Split Decision (No Safe Corner #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

LUKE

Something’s wrong. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there, lying just below the surface and waiting to emerge from its cocoon. I feel defeated before the ring of the bell even matters.

I stand in the center of the ring, my gloves hanging loose, sweat cooling too quickly on my skin.

Something’s off. It’s not my strength—that has been tested in every imaginable way.

It’s not my conditioning. I don’t even need an alarm clock anymore.

I wake at exactly the same time every morning to run sprints and build my endurance.

It’s my timing. It’s been slipping for weeks now.

The problem is this isn’t the kind of off I can fix by going more rounds or sharpening my timing.

There’s nothing for me to train out or push through.

This issue runs deeper than that. It’s similar to the calm before the storm.

The kind of obstacle you don’t see until it’s already in front of you and you can’t swerve to miss it.

It’s not just in the ring.

It’s everything. Conversations half a beat off. Reactions that come too late or too fast.

Even with Andi… I’m not where I should be when it matters.

“Earth to Luke.” Mack’s voice breaks through my inner thoughts as easily as it cuts across the gym. My training has taught me to filter out every noise that isn’t his voice. “You planning to move today, or you just here sightseeing?”

I roll my shoulders once and step in, forcing my feet to find the rhythm they’ve known for years. Jab. Cross. Reset. It’s close. Well, closer. But it’s still not right, and I can’t even pretend otherwise.

Mack doesn’t correct me. He doesn’t shout. He just watches, arms folded, eyes concentrated on the details most people miss.

That’s worse.

“Again,” he says.

I go again, but with the same result. My timing’s half a beat off, like I’m reacting instead of reading. I drop my hands and drag my glove across my mouth, more out of habit than anything else.

“You’re reading late,” Mack says.

Late means losing. Late means taking hits you never should’ve seen coming.

Late means you stop trusting yourself.

And once that’s gone… everything else follows.

There’s no anger in his tone. No volume in his pitch.

He doesn’t even add his signature bass gruff that conveys exactly what he’s thinking without him needing to spell it out.

He’s simply asserting a cold, hard fact.

The problem is he’s right, and that irritates me more than it should.

Because I don’t have an answer for it. There’s no excuse for my regression.

For the last seven weeks, everything’s been… quiet. Jackson and Delia are officially presumed dead. There have been no sightings, no unexpected statements, and no bodies pulled from the water. They haven’t shown up like some poorly written horror movie where the evil villain refuses to die.

At first, I told myself that it was a good thing.

That meant our ordeal was over. Now it just feels like space.

The kind of something that can move through without being seen.

Now I’d rather face Rhoades like a man and finish this the old-fashioned way.

I never realized how intrusive a lack of closure feels in everyday life.

“You hear me?” Mack asks.

“Yeah.”

“Then stop waiting for permission and get ahead of it.”

I nod, but my attention’s already slipping. Not to anything in the ring. Not to him. Something out there, looming on the horizon. Like when you can feel a storm brewing, you can smell the rain in the air, but can’t see a single storm cloud in the sky.

Across the gym, my phone sits on the bench where I left it.

I checked it three times in the ten minutes before climbing into the ring without realizing I was doing it.

Here I am, waiting. For what, I don’t know.

To put a finer point on it, that’s exactly what’s wrong…

what’s off. Just the next move—and that’s the problem.

I don’t know where the next hit is coming from.

Only that it is coming. There’s no way to guard against something like that.

Mack tosses me a towel. It lands against my chest harder than it needs to.

“Take five,” he says. “Before you make this a habit.”

I catch it and step out of the ring, wiping the sweat from my face as I head toward the bench.

There’s a dark sedan parked at the curb across the street.

The car is probably nothing, but I’m hyper-vigilant now, and I can’t turn it off.

Is someone watching me train? The second my feet hit the floor, my phone lights up.

It’s a news notification.

Why Unsanctioned Boxing Matches Are Illegal

I stare at it for a second before I pick it up.

I don’t need to read the article to know what it’s about.

It’s a targeted jab at me… about my past fights, now that my name is becoming better known.

Seems the puppeteers are using every piece of leverage against me they can find, and everyone in the media loves a juicy exclusive.

If they can use my past underground, unsanctioned fights to block my sanctioned rise, they’ll destroy me on the six o’clock news and sleep like a baby later.

It doesn’t matter how long ago those fights were.

They won’t care that I was only trying to gain some street cred, not understanding how the ranking system actually worked at the time.

No one will care how long ago that era of my life was.

The “crucify him” crowd will be hard at work.

The quiet is officially over, and a new fight—one outside the ring—has just begun.

ANDI

The phone vibrates on Luke’s nightstand, and I groan slightly in frustration.

Today is his only day off from strenuous training, the day for his body to recover and prevent over-training.

The one day we didn’t have to be up before dawn to hit the road for a long-distance run followed by intense repetitions of sprints that fatigue his muscles beyond exhaustion.

He doesn’t move at first. He’s warm beside me.

One arm lies heavy across my waist. His breathing is deep and even in blissful sleep.

At first, I decide to ignore it. He needs a rest day and his sleep to help his body repair itself after his grueling workouts.

Luke still hasn’t stirred, and whoever it is can wait until we’re both ready to rise and shine.

Then it vibrates again.

And again.

Before I even open my eyes, my chest constricts with that familiar sensation of tension and anxiety.

It’s from pure instinct. The kind that forms in you young, when you learn the hard way that calm mornings don’t stay quiet.

