Chapter 10
Knox
Knox pushed through the gym doors at exactly nine. The place smelled like sweat and rubber mats. A few people glanced up when he walked in, then went back to whatever they were doing.
He rolled his shoulders, trying to shake some of the tension out of them. It didn’t go anywhere.
“Right on time.” Cassian’s voice carried across the gym.
Knox turned to find him leaning against the edge of the ring, already warmed up by the look of him. He pushed off as Knox approached, smile in place. “Was afraid you might bail,” he said.
Knox stopped a few feet away. “Didn’t seem like an option.”
Cassian’s smile didn’t falter, but understanding flickered behind it. “Smart. You’re learning.”
Knox folded his arms. “Dominic sent me here.”
“Yeah,” Cassian said. “He did.”
“Why?”
Cassian tilted his head, studying him for a moment as if deciding how honest to be. “Because that little handoff with those two idiots could’ve gone a hell of a lot worse.”
Knox’s nostrils flared. “I handled it.”
Cassian nodded. “You did. Doesn’t mean you were ready for it.”
The annoying part was how true that sounded.
Cassian stepped closer, not in his space, but close enough that Knox had no choice except to pay attention.
“Here’s how this works,” he said. “You’re here all week.
Mornings. You show up on time, you do what I tell you, and maybe next time someone puts a gun in your face, you won’t have to rely on blind luck. ”
Before Knox could respond, Cassian tossed something at him. Knox caught it on instinct, fingers closing around the fabric. Hand wraps.
“What’s this?” he asked, even though he knew.
Cassian clapped his hands once. “Wrap up.”
Knox exhaled through his nose and started winding the fabric around his knuckles, slower than he probably should have, more focused on getting it right than he wanted to admit.
Cassian watched him the whole time. “Ever trained before?” he asked.
Knox shook his head. “Not like this.”
“Been in fights?”
Knox glanced up briefly. “Some. When I was younger.”
Cassian huffed a laugh. “Yeah, I figured.”
Knox finished the wraps and flexed his fingers, testing the tightness.
Cassian jerked his chin toward the mat. “Good. Get in.”
Knox stepped onto the mat, the surface giving slightly under his weight.
Cassian followed, rolling his shoulders. “No rules,” he said.
Knox blinked. “What?”
Cassian’s grin widened. “No points. No rounds. No one stepping in to break it up.” He tilted his head. “You want to learn how to protect yourself? This is how.”
Knox felt his pulse kick up. “That’s not training.”
Cassian shrugged. “Sure it is.” The easy humor drained out of his face, replaced by something focused. “Lesson one,” he said, and before Knox could fully register the shift in his tone, he moved. Fast.
Knox barely had time to react. His hands came up on instinct, just enough to keep Cassian’s fist from connecting cleanly with his face, though the blow still slammed hard into his shoulder and sent him stumbling backward across the mat.
“Too slow,” Cassian said.
Knox steadied himself, adrenaline hitting all at once. “That was cheap,” he snapped.
Cassian laughed outright. “Yeah. That’s kind of the point.”
He came at him again without warning, giving Knox no time to reset properly. This time Knox tried to create distance, stepping back, but Cassian closed it effortlessly. He caught Knox’s wrist, twisting just enough to throw him off balance. Knox hit the mat hard, air punching from his lungs.
“Get up,” Cassian said.
Knox rolled, pushing himself back to his feet with his jaw locked tight, something wilder burning through the shock.
“You don’t get to take a second,” Cassian went on. “You hesitate, you panic, you try to process what’s happening instead of reacting, and suddenly you’re done.”
Knox lunged before he could overthink it, fueled more by irritation than strategy.
Cassian let him get close. That should have been warning enough.
Knox managed one decent hit before Cassian moved again, and suddenly the world flipped.
One second he was upright, the next he was flat on his back with Cassian pinning him hard, his arm locked in a way that made it very clear how easy it would be to break.
Knox froze, breathing hard.
Cassian leaned down, voice low. “Stop panicking. This is where people get themselves hurt. They thrash around, waste energy fighting the wrong thing.”
