Chapter 2 - Ten Seconds to Silence
The metal gate of the cage slammed shut behind her with a heavy, echoing clang.
Inside, Rourke Vance—a mountain of muscle standing six-foot-four and scarred from a hundred illegal bouts—cracked his massive knuckles. He looked down at her as if she were a small insect that had wandered into a lion's den.
"Little girl, you picked the wrong cage to die in," Rourke grunted, his voice deep and gravelly.
Outside the fence, Cassius Grey crossed his arms, leaning against a steel pillar with an amused smirk, waiting to see how quickly his champion would crush her to teach her a lesson about boundaries.
The referee dropped his hand.
Rourke lunged forward instantly, throwing a massive right hook intended to lift her off her feet and knock her unconscious in a single blow. The wind from his fist alone whipped her dark hair back.
She didn't flinch.
Instead of dodging backward, she stepped forward directly into his blind spot, moving with blinding, terrifying speed. Her palm struck upward with surgical precision right beneath his heavy jaw, channeling every ounce of momentum he had generated against himself.
A sharp crack echoed through the silent factory.
Before Rourke's brain could even register the impact, she pivoted on her heel, her elbow driving down like a sledgehammer into the base of his neck.
The giant's eyes rolled back. His massive, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame stiffened rigidly for a fraction of a second before collapsing straight down onto the blood-stained concrete like a felled oak tree.
Thud.
Total, absolute silence enveloped the Foundry.
Not a single person breathed. Three hundred hardened criminals, smugglers, and killers stared in horror at the undefeated champion lying completely motionless, snoring softly on the floor.
At his feet stood the quiet waitress, adjusting her sleeves as calmly as if she had just wiped down a table.
Cassius Grey’s smirk vanished entirely. The color drained from his face as he pushed off the pillar, his mind refusing to process what his eyes had just witnessed. He had joked about marriage to humiliate her, never expecting that in less than ten seconds, his invincible weapon would be neutralized by a woman in a plain shirt.
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She turned her gaze from the unconscious giant, walked straight up to the chain-link gate, and looked directly through the wire at Cassius.
"One," she said softly, her voice carrying clearly across the dead silence of the room. "That was your champion. Now... let's talk about that wedding."