When you’re waiting for the next shoe to drop and the next sucker punch to land from out of nowhere.

Luke rolls onto his back and grabs his phone, squinting at the screen as he forces his heavy eyes to focus on the words.

I watch his expression change, and my stomach drops.

The pressure in my chest becomes a vice, squeezing the breath out of me.

Whatever he sees, I already know it’s about to change our world.

Sleep drains out of him in a single second. He sits straight up in bed. His jaw locks, the muscles jumping from the tautness. His shoulders go rigid as he inhales a deep breath.

“What is it?” I ask, already sitting up and waiting for the news.

He doesn’t answer right away. Then he turns the screen toward me, knowing I’ll want to see it for myself, anyway.

Georgia State Athletic Commission Announces Review of Luke Woods’ Boxing License

The words feel unreal—clinically sterilized and carefully neutral, like an administrative memo meant to pass without resistance.

Harmless on the surface, but hiding what’s in the dark depths below it.

And that’s what scares me most—how easily this kind of language slips past your defenses before you realize what it’s already decided for you.

My phone lights up at the same time.

Morgan Youth Outreach—Donation Structure Flagged for Inquiry

I stare at the headline. The inquiry isn’t centered on me personally, but it might as well have my name listed in flashing lights.

The distinction feels meaningless. The room seems to contract around it.

The walls are inching closer, and the air is thinning as if my body already understands what my mind is still catching up to.

I’ve seen this tactic before—not with the Commission or the Youth Outreach, but the structure of the attack.

The way it skirts direct accusation while still placing you squarely in the frame.

Close enough to contaminate. Close enough to make everyone nervous.

I’m not named, but the implication is equally damning.

I’m just close enough that denial becomes irrelevant… and I’ve been here before. The language sounds neutral while effectively positioning me as a suspect in everyone’s mind.

The campaign starts as psychological warfare.

If we don’t bend or break under the initial public scrutiny, the collective “they” will tighten the screws and up the ante.

Jackson and Delia ruined so many people with the same approach when I lived in their house.

I was too young to understand what they were doing or recognize the pattern at the time, but their tactics are clear to me now.

My heart breaks knowing what Luke’s about to face because whoever is pulling the strings finally found a way in. If I can’t be hurt directly, the default setting is to annihilate everything I love—Luke, his career, the youth center—anything that results in leverage against me.

Now that their secrets are exposed, the fallout will be colossal.

“Procedural review,” Luke mutters. “That’s what they’re calling it.”

I want to console him. I want to give him the words that will soothe his frustration and quiet his fears.

He knows he’s done nothing wrong, but he also saw what they did to Shane.

How the lies that were carelessly flung around about him nearly cost him his run for the title fight.

The scandal broke his concentration and focus before the most important fight of his life.

A boxer’s mental status is equally important as his physical condition.

A fighter should never step into the ring if his mind is on anything but the opponent across from him.

When I pick up my phone, I check my email first since I already know what the news headlines will show.

I can’t say I’m surprised when I find a formal request from the bank.

They’re asking for more documentation on the youth center's financials. They want to see all the fund disbursement breakdowns. The last line of the email includes trust oversight language to make it sound as though they’re only being helpful, looking out for the financial integrity of the youth center.

The ultimate oxymoron: a standard procedure audit at the same time as a regulatory review.

Everything is “standard.”

But everything is tightening.

Luke throws the covers back and stands, immediately pacing the floor beside the bed.

He runs a hand through his hair, thinking through all the angles, opponents, and openings our enemies have to attack us.

He fights in patterns. He always has. But he’s used to fair fights, referees, and trustworthy scorekeepers.

We don’t have that luxury anymore.

“They escalated it,” he says.

“But why?” I ask. “Why now, after all this time?”

He shakes his head. “The why doesn’t matter yet.”

But it does matter.

It matters because escalation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

It doesn’t happen without an instigating factor.

It happens because someone nudges it. It happens because someone has something to leverage and something to gain.

These people don’t come out swinging blindly.

They know exactly what their target is and what they want as an outcome.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and force myself to breathe evenly.

The youth center is clean. Every donation has been tracked. Every expense has been documented. I built it that way on purpose. After everything they put me through. After what they did to me the first time. They don’t get a second chance at trying to shut down my center again.

Luke stops pacing and looks at me. “They’re lining this up.”

The way he says it makes my stomach drop.

“Who is lining what up, Luke? We don’t even know who we’re fighting yet.”

He doesn’t answer directly. He reaches for his phone again. “I’m calling Brandon.”

There’s no panic in his voice. Just calculation. When he hangs up, he looks at me carefully.

“He’s coming over.”

“Okay.”

“And he’s bringing Marin.”

I frown. “Marin?”

“She’s his top-tier fix-it girl,” he says. “She does crisis management. Governance, compliance, that sort of thing. He said she’s handled stuff bigger than this, and he trusts her to help us navigate this political maze.”

Bigger than this.

I nod, not in agreement but in slow deliberation, something inside me shifting as the words register—crisis management, compliance, governance.

Language built on structure and order. On control.

On the subtle authority to decide what the story becomes, and who gets to tell it. What our story becomes.

Brandon trusts her. That should make me feel better. It doesn’t.

Luke walks up to me and cups my face in his hands. “Baby, we’re not going through this alone,” he says.

I believe him. I just don’t know what else is about to walk into our house.

“This doesn’t scare me.” I put my hand on his, reaffirming our connection.

He studies me for a moment. “It should.”

“Not if you’re in it with me.”

“I’m with you.”