“I’m not panicking,” Knox bit out.
Cassian gave a quiet hum that might have been approval before releasing him and stepping back. “Good.”
Knox rolled away and stood more carefully this time. Cassian watched him without mocking, which somehow made it worse. “No one’s coming to save you in a room like that,” he said. “You either figure it out fast, or you don’t walk out.”
Knox wiped a hand over his mouth. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I got that part.”
“Again,” Cassian said.
The next round lasted longer. Knox stopped charging blindly and started watching instead, trying to track the way Cassian held himself.
But the second Knox thought he saw an opening, Cassian clipped him across the side of the head.
Not enough to drop him, but enough to sting, to remind him exactly how far behind he was.
“Don’t watch me,” Cassian said, circling him. “Watch what I’m about to do.”
That sounded maddeningly unhelpful until Cassian demonstrated it, slowing down enough to guide Knox through the mechanics. He showed him how balance shifted, where leverage disappeared, and why strength alone was useless if you were fighting the wrong thing.
“Feel that?” Cassian asked, adjusting Knox’s wrist.
He did. His body understood the lesson the second Cassian forced him into it, but actually applying it in motion was another matter.
They kept going. Long enough for Knox to lose track of time, long enough for his body to start protesting every movement.
Cassian didn’t go easy on him, but he wasn’t trying to humiliate him either.
He pushed, corrected, demonstrated, then expected Knox to absorb it fast enough to try again.
More than once Knox found himself staring up at fluorescent lights, lungs burning while Cassian stood over him waiting to get up.
“Hands up unless you want to lose teeth.”
“Don’t reach.”
“Watch my shoulders, not my hands.”
“Don’t wait for permission.”
Slowly, it began to click. The hits still came, the mistakes still happened, but he improved. Cassian noticed. Knox could tell by the way the corrections got shorter.
“Again.”
They reset. Cassian stepped in, expecting that same reaction he’d been getting for the past ten minutes. Knox didn’t give it. He moved differently. It wasn’t elegant, but it was enough to break the pattern.
“There,” Cassian said. “That’s it.”
Knox didn’t stop to think. He moved again, his shoulder turned, his hand came up, and this time it landed. The crack of knuckles against bone seemed louder than it should have been.
Cassian’s head snapped sideways.
Everything stopped. Knox froze, breath catching, his own surprise nearly outweighing the adrenaline.
Cassian went very still, then slowly lifted a hand to his nose. When he pulled it away, bright blood streaked his knuckles.
“I—”
Cassian looked at the blood before grinning in a way that was frankly a little alarming. “There you go,” he said, sounding genuinely delighted. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
He wiped the blood away with complete indifference and looked back at Knox with a new kind of intensity.
“Again.”
Knox blinked. “You’re not serious—”
Cassian was already moving. This time he came in faster, harder, like the hit had flipped something instead of slowing him down. There was no rhythm to it now, no warning, just relentless pressure forcing him to move or get dropped.
Knox moved with it, took the hits he couldn’t avoid, and gave back whenever he spotted an opening. None of it was clean, but it was real.
Cassian let out a short laugh. “That’s it. Don’t stop now.”
Knox’s lungs burned, his muscles shaking with the effort, but he stayed on his feet. Because he understood what Cassian had been trying to teach him. This wasn’t about winning. It was about not breaking.
And somewhere beneath the exhaustion, Knox kept pushing back.
* * *
By evening, the ache had settled in properly. His shoulder throbbed where he’d taken the worst of the hits. His ribs weren’t much better. Every shift of his weight reminded him of it, like his body hadn’t quite decided whether to recover or just remain in a permanent state of protest.
Knox sat at the far end of the couch while the TV flickered in front of them. His mother controlled the remote, chain-smoking through some entertainment gossip show with the volume loud enough to make ignoring it impossible.
On-screen, a perfectly polished blonde host smiled beside footage from some red carpet event. “We have to talk about last night’s Hollywood gala, because yes, Jacob Wolfe and Liam Hart actually did it. They made their first official public appearance as a couple.”
