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Dan’s voice cuts through the gym from the doorway, and I let the bag swing free without turning to look at him. I already know the expression on his face. He’s worn it every day for six years, since he took over my father’s training program the way a man inherits a house he never asked for and resents it anyway.

“Two more rounds,” I say.

“You’ve done too many. Your form’s breaking down.”

It isn’t. I know my form, and it hasn’t slipped. But arguing with Dan isn’t worth it, so I unwrap my hands instead, letting the tape fall in strips onto the mat.

He crosses the floor with that walk of his, unhurried, hands in his pockets. Dan’s the kind of handsome that makes people nervous instead of comfortable, all sharp angles and darker intentions hiding behind expensive tailoring even here, in a gym at nine at night.

“We got the call today,” he says. “Commission approved the title defense.”

Something in my chest goes still, the way it always does right before a fight gets real. “Who?”

“Some kid from Ravenwood Hollow.” Dan says the town’s name like it tastes bad. “Oath MMA. The one that lets anyone in.”

I know the gym. Everyone in this business knows the gym, mostly through the noise around it—the coach who came out publicly last year, the roster full of fighters who don’t fit the mold Ironside’s spent three generations perfecting. Dan’s mouth twists faintly on anyone, like the word itself needs washing.

I keep my face empty. Learned that trick before I learned how to throw a proper jab.

“Name?” I ask.

“Rivera. Micah Rivera.” Dan hands me a folder, thin, unimpressive. “Twelve and oh. Nine finishes. Good hands, better chin, no real pedigree behind him. Should be an easy night for you.”

Should be. Dan never says anything is certain. Certainty is a luxury he doesn’t extend to me, not even after twenty-three wins, not even after I put a man in the hospital with a spinning elbow nobody saw coming. My father never handed out certainty either. I grew up knowing legacies aren’t built on comfort.

“I’ll watch the tape tonight.”

“Do more than watch it.” Dan’s eyes track over me, assessing, the way they always do, like I’m a car he’s deciding whether to sell. “Your father would’ve had this kid’s whole life mapped out by now. Habits, tells, weaknesses. You’re not him yet.”

Yet. Like there’s a version of me still to arrive, still owed to my father’s name over the front door. My father’s belt sits in a glass case by the front entrance, lit from underneath like something holy. I walk past it every day. I’ve mostly stopped looking at it, except on nights like tonight, when Dan reminds me it’s watching.

“I’ll have a game plan by Friday,” I say, and Dan nods once, already turning to leave, already done extracting whatever he came to extract from me tonight.

He doesn’t say good job. He never does. I stopped waiting for it around year three.

The apartment above the gym is silent. I own the whole building, technically, though owning something and living in it aren’t always the same. I eat alone most nights. Train alone most days. The only