Chapter 13 - Wounded Pride
Three miles away, inside the private executive suite of the Vance Martial Arts Academy, the air smelled heavily of medicinal eucalyptus, wintergreen liniment, and stale sweat.
Derrick Vance sat stripped to the waist on a leather treatment table, an ice pack strapped tightly to his left shoulder and another resting against the back of his neck. His chest, usually puffed out with arrogant authority, rose and fell in ragged, shallow breaths. Across the room, a large 70-inch television mounted on the wall was playing the viral video on an endless loop.
Every time the screen showed Lily stepping inside his guard and sending him crashing to the floor, Derrick winced, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the edge of the table.
"Turn it off," Derrick barked, his voice hoarse with rage. "I said shut that damn thing off!"
Standing near the desk was his head assistant, Kevin—the same young man who had run to bring ice an hour earlier. Kevin hastily tapped the remote control, and the screen clicked to black, plunging the room into dim lighting.
"How bad is it?" Derrick growled, rotating his neck with a grimace.
"The video?" Kevin swallowed hard, hesitant to speak. "It's... it crossed three million views twenty minutes ago. Major combat sports blogs are picking it up. Someone tagged Joe Rogan. Even the regional commission sent an inquiry asking why an unlicensed coach-on-parent sparring session took place during an open-door youth class."
Derrick slammed his fist onto the padded table, the sound reverberating off the glass trophies lining the walls. "It wasn't a sparring session! She ambushed me! She took advantage of a demonstration drill! I was holding back because she was a woman and a mother—any idiot can see that!"
"Derrick," a deep, gravelly voice cut through the room from the shadows near the doorway.
Derrick froze.
Stepping into the light was a tall, silver-haired man in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit. His face was weathered, bearing an old, jagged scar across the bridge of his crooked nose, and his cold gray eyes carried the heavy weight of a man who had made millions operating in the violent underbelly of combat sports.
Marcus Sterling. The primary financial backer of the Vance franchise, and the head of the Continental Combat League.
"M-Marcus," Derrick stammered, attempting to straighten his posture despite the burning pain in his shoulder. "I didn't hear you come in."
"Evidently," Sterling said, his voice smooth as polished stone. He walked over to the desk, poured himself two fingers of amber bourbon from a crystal decanter, and turned back to face Derrick. "You're a fool, Derrick. I invested half a million dollars turning this academy into the flagship for our regional talent feeder. And in fifteen seconds, you let a middle-aged soccer mom make you look like an uncoordinated sack of flour."
"She caught me off guard!" Derrick pleaded, his voice rising in panic. "Marcus, you don't understand, the woman wasn't normal! Her balance, her leverage—she moved like a ghost!"
Sterling took a slow sip of his drink, his lips curving into a cold, nostalgic smirk. "Of course she didn't move like an amateur, you brainless ape. Do you have any idea who that woman was?"
Derrick blinked, stunned. "Who... who is she?"
Sterling reached into his suit jacket and tossed a black-and-white photograph onto the treatment table in front of Derrick. It was an archival press photo from sixteen years ago, showing Lily Carter with three gold belts slung over her shoulders, standing atop an international podium with blood on her brow and an ice-cold smile on her lips.
"That," Sterling said, pointing a manicured finger at the image, "is Lily 'The Silent Storm' Carter. She was the most dangerous pound-for-pound fighter in the world before you even put on your first pair of boxing gloves. She won twenty-eight straight fights without ever being knocked down."
Derrick stared at the photograph, his jaw slack. "The... the Silent Storm? I thought she was a myth. People said she died in a car crash or retired to Europe."
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"She didn't die," Sterling said quietly, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "She walked out on a contract with me. She cost me twelve million dollars in pay-per-view revenue when she vanished the night before the Tokyo unification rematch."
Sterling walked to the window, staring out into the suburban night. "For sixteen years, I thought she was gone forever. And then my idiot protege serves her up on the internet on a silver platter."
