5. Mari
FIVE
MARI
Ten days before the fight, I discover three things.
First, Ruiz makes coffee strong enough to dissolve a spoon.
Second, Knox is a better fighter than the old footage suggests.
Third, watching him train is going to destroy what remains of my judgment.
Ruiz's gym occupies a converted tire warehouse on Florida Boulevard. Heavy bags hang from steel beams. The cage sits beneath a row of industrial lights, its chain link repaired in half a dozen places. Nothing is decorative. Everything has absorbed sweat.
Knox is inside the cage with a heavyweight named Bishop, moving around a man forty pounds heavier as if the size difference is a problem he's already solved.
He doesn't fight the way Cortez does. Cortez crashes forward.
Knox invites pressure, shifts half a step, and makes the other man miss by inches.
He sees combinations before they arrive.
When Bishop loads his right, Knox slips inside and drives a short punch into the body pad that makes the larger man grunt.
Ruiz watches beside me. "He still thinks too much."
"That's usually considered an advantage."
"Not when thinking becomes a place to hide."
I look at him.
Ruiz is sixty-two, built like a fire hydrant, and apparently uninterested in conversational boundaries.
"He told you about his last fight?" he asks.
"Only the shoulder."
Ruiz's gaze returns to the cage. "He broke a young man badly. Orbital, cheek, jaw. Ref should've stopped it sooner, but Knox knew the boy was done and hit him twice more because the crowd was screaming and he was angry. Won the fight. Quit the next morning."
Inside the cage, Knox pivots away from Bishop and resets.
"He thinks the worst thing about him is that he can hurt people," Ruiz says. "The worst thing is he believes hurting himself is different."
That is so precisely Knox that my chest aches.
After sparring, he comes to the cage door with sweat running down his throat and tape wrapped around his hands.
"What did Ruiz tell you?"
"That your defense drops when you get self-righteous."
Ruiz laughs behind me.
Knox gives him a look. "Traitor."
"She sees better than you listen."
I hold up my tablet. "I also found something useful. Cortez's twelve finishes aren't twelve equivalent fights. Nine ended inside four minutes. Two reached the second round, and both opponents had already taken significant head damage. Only one man kept him working past six minutes."
"Polk," Knox says.
"Yes. According to the video, Cortez won by referee stoppage at seven twelve. According to the live betting archive, money moved against Cortez ninety seconds before the stoppage. People in the room thought he was fading."
Ruiz takes the tablet. I show them the output graph I built from the footage: strikes per minute, forward movement, time spent in clinch.
"His pace falls almost forty percent after minute five," I say. "He hides it by leaning his weight in the clinch. If you keep him turning instead of letting him pin you, he has to carry himself."
Knox studies the graph. "Body shots."
"Body shots and time. The first round is his. The longer it goes, the more it becomes yours."
His eyes lift to mine without surprise or patronizing praise. Trust simply settles into place.
"Build me a round-by-round probability," he says. "I want to know exactly when the shift happens."
"Already did."
I swipe to the next screen.
That earns a slow smile. "Of course you did."
For the next four days, I come to the gym each morning. I run the promotion from the ring apron, answer messages between rounds, and watch Knox drill the plan I helped shape.
He gives me a job in his corner without making a ceremony of it.
I call time intervals while Ruiz pressures him with pads.
I flag the moment his left hand drops after the body hook.
Knox corrects it. He notices that I stop breathing whenever Bishop catches him clean and starts looking at me after every hard exchange, a silent check that he's still standing.
We don't discuss the almost-kiss at the clubhouse.
We don't need to. It follows us everywhere.
Six days before the fight, Razor confirms Santos provided Leveaux with old security diagrams and my address. He claims he never knew about the photograph or the break-in. I believe that he didn't ask. Men like Santos sell a door and pretend innocence about who walks through it.
Forge removes him from the Pit permanently. Leveaux keeps the escrow deadline and denies involvement.
That afternoon, Knox catches me heading toward the parking lot alone and blocks the gym door with one arm.
"Where's Ghost?" he asks.
"Collecting the replacement cameras."
"Then wait."
"My car is thirty feet away."
"Thirty feet is enough."
