Chapter 1 Round Three

Mara Vance dropped onto her stool after round three. Her left eye was swelling shut, and nobody was in her corner.

Her cutman had left for another gym the week Frank died. The promoter's replacement second had walked out after round two. The folding chair beside her was empty. It was her father's chair. Three weeks ago he had sat there with a towel on his shoulder and said the same words before every round.

Breathe. Hit what you see.

"Ten seconds!" the ref called.

Four hundred people packed the Eastside Rec Center. Most of them had come to see Bree.

Across the ring, Bree Calloway bounced on her toes. Bree was ranked fourth in the state. Mara was ranked nowhere. The purse was twenty thousand dollars. If Mara lost, the bank took her father's gym on Monday. If she won, she bought one more month.

Her right hand throbbed. It had cracked in round one, when her hook landed on Bree's elbow instead of her jaw. The ringside doctor had looked only at her eye. If she told him about the hand, the fight stopped.

Her father had one rule: you never quit on your feet. So she told no one.

"Five seconds!"

A man in a black coat dropped into the empty chair. A commission second's badge hung from his lapel.

Mara knew that face. It had hung on the wall of her father's gym for eight years, crossed out in red marker. Dante Kane. Undefeated middleweight champion. The man who had ended Frank Vance's career with one punch.

"Get out of my corner," she whispered.

"She drops her right shoulder before the jab," Dante said. He looked at Bree, not at Mara. "Every time. Counter with the left."

"I don't want your help."

"Vance!" the ref barked. "Now, or it's a forfeit."

Dante shrugged. "Then don't use it."

"Wasn't planning to," Mara muttered, and walked into the ring.

Bree came out fast. Mara kept her right glove tucked against her jaw and circled left, away from Bree's power hand. A hook caught her ribs and drove the breath out of her. Bree's eyes dropped to Mara's right glove. Bree had noticed it.

Breathe, said her father's voice in her head. Hit what you see.

Mara had been watching Bree's right side since round one. She looked at the shoulder.

It dropped. Only an inch, just before the jab. Exactly as the man had said. Mara hated that he had named it first.

Bree threw the jab. She had spent two rounds waiting for the right hand, and she wasn't watching the left. Mara slipped left, planted her back foot, and drove a hook with her good hand into the open jaw.

Bree hit the canvas on her back.

"...nine. Ten! It's over!"

The arena went silent for half a second. Then everyone was on their feet, shouting. Mara's left eye had closed completely. The ref lifted Mara's arm. She looked at the empty chair. Dante was gone.

He named it, she told herself. You saw it first. You threw the punch. Her right hand throbbed.

A different man was climbing through the ropes. Silver hair. Gray suit. A polite, fixed smile. Victor Rourke, owner of Titan Boxing. Two men in blazers followed him with a leather folder.

A camera flashed. "Beautiful fight, Miss Vance," Rourke said, loud enough for all of them. "Your father would be proud."

"Don't talk about my father."

"I'm afraid I must." He pushed the folder into her hands. "Fourteen months ago, Frank borrowed four hundred thousand dollars from me for his hospital bills. As security, he pledged something very valuable."

"What?"

"You."

"You signed your father on as your manager the day you turned pro," Rourke said. "Full control of your bookings and your purses, including the right to pledge them as loan security. He used it. For three years, or until the debt is paid, every purse you earn belongs to Titan."

The promoter hurried over with the purse envelope. He did not look at Mara. Rourke tucked it into his coat. "Starting with tonight's twenty thousand."

Twenty thousand dollars, and she had not even touched it.

"That's not real," Mara said. "He would never..."

"Read page twelve."

She read it. Her own name was printed there in black ink: Mara Vance, Fighter. Below it was her father's signature as manager of record. The tilted V she had copied on every school form since she was seven. No trick. No fake.

She remembered signing him on at nineteen. A diner napkin, a handshake, a lawyer's form three days later. I'll never let anyone cheat you, he had said. He had signed this while she sat at his bedside bringing him soup.

"Frank begged me not to tell you," Rourke said. "He said you would never forgive him."

She tore the page in half.

Rourke did not stop her. "The original is filed with the commission."

"Then I'll pay it myself."

"With what?" He patted his coat. "Your gym goes to auction Monday. I bought the bank's note. I hold that lien too."

"Then I'll fight for someone else."

"No promoter in this state will sign you while the pledge stands." He closed the folder. "But I have an offer. Win the regional eliminator and the belt inside ninety days, and I tear up the pledge. Lose, and it stands, and so does the sale."

"Why would you offer that?"

"Because I win either way." Rourke nodded at the stairs. "My lawyer is waiting in the locker room."

Behind her, a worker folded her father's chair and carried it out of the ring.

"I don't have a coach," Mara said. "He's dead. Who trains me?"

"Oh, you have one," Rourke said, and stepped aside.

Dante Kane stood at the bottom of the ring steps, black coat open, hands in his pockets. He looked at her right hand, the one she had hidden for three rounds. Then at her face.

"Training starts at five," he said. "Don't be late, Vance."