The air inside Apex MMA was suffocating, thick with the humidity of thirty men exhaling aggression all at once. The cavernous room featured a ceiling painted pitch black, intersected by blinding fluorescent lights that beat down on the vibrant blue mats covering the floor. In the far back, a massive black iron octagon cage loomed like an executioner’s block.
I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, gripping the edges of the heavy brown cardboard carton against the bright yellow fabric of my courier jacket. The backpack strapped to my shoulders felt like a lead weight, but I forced my breathing to remain slow and even. I wasn't Maya Vance, grieving sister. I was just a nameless girl in a yellow jacket making a delivery.
I took three steps onto the blue mat toward the reception desk.
A massive shadow fell over me.
Marcus "The Mountain" Cole stepped deliberately into my path. Up close, he was even more terrifying than the footage I’d obsessed over for the last six months. He was entirely shirtless, his dark skin shining with sweat, his muscles thick and corded like twisted steel cables. He reached out and planted a heavy, calloused hand firmly onto my shoulder. It felt like an anvil dropping on my collarbone.
"Package for me?" Marcus’s voice was a deep, gravelly rumble that vibrated in my chest.
Behind him, three of Silas Thorne’s regular fighters—a guy with a cauliflower ear named Jax, a heavily tattooed heavyweight named Rocco, and a bald, scarred man named Bane—stopped hitting the heavy bags. They smirked, pulling their cell phones out of their gym bags to film the interaction. They loved to humiliate outsiders.
I didn't blink. I tilted my head up, keeping my face completely blank. "Depends," I said, my voice cutting through the gym’s ambient noise. "Are you signing?"
Marcus stared at me for a second, clearly surprised that I hadn't shrunk away from his touch. Then, his cruel smile widened. He removed his hand from my shoulder, waving off the cardboard box, and took a deliberate step backward. He aggressively clapped his massive hands together, the sound echoing like a gunshot across the gym.
"Forget the package," Marcus said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. "Let's go one round."
The gym went entirely quiet. Jax, Rocco, and Bane snickered, lifting their phones higher. They were waiting for me to panic, to apologize, to turn and run out the glass doors.
Instead, I casually walked past Marcus’s towering frame, stepped over to a long black padded bench, and gently set the cardboard carton down.
"Not in my job description," I said calmly, turning my back to him to make sure the box was secure. I took a slow breath, feeling the old, familiar rush of adrenaline flooding my veins. My knee ached, a ghost of my past life, but I pushed the pain into a tight little box in my mind. "Fine. But don't blame the courier."
I pivoted sharply. In a fraction of a second, my muscle memory took over. I dropped my center of gravity low, bending my knees, and brought both hands up in a flawless, perfectly balanced judo stance.
Marcus’s grin vanished. His eyes narrowed, recognizing that I wasn't just holding my hands up to block—I was in a combat stance. He raised his enormous fists and began to stalk toward me across the blue mat.
"Wait," Jax yelled from behind his phone camera, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. "The delivery girl knows how to fight. Look at her!"
I didn't look at Jax. I kept my eyes locked on Marcus's collarbone, waiting to read his muscle twitch. He was massive, but he was arrogant. He carried his weight too far forward, relying on sheer power to overwhelm his opponents.
With a guttural grunt, Marcus lunged.