He was quiet for a moment. Then he stood, held out his hand. "Come with me."
The basement gym had been converted into a training space. Mats covered the concrete floor. A weapons rack lined one wall—knives, batons, even a few items I couldn't identify. Tank was already there, running Jake through defensive maneuvers. They paused when we entered.
"Kai wants combat training," Axel announced. "Real training. Not self-defense—tactics."
Tank raised an eyebrow. "He's got good instincts. Saw that at the warehouse."
"Instincts aren't enough against what's coming."
"No." Tank's gaze swept over me, assessing. "They're not."
For the next three hours, they broke me down and built me back up. Tank taught me how to fight dirty—dirtier than Tyler ever had. Eye gouges, throat strikes, how to use a knife when your opponent outweighed you by a hundred pounds. He was patient but brutal, correcting my form with hands that could crush bone, demonstrating moves at half-speed before making me repeat them until my muscles screamed.
"You're thinking too much," he said after I botched a disarm for the third time. "Combat isn't chess. It's reaction. You see a threat, you neutralize it. No hesitation."
"I'm a nurse. Hesitation is literally my training—assess before you act."
"That'll get you killed." He reset my stance, hands firm on my hips. "In the ER, hesitation means you save a life. In a fight, it means you lose yours."
Axel watched from the sidelines, arms crossed, expression unreadable. But I caught the tension in his shoulders every time Tank's hands corrected my position. Possessiveness he was trying to hide. "Again," Tank ordered.
I went again. And again. And again. By the time he called a break, I was drenched in sweat, bruises blooming across my forearms, every muscle trembling with exhaustion. "Better," Tank proclaimed. It might have been the highest praise I'd ever heard from him.
Tyler appeared in the doorway, two water bottles in hand. He tossed one to me, offered the other to Tank. "Thought you could use these."
Tank took the bottle, and their fingers brushed in the exchange. I watched Tank's reaction—a flicker of something, quickly suppressed—before he nodded his thanks and stepped away. "How's he doing?" Tyler asked, nodding toward me.
"He's got potential." Tank unscrewed the cap, took a long drink. "Fast learner. Just needs to get out of his own head."
"Sounds familiar." Tyler's smile was wry. "Kai's always been like that. Overthinks everything."
"I'm right here," I pointed out.
"Yeah, and you're overthinking this conversation too." Tyler dropped onto the mat beside me. "Relax. You did good."
"I got my ass kicked for three hours."
"That's how you learn." He bumped his shoulder against mine. "Remember when I taught you to fight? You cried the first six times I put you on the ground."
"I was fourteen."
"And now you're—what, twenty-eight? And you're still getting up." His expression softened. "That's what matters, Kai. Not how many times you fall. How many times you get back up."
Tank was watching us, something thoughtful in his gaze. "You two are close."
"He's my brother." Tyler's voice was simple, certain. "Blood doesn't make family. Choice does."
Tank's eyes flickered—the briefest flash of something raw—before his expression shuttered again. "Yeah," he said quietly. "It does."
Afternoon brought weapons training.
Irish took over, his manic energy somehow calming when he had a gun in his hand. He walked me through the basics I already knew, then pushed into territory Tyler had never covered—tactical reloading, shooting while moving, clearing rooms.
"You're not bad," he said after I'd emptied a clip into the target—center mass, mostly. "Could be better. But not bad."
"High praise from the man who never misses."
"I miss sometimes." He grinned. "Just never when it counts."