I fold my arms. "Mémère ran an illegal card room in New Orleans for forty-one years. Do you truly believe she sent me into adulthood unable to handle a man grabbing me?"
His expression changes. "Show me."
"Here?"
"Unless your grandmother's method requires special lighting."
I set my laptop bag down on the mat. Knox removes his wraps and stands in front of me. "I'm reaching for the strap. Don't let me take it."
"You're twice my size."
"Most men who choose smaller targets are."
He grabs the strap across my shoulder. I step into him, stamp the inside of his foot, and drive my elbow toward his ribs. He turns enough that the strike misses, but the strap loosens.
"Good," he says. "Again."
"That sounded surprised."
"It sounded good."
The second time, he pulls backward. The strap tightens across my chest and drags me off balance.
"The bag is replaceable," he says. "Your shoulder isn't. If the strap traps you, give him the bag and keep the hand."
"The hardware key isn't replaceable."
"Then it shouldn't be in the bag."
Annoyingly, he has a point.
He shows me how to turn toward the grip instead of fighting the pull, pin his thumb, and use my whole body against the weakest part of his hand. His chest brushes my back as he positions my wrist. His voice drops close to my ear.
"Don't try to overpower him. Break the connection and move."
"You enjoy giving orders far too much."
"I enjoy you winning."
I turn my head. His mouth is inches from mine.
The moment stretches, hot and dangerous, before Ruiz bangs a bucket down across the gym and announces that if we intend to make out during self-defense training, he is charging for a private lesson.
Knox steps away. I pick up the bag and look at Ruiz. "Add it to his bill."
We run the drill six more times. On the last attempt, I break Knox's grip, hook his ankle, and put him on one knee.
His slow grin makes the victory feel far more indecent than it should.
"Again tomorrow," he says.
"Only if you can cope with further humiliation."
"I'll take the risk."
Five days before the fight, someone tries to take my laptop in the gym parking lot.
I'm reaching for the car door when a man in a gray cap comes between the vehicles. One hand grabs the strap across my shoulder. The other catches my upper arm.
"Give me the bag."
I don't scream. Screaming tells a predator you're waiting for rescue.
I step toward him instead of away, slam the heel of my boot down his shin, and drive the edge of my laptop bag into his throat. His grip loosens. I wrench free and hit the panic button on my keys.
The car horn erupts.
The gym door bangs open.
Knox crosses the lot at a run.
The man reaches inside his jacket. Knox hits him before I see what he's reaching for. One punch to the jaw, a second to the ribs, then the man is face down on the asphalt with Knox's knee between his shoulder blades.
A folding knife skids beneath my car.
"Who sent you?" Knox asks.
The man's cheek grinds against the pavement. "Fuck you."
Knox pulls his arm higher.
"Careful," I say. "I need him conscious."
Knox looks at me. His eyes are black with rage, but he eases the pressure by a degree.
Razor arrives ten minutes later and takes the man somewhere I don't ask about. Before he goes, he admits he was paid to steal the laptop and the hardware key I use to authorize transfers. Not kill me. Not that the knife makes the distinction comforting.
When the parking lot clears, Knox turns on me.
"You're done."
Adrenaline is still buzzing beneath my skin. "Excuse me?"
"You work from my house until the fight. You don't come here, you don't go to the Pit, and you don't move without one of us."
"No."
"A man just put a knife in reach of you."
"And he left without my laptop."
"This isn't a scorecard."
"It matters when somebody is trying to find out what they can take."
He steps close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him from training. "They can take you."
The words break rough in the middle.
My anger shifts.
"Is that what this is?" I ask. "You think I'm yours to lose?"
His jaw works. "I think if something happens to you, there's no part of my life it doesn't tear through."
The parking lot, the horn, the approaching traffic on Florida Boulevard all fade.
"Knox..."
"I know you can protect yourself. I know you're smarter than Leveaux and me and probably everybody at that table combined. None of that makes you bulletproof."
"Neither are you."
"I never claimed to be."
"You act like it every day."
He looks away first.
I take his taped hand. His knuckles are scraped where they hit the man. The wrap is rough against my palm.
"Mémère's rule wasn't that I should never care about anybody in the room," I say.
"It was never sit in a game where somebody else controls the deck.
