Coach Vic didn’t flinch at the threat. Instead, he reached down behind the scorer’s table and picked up a weathered, black-and-gold jacket.
“You sure you want to ban her, Damon?” Vic asked, a slow, dangerous smile finally cracking through his gray beard. “You might want to take a closer look at who you’re talking to.”
Chapter 2: The Red Wraps
The silence in the gym had shifted from shock to a suffocating tension. The fighters who had been training didn’t go back to their bags. They stood by the water coolers, leaning against the walls, watching the standoff.
Damon smoothed the lapels of his suit, his face flushed with the kind of anger only a man used to getting his way could manifest. He looked from Coach Vic to the old black-and-gold jacket in the coach's hands, then scoffed.
“I don’t care if she’s your niece, your cousin, or some washed-up golden gloves champion you dug out of a trailer park,” Damon said, his voice carrying easily across the silent gym. “My agency pays your rent, Vic. Five thousand dollars a month for exclusive use of that main cage for my fighters. The bank has been breathing down your neck since your brother died, and I’m the only thing keeping the lights on. If I say she’s out, she’s out.”
By her duffel bag, Maya finished packing away her gloves. She didn’t look frightened, nor did she look angry. She reached into the side pocket of her bag and pulled out two rolls of heavily used, distinctly red cloth hand wraps.
She began winding the red cloth around her knuckles in a very specific, deliberate pattern. Over the thumb, across the back of the hand, locking the wrist, and then weaving intricately between each finger.
Damon noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye and glared at her. “Are you deaf? Pack your bag and get out.”
Maya didn’t stop wrapping her hands. She looked up from her knuckles and let her eyes drift toward the wall behind the front desk. Pinned to the cheap corkboard, surrounded by local fight posters, was an old photograph. It showed Coach Vic, looking twenty years younger, standing next to a massive, smiling man with a shaved head. Tommy Vicario. The co-founder of the gym, who had passed away unexpectedly five years ago.
Standing between the two brothers in the photo was a young woman, her face obscured by the shadow of a baseball cap, her hands raised in victory, wearing bright red hand wraps.
“You think your money keeps the lights on, Damon?” Vic said, walking slowly toward the manager. “You think your little five grand a month buys you this gym?”
“It literally does,” Damon snapped. “Brad is the future. This gym is the past. And this woman just jeopardized a fifty-thousand-dollar purse because she wanted to play tough guy.”
Brad, sensing his manager's protection, finally found his nerve again. He stepped forward, rolling his injured shoulder, trying to look intimidating. “She used an illegal grip in sparring. She intentionally tried to injure me. I want her name, Vic. Now.”
Maya pulled the velcro tight on her left wrist. The harsh red of the wraps stood out like fresh blood against her pale skin and faded gray clothes.
She finally turned to face them.
“You don’t keep your chin tucked,” Maya said. Her voice cut through the room, quiet but carrying a strange, resonant authority that made the younger fighters in the back stand up straighter. “You plant your lead foot too heavy when you throw the cross. And you panic when you're on your back. If you fight in six weeks with that technique, the kid from Albuquerque is going to knock you out in the second round.”
Brad’s jaw dropped. “How the hell do you know who I’m fighting?”
“Because I know this sport,” Maya said, walking slowly toward the center of the room. “And I know you. You’re a bully. You beat up on the new kids to feel like a champion, but when someone actually pushes back, you break.”
“Listen to me, you miserable—” Damon started, stepping toward her, raising a hand as if to point in her face.
As Damon closed the distance, the harsh overhead fluorescent lights hit Maya’s face fully for the first time.
Damon stopped dead in his tracks. His pointed finger slowly lowered.
He looked at the small, crescent-shaped scar resting high on her left cheekbone, just under her eye. He looked at the deep, calm, utterly dead expression in her dark eyes. And then he looked down at the intricate, unique way the red cloth was woven between her fingers—a signature style known only to one specific Muay Thai camp in Bangkok.