The screen cut to a frenzy of camera flashes, reporters shouting over each other as a sleek black car pulled up outside some fancy event. The cameras exploded as the two men stepped out.
There he was.
Jacob Wolfe.
His brother, or technically half-brother. Still a ridiculous thought. They shared the same father, but their lives were so far apart they might as well have happened on different planets.
Knox had seen him exactly once, at their father’s funeral six months ago, and they hadn’t exchanged a single word.
Finding out the distant half-brother he’d never known was a famous actor caught in some massive cheating scandal with another famous actor had somehow made the whole thing feel even more surreal.
The host kept going. “The actors—whose relationship began under highly controversial circumstances, considering both were married at the time—looked very much unbothered at last night’s event.”
A second host leaned in dramatically. “Unbothered? Please. That man looked at Liam like the rest of us didn’t exist.”
His mother let out a sharp laugh through her cigarette smoke. “Disgusting,” she muttered.
Knox kept his expression blank while the segment rolled on. “Social media is exploding with reactions ranging from support to outrage. Fans are loving this new couple, though plenty still aren’t ready to forgive the affair that ended two marriages. But one thing’s clear: nobody can stop watching.”
“Jesus Christ,” his mother said, reaching for the remote and flipping channels.
Knox got to his feet and headed for his room.
“Where are you going?” his mother called after him.
“My room.”
She stubbed out her cigarette with more force than necessary. “Sure. God forbid you spend two minutes with your own mother?”
Knox stopped moving and looked back. They stared at each other for a long moment, the air between them thick and sour. He could feel the disappointment rolling off her, the bitterness that never really left this place.
She broke eye contact first, flicking her lighter open like he’d stopped existing.
He left her to it, closing his bedroom door behind him.
He sank onto the bed and lay back, arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the stained ceiling.
He breathed slowly, trying to settle the noise in his head.
It didn’t work. Inside these walls, everything felt hopeless.
The ceiling pressed down, the walls closed in, and all the colors faded to nothing.
The feeling of being stuck in a life too narrow for anything good to grow.
His phone buzzed on the mattress beside him. He hadn’t even realized he’d set it down there. The screen lit up.
Dominic.
He pushed himself upright and answered. “Hello.”
There was a brief pause before Dominic’s voice came through. “How was the training?”
Knox stayed seated for a moment, then got to his feet, restless energy pushing him into motion. “I’m sure you already know.”
“Say it anyway.”
Knox paced once across the room before turning back. “Got dropped. A lot. Figured some of it out. Not much.”
A pause.
Knox looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers before adding. “I hit him.”
“Did you?”
Something in Dominic’s tone made Knox straighten a little. “Yeah. Caught him clean.”
“Good.”
He stopped pacing. The praise shouldn’t have mattered. It absolutely shouldn’t have. But it landed anyway, and he hated that it did.
“You sent me in there to get my ass handed to me,” Knox said, the edge back in his voice.
“Yes.”
He dragged a hand through his hair. “Cassian doesn’t exactly go easy.”
“I told him not to.”
Knox stilled at that.
“I don’t need you getting lucky once,” Dominic added, his tone controlled. “That’s not useful to me. I need you to be able to handle yourself every time, in every room. You learn quickly, or you become a liability.”
Knox’s jaw clenched, anger flaring in his chest. “I’m not a liability.”
“Then prove it,” Dominic said. No softness or room to argue.
Knox’s grip tightened around the phone. “I will.” He was leaning against the wall now. “You could’ve just asked Cassian how it went.”
“I did.”
That made him frown. “Then why call me?”
A pause. Long enough that Knox noticed.
“I expect progress,” Dominic said, dodging the question.
Knox let out a deep breath. “Right.”
The line went dead.
Knox stood there for a moment, staring at the dark screen before letting his arm drop to the side.
He shouldn’t have cared that Dominic called.
But he did.
It wasn’t like the conversation had been a good one. Dominic had barely given him anything.
And yet he’d called. He could’ve left it at Cassian’s report. Could’ve moved on to the next problem without wasting a minute on Knox. Instead, he’d picked up the phone.
Fuck.
When had that started to matter?