“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For hurting someone who trusted this place to teach her.”
Ryan shook his head.
“Man, you walked into the wrong gym.”
Marcus didn’t answer.
Ryan looked around.
“Anybody got a camera on this?”
Several phones moved closer.
Ryan smiled.
“Good.”
He turned back to Marcus.
“Here’s the deal. You want to teach me manners? Put on gloves.”
“No.”
“Scared?”
“No.”
“Then why not?”
Marcus looked toward Emily.
“Because I came to take my sister home.”
Ryan’s smile widened.
“Oh, she’s your sister.”
He turned toward the spectators.
“Now it makes sense.”
Then he said something that made Marcus’s expression change.
“Maybe if her brother wasn’t such a coward, she wouldn’t be one either.”
Emily closed her eyes.
She knew what was coming.
Marcus stood completely still.
Ryan mistook the silence for weakness.
He stepped closer.
“You hear me?”
Marcus answered.
“Yes.”
“Then do something.”
Marcus looked at Victor.
“Are you going to let him keep doing this?”
Victor hesitated.
“Ryan, back off.”
Ryan ignored him.
He placed one hand against Marcus’s chest.
It wasn’t a hard shove.
It was a deliberate insult.
Marcus looked down at the hand.
Then back at Ryan.
“Take your hand off me.”
Ryan leaned forward.
“Make me.”
A strange expression passed across Marcus’s face.
Not anger.
Recognition.
He had heard those exact words before.
Three years earlier.
In a parking lot outside a nightclub.
The last time someone had challenged him to prove what he could do.
The last time he had answered with violence.
Marcus slowly stepped backward.
Ryan laughed.
“There he goes.”
But Marcus wasn’t retreating because he was afraid.
He was remembering a hospital corridor.
A police detective.
His mother crying.
And a doctor saying that one of the men he had fought might never walk normally again.
Marcus turned toward Emily.
“Can you stand?”
She nodded.
He offered his hand.
Ryan stepped between them.
“Not so fast.”
Marcus looked up.
Ryan pointed toward the spectators.
“You came in here making threats. You don’t get to walk away now.”
“I didn’t threaten you.”
“You challenged me.”
“I asked you to apologize.”
