CHAPTER NINE
Winter settled over the city like a gray blanket, and Olivia's training entered a new phase.
Lucas introduced strength work—real strength work, not the body-weight exercises she'd done at home.
She learned to deadlift, her chubby fingers gripping the bar with surprising power.
She learned to squat heavy, her flexible hips letting her reach depth that impressed even the powerlifters.
She learned to press, to pull, to carry, to drag.
Her body changed. Not in the ways people expected—she didn't shrink, didn't become smaller or more socially acceptable.
She became denser. Her arms showed definition she'd never had before.
Her legs grew stronger, thicker, capable of generating frightening power.
Her core became a pillar of stability that let her absorb impacts and generate force from impossible positions.
She was still round. Still soft in places. Still five-foot-two with wide hips and a belly that refused to flatten.
But now, when she walked into Ironhaven, people looked at her differently. Not because she'd changed her shape, but because she moved like someone dangerous.
"You've put on muscle," Gloria observed one morning. The divorced woman had become Olivia's closest gym friend—funny, fierce, and relentlessly supportive. "You look like you could throw a car."
"I could probably throw a golf cart."
"That's my girl."
Gloria was progressing too, finding confidence in her forties that she'd never had in her twenties. She and Olivia trained together on Lucas's days off, drilling combinations, spotting each other on lifts, sharing protein bars that tasted increasingly less like cardboard.
"So," Gloria said casually during a water break. "You and Lucas."
"There is no me and Lucas."
"There's definitely a you and Lucas. The tension could power the gym."
"He's my trainer."
"He's your trainer who looks at you like you're the last slice of pizza at a party."
Olivia spluttered water everywhere. "He does not."
"He absolutely does. And you look at him like he's a pull-up bar you really want to mount but you're not sure you can reach."
"That is the worst metaphor I've ever heard."
"I'm a work in progress." Gloria grinned. "But seriously, Olivia. When are you going to admit there's something there?"
Olivia dried her face with her towel. "When he admits it first."
"Proud and stubborn. A classic combination."
"I'm not proud. I'm cautious. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
Olivia didn't answer. She was thinking about the night before—how Lucas had corrected her deadlift form by standing behind her, his chest pressed to her back, his hands guiding her hips.
How he'd held her there for one breath too long after the set ended.
How he'd cleared his throat and stepped back like they'd both been burned.
"He falls first or nobody falls," Olivia said finally. "I have a dream, Gloria. I can't get distracted."
"Who says love is a distraction? Valeria Vance had a love interest, didn't she?"
"Marcus. He was her tactical partner. They didn't get together until book four."
"See? Slow burn. Just like you."
"I'm not a slow burn. I'm a controlled explosion."
Gloria laughed so hard she nearly fell off the bench.
Lucas appeared then, gym bag over his shoulder, hair still wet from a shower. He'd been doing his own training in the back room—something intense, based on the fresh bruises on his knuckles.
"You two look conspiratorial," he said.
"We're planning your demise," Olivia said.
"Naturally. What did I do?"
"Exist annoyingly."
"I'll work on that." He dropped his bag and pulled out a tablet. "Olivia, I want to show you something."
The tablet displayed video footage—grainy, dark, clearly shot on a phone. It showed a fight. Not a gym sparring match. A real fight, in what looked like a warehouse. Two men, moving with supernatural speed, trading blows that cracked concrete and shattered metal.
"What is this?" Olivia asked.
"Something I found online. It'll be gone in an hour—someone keeps scrubbing these videos."
The men in the footage weren't just fast. They were impossible. One of them leaped twenty feet. The other caught the leap with one hand and threw him through a wall.
"This is fake," Gloria said. "CGI."
"It's not," Lucas said quietly. "I've seen this before. In person."
Olivia looked up at him. His face was drawn, serious in a way that made her stomach tighten.
"Lucas," she said slowly. "What aren't you telling me?"
He closed the tablet. "Nothing that matters right now. What matters is your training. We have three months until—"
He stopped.
"Until what?"
"Until you're ready," he finished, but the words felt like a substitution. "Come on. Conditioning circuit. Let's go."
He walked toward the turf area before she could press him, leaving Olivia staring at his back with a growing sense that Lucas Mercer knew something about the world that she didn't.
Something big.
Something terrifying.