Chapter 9: Serenity's brutal training session turns Marcus into an unwilling sparring partner when she demonstrates the Siberian's signature moves on his body, leaving him gasping on the mats as she straddles his chest to whisper 'This is what survival looks like.'
The abandoned gym was a tomb for forgotten glory. Dust motes danced in the slants of weak afternoon light cutting through grimy windows. The air was stale, tasting of old sweat and defeat. Marcus leaned against a rotting turnbuckle, the rough canvas of the ring digging into his back through his thin t-shirt. He watched her.
Serenity moved through the space like a ghost, her bare feet silent on the cracked concrete. She’d dragged him here after returning from The Pit, her mood a dark, unreadable cloud. She hadn’t said much about it, just that it was everything Gertie promised and worse.
Now, she stood before a heavy bag that was more duct tape than leather. She’d kicked off her sandals an hour ago. Her feet were already raw, the skin red and abraded.
“What are you doing, Ren?” Marcus asked, his voice echoing slightly in the vast, empty space.
She didn’t answer. She just stared at the bag as if it held all the answers. Then she moved. A series of front kicks, swift and brutal, each impact a thunderclap that shook the chains suspending the bag. She wasn’t just hitting it. She was dismantling it. The force traveled up her bare leg, jarring her hips, her spine. She welcomed it. Each jolt was a penance, a preparation.
“She was there,” Serenity said suddenly, her breath coming in sharp clouds in the cool air. She didn’t stop kicking. “At The Pit.”
Marcus straightened up. “The Siberian?”
A nod. Another kick. “Not training. Just watching. Standing by the ropes with her coach. They looked at me for maybe thirty seconds. Then they left.” She spun, a devastating roundhouse that connected with a sickening crunch of sand shifting inside the bag. “It was like I was a piece of furniture. Something that didn’t even register as a threat.”
Her movements became more frantic, less technical. It was pure, unfiltered aggression. She was chasing a feeling, a level of hardness she feared she didn’t possess. Marcus saw the bandage on her cheek, the one covering Gertie’s teeth marks, had come slightly loose. A flash of angry red peeked through.
“Ren, maybe take a break. Your feet—”
“She’ll break my feet if she gets the chance,” Serenity cut him off, her voice flat. “She’ll break anything she can. I need to know what it feels like before I get there. I need to be okay with it.”
She turned her back to the bag, pacing a tight circle, her chest heaving. Her eyes, when they found his, were hollow. Empty. The same eyes he’d seen in the dark last night.
“Come here,” she said.
“What?”
“Come here. Stand in front of me.”
A cold trickle of apprehension ran down his spine. He knew that tone. It was the same one she used when she told him to call Vince. The one that left no room for argument. He pushed himself off the ring and walked toward her, the sound of his footsteps loud in the silence.
She positioned him directly between her and the heavy bag. She was close enough that he could smell the sharp, clean scent of her sweat, see the frantic pulse in her throat.
“Just stand there,” she whispered.
He saw the shift in her posture, the coiling of energy in her core. He thought she was going to move around him, to strike the bag past his shoulder. It was a drill. It had to be a drill.
Her spin was a blur of motion. There was no telegraph, no wind-up. It was all efficient, violent economy. His brain registered the pivot of her bare foot on the gritty floor, the whip of her leg.
The impact was not on the bag.
It was a controlled, precise shot, the hard bone of her shin connecting with a soft, devastating accuracy between his legs.
The air left his lungs in a silent, agonized whoosh. White-hot pain exploded in his core, so intense it was a colour behind his eyes. His legs folded. He dropped to his knees, the world tilting on its axis, his vision swimming with black dots. He gasped, trying to pull air into lungs that had forgotten how to work, his hands clutching at the emptiness in front of him.
Serenity stood over him, her breathing even. She hadn’t even broken a sweat. She watched him writhe on the dirty floor for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
Then she knelt. Her hand, cool and steady, came to rest on the back of his neck. She leaned in, her lips close to his ear as he fought not to vomit.
“If you can’t take me at my weakest,” she murmured, her voice devoid of any warmth, any remorse, “you don’t deserve me at my strongest.”
The words hung in the dusty air, more brutal than the kick. This wasn’t the possessive fervor of the night before. This was cold. Clinical. A test he hadn’t known he was taking.
He finally managed a ragged, sucking breath, the pain a molten ball in his gut. He looked up at her, his eyes watering. He saw it then, the flicker of something behind the hollow look. Not doubt. Not regret. It was a desperate, terrifying loneliness. She was pushing him to the edge of what he could bear, because she needed to know if he’d still be there when she fell over it herself.
He reached out, his hand trembling, and wrapped his fingers around her bare, dirty ankle. A anchor point. A confirmation.
She flinched, almost pulling away, but his grip held.
“Okay,” he rasped, the word a painful scrape from his raw throat. He met her gaze, his own vision clearing, pushing through the nausea. “Okay.”
He saw her throat work as she swallowed. The hard mask of her face didn’t crack, but something in her shoulders relaxed by a fraction of a millimeter. It was enough.
He used her ankle for balance, pulling himself slowly, painfully, to his feet. He stood swaying before her, the taste of bile in his mouth.
“Now what?” he asked, his voice still tight.
Serenity’s eyes drifted past him, back to the heavy bag. The moment of vulnerability was gone, sealed shut.
“Now,” she said, turning away from him, her bare feet leaving prints in the dust. “I break my hands.”