In the darkness beyond the torchlight, Connor imagined Sophie leaning forward in the tower, intent on the battle.
Watch, and remember why you loved me, even if we can’t be together.
They clashed again, and this time Connor met violence with violence, shin checking shin with impacts that echoed like gunshots.Sunan’s fist found his ribs; Connor’s knee found Sunan’s kidney.They broke apart gasping.
“You insist on dragging out the inevitable,” Sunan said, spitting blood that looked black in the torchlight.“I represent all those who want to return to greatness.”
“Your greatness is lies.”Connor swiped blood from his eye with a forearm.“Drug trafficking, gun dealing—you would make us into a cartel, nothing more.”
“A rich cartel that runs the world.”Sunan bared his reddened teeth.“Ask your woman, cowering from her perch in the jungle.She chose comfort in Hawaii over you, but I’ll make sure she meets the new Master of the Yam Khûmk?n.”
Connor didn’t react to confirmation that Sunan knew Sophie was here; he could not be distracted.
They engaged again, and this time Sunan’s Israeli training showed.He mixed Krav Maga brutality with Muay Thai traditions, creating combinations Connor had never seen.An eye gouge flowed into an elbow strike.A groin attack set up a head kick.
Connor absorbed the punishment, waiting for the man to tire, waiting for those pumped-up muscles to run out of juice.His style had always been different—the mountain that endures the storm, finding the perfect moment to send an avalanche.
Each time Connor positioned for a finishing strike, Sunan was gone, leaving only air and adding another slashing cut to Connor’s collection.
Five minutes became ten.Ten became fifteen.The torches burned lower, making the shadows dance faster, turning the fight into something mythic.Both men bled from dozens of wounds, their movement slowing but never stopping.The crowd had gone silent, recognizing they were witnessing not a challenge, but a war of philosophies made flesh.
Connor’s left eye was swelling shut.At least two ribs had cracked.His lead leg was slick with blood from Sunan’s kicks.But he kept moving, kept pushing back.
“She’s not yours anymore,” Sunan taunted during a clinch, as their bodies heaved and strained against each other.“After I kill you, I’ll thank her properly for returning to witness your end.”
Connor let the words wash over him.Connor had already accepted that Sophie wasn’t his—but she’d come to watch him fight, knowing it might be his last effort.That gift of her presence, even at a distance, was more than he’d dared hope for.
He could not fail or he’d be failing her too.
Sunan loaded up for another leg kick but as he did, he dropped his right fist, protecting ribs that were more damaged than he wanted to show.Connor didn’t think.He simply moved, flowing under the kick.
His fist found Sunan’s liver with precision.Sunan’s eyes went wide and his body folded involuntarily.Connor’s elbow followed, crashing into the man’s temple, sending Sunan spinning.Before he could recover, Connor’s knee drove into his spine, knocking him to the ground in a strike that might have paralyzed a normal man.
But Sunan was not normal.He rolled with the impact and came up swinging, desperation replacing calculation.
They traded blows, then grappled, gladiatorlike, in the center of the circle.No more dancing, no more technique.Just two men trying to break each other before they themselves shattered.
Connor’s nose broke under Sunan’s palm in a white-hot eruption of pain.He didn’t stop, though, and Sunan’s knee buckled under his kick.
They were destroying each other piece by piece, inch by inch.The largely male crowd roared with excitement as two of the Yam Khûmk?n’s greatest warriors fought like cornered tigers.
The torches guttered in a gust of night wind as Connor and Sunan pummeled on, too stubborn to fall, too proud to yield, better matched than either could have believed.
Through the blood and pain, Connor felt Sophie’s presence at the periphery, a heartbeat of hope and support.
Still watching.Still there.A witness to his triumph or his end.
I will prevail.For the future of the Yam Khûmk?n.For the memory of what we were, what we could be again.
I will win.
* * *
The torchlight turnedthe ancient stones of the combat circle into pools of gold and shadow.Connor tasted copper in his mouth, felt the warm trickle of blood from his split lip mixing with sweat.His ribs screamed with each breath—at least two cracked, maybe three.But he was still standing.
Sunan wasn’t.
The younger man knelt in the dirt, one hand pressed to his side where Connor’s knee had found its mark.The arrogance that had carried him through the first rounds of combat had evaporated like morning mist.Now there was only pain and the dawning realization of defeat.
