I nodded once. Because he was right. This was unlike anything the Performance Center had seen in recent years; I knew that in my core, and everyone around us did too.
Afterward, we offered hands. The shake was firm. Measured. The kind of grip that communicated everything words didn’t need to.
“Silas Reed,” I said.
“Callum Kincaid,” he replied. His real name. Not the one that echoed through gymnasiums. He wasn’t introducing his character like some of the new guys did to prove a point. He was introducing himself. Who he was beneath the spectacle that wasDeadlock.
The grip lingered just long enough to register. There was no need for more than this right here, because we both knew.
Two weeks had passed since Callum Kincaid walked through the Performance Center doors, and the trajectory of my career had seemed to shift in just the rightdirection, the direction I had been busting my ass to get to. The road to the main roster. The road to one of the flagship shows for the UWF.
Callum and I were informed a few days ago that he’d be debuting on the developmental show, UWF’sThursday Night Aftershock, against me. We were told this wasn’t going to be something the program had seen before. The GMs of the flagship shows would be watching us closely.
UWF had three television programs that aired every week. Their flagship shows, the big leagues:Monday Night ShowdownandFriday Night Demolition. And their developmental show that aired on a smaller network,Thursday Night Aftershock.
Unlike the main roster shows that traveled all across the world wrestling live events,Aftershockwas a weekly house show that happened every Thursday at the Performance Center. The crowds were small, maybe four hundred people max, but to us down here, it felt likeeverything, knowing fans wanted to watch us just as much as they wanted to watch the main roster.
The thing aboutAftershockwas that the GMs didn’t watch us all the time. Only a few times a year did the GMs from the main roster look down into developmental: once in the winter, right after our last pay per view, and once in the spring, right before the first pay per view of the year. So to have the GMs watching Callum and me now, before their official spring scouting even started, was a big fucking deal.
We trained every day.
Every session sharpened something between us. Not resentment. Not friendship. Something else. A pressure. A challenge that demanded everything we had and then some.
I caught Callum watching me when he thought I wasn’t looking, not with jealousy, but with calculation. I did the same.
He was arrogant, sure, but it was earned. He backed it up every single time he stepped into the ring, and beneath it was respect. He never went half speed with me. Never pulled a strike. Never took the easy way out.
Evancornered me after our first round of drills, shaking his head. “You’re screwed.”
I raised a brow. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said. “You two… it’s like you’re daring each other to be better every time.”
“It’s respect,” I said.
He snorted. “Yeah. Sure.”
Maybe Evan was right. Maybe it was something more dangerous than respect. Maybe it was rivalry building to an ungodly level. All I knew for certain was this: a fire had been lit. And I don’t think Callum, or myself, were scared of throwing ourselves into the flames.
Wednesday came around in a blur. We were less than twenty-four hours away from our match onAftershock. A match nobody knew about, because nobody knew Callum was debuting tomorrow night.
In a way, I was jealous of him. I had been here since the day I turned eighteen and could sign the damn contract, busting my ass like my life depended on it. I had only been onAftershockfor seven months, and here was Callum, waltzing in, and within weeks, being pushed onto the roster.
Night settled slowly over the Performance Center, the kind of quiet that only came once the last group had filtered out and the trainers had stopped pretending they were going to lock the doors on time. The overhead lights dimmed automatically, not dark, just softer than normal, enough to make the ring feel more private than it ever did during the day.
I hadn’t planned on staying late. I rarely did. Being here at night was bad for me. The silence forced me to confront the ghosts of my father and uncle, and the anger I had struggled so hard to keep from the light.
I glanced up from redoing my tape. Callum was still inside the ring, methodically running drills like the building belonged to him. Something in me resisted leaving. He wasn’t showboating now. No audience. No trainers watching. Just repetition. Precision. Correction. He moved like a man trying to sharpen something already lethal.
I stepped back onto the apron without saying anything. He noticed immediately. Didn’t look surprised, just nodded once, like he expected it.
We fell into rhythm without discussion. Chain wrestling sequences we were given for tomorrow night, counters layered over more counters, resetting and running them again when something didn’t land clean enough. He adjusted his grip without asking, altered my footwork instinctively. Every correction was silent.
Mutual.
It felt… natural.
Callum watched me the way a good wrestler watched the tapes of the legends, not with awe, not with jealousy, but with intent. He tracked how I shifted my weight before a leap, how my shoulders dipped just enough to telegraph a move if someone knew what to look for. And instead of exploiting it, he compensated for it. Matched me. Forced me to tighten it.