I kept this between us because the club pays me, and you brought me in, and I couldn't tell whether wanting you meant giving up control of my own seat. "
His gaze comes back to mine. "You think I'd use the club to hold you?"
"No. That's why the rule stopped helping."
His breathing changes.
"Mari, if this happens, your work stays yours. Your decisions stay yours. You don't become club property, and you sure as hell don't become mine."
"That wasn't very romantic."
"I don't know how to make freedom sound romantic."
"Try kissing me."
He does.
His hand closes around the back of my neck and his mouth comes down on mine with all the restraint he's been carrying since we met. The first touch is hard enough to steal my breath. The second slows, his lips moving over mine as though he needs to learn the shape of what he's wanted.
I taste coffee and salt. My hands flatten against his chest, sweat-warm beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, and every part of me that has been pretending wakes at once.
He backs me through the open gym door without breaking the kiss.
"Ruiz?" I ask against his mouth.
"Gone."
"Door?"
"Locked."
"Good."
The backs of my thighs hit the ring apron. Knox lifts me onto it, his body between my knees. His taped hands slide over my hips, rough through my jeans, and I pull him closer until the hard length of him presses against me.
"Tell me to stop," he says, mouth at my throat.
"I'm never going to tell you to stop."
He makes a low sound that I feel more than hear.
My shirt comes off. Then my bra. His palms cover my breasts, tape dragging over my nipples, and the scrape sends heat straight between my legs.
"The wraps," he says. "Want them off?"
"No."
His eyes darken.
"I like them," I admit.
"That's going to stay in my head."
"Then give it something better to remember."
He kisses down my neck and chest, taking one nipple into his mouth while his taped thumb rolls over the other. I arch into him, fingers gripping his shoulders.
Then he drops to his knees.
The sight of Knox Barrera between my thighs almost finishes me before he touches me.
He unbuttons my jeans and pulls them down with my underwear. I lean back on my hands, naked from the waist down on the ring apron while the industrial fans turn overhead.
"Look at me," I say.
He does.
He doesn't look embarrassed or reach for the joking distance we usually use. His gaze holds mine as he presses his mouth to my inner thigh, then drags his tongue slowly toward where I need him.
The first flat stroke over my clit tears a sound from me.
His taped hands lock around my hips. He eats me with the same patience he brings to the cage, testing pressure, reading every movement. When I roll toward his mouth, he repeats the stroke. When my breath catches, he slows until I'm shaking with the need for more.
"Knox, please."
Two fingers push inside me, curling forward. His tongue circles my clit and the combination makes my elbows buckle.
"Right there. Don't stop."
He doesn't. His fingers move in a steady rhythm, his mouth relentless, and pleasure gathers so quickly it borders on panic. My thighs tighten around his head. One hand fists in his hair.
"I'm going to come."
He answers with a rough sound against me and presses harder.
The orgasm breaks through me. My back arches off the apron, his name coming out in a broken cry while I clench around his fingers. He keeps his mouth on me through every pulse until the sensitivity turns sharp and I push at his shoulder.
"Too much. Stop."
He sits back on his heels, mouth wet, chest rising hard.
For one breathless second we stare at each other.
Then I reach for the waistband of his training shorts.
He catches my wrist.
"Not tonight."
"You cannot be serious."
"Five days. I need my head in the fight."
"Your head hasn't been in the fight for the last ten minutes."
"Exactly."
I wrap my hand around the hard shape of him through the fabric. His eyes close.
"Mari."
"That sounded less convincing."
He takes my hand away and kisses my palm. The tenderness of it lands deeper than everything else.
"After," he says. "When I'm not counting days and rounds. I want time."
The promise in his voice quiets the frustration.
"After," I agree.
He helps me dress, which is somehow more intimate than undressing me. He pulls my shirt down over my ribs, smooths my hair away from my face, and presses his forehead to mine.
"You're still working from my house."
I laugh. "You ruin every moment."
"But you're agreeing."
"Until the fight. Because the hardware key has already been moved, and because I'm choosing it."
"Understood."
I touch the scar at the edge of his right shoulder. "And you're coming back for the rest of that promise."
His hand covers mine.
"Understood."