He didn’t look at anyone.
He walked out.
I watched him go.
Wrecker came to my side, his presence solid and quiet. He didn’t touch me. Didn’t crowd me.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
And I meant it.
I wasn’t shaken.
I wasn’t small.
I’d said what I needed to say.
As we walked back toward his room, I glanced once more down the hallway where Ghost had disappeared.
Something told me his war was just beginning.
And for the first time, that didn’t scare me.
Because I knew exactly who I was now.
And I wasn’t invisible anymore.
30
AMANDA
The first punch knocked the breath out of me.
Not because it was hard.
Because I hadn’t expected my body to hesitate.
I stood there in the training room, gloves up, heart hammering, staring at the padded target in front of me like it had personally betrayed me. Ranger had set it up himself. It was heavy, scuffed, and hanging from reinforced chains bolted into the ceiling. Nothing fancy. Nothing dramatic.
Just something meant to hit back if I got sloppy.
“Again,” Ranger said calmly.
I rolled my shoulders, flexed my fingers inside the gloves, and reset my stance. Brutus leaned against the wall behind him, arms crossed, eyes sharp. Wrecker stood off to the side, quiet and watchful, not interfering.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
I exhaled and threw the punch again.
This time it landed solid. The pad swung back on its chain with a dull thud.
“Good,” Ranger said. “Now don’t think about it.”
Easy for him to say.
I’d spent weeks thinking about every movement. Every sound. Every shadow. Training wasn’t about learning something new. It was about unlearning what fear had hardwired into me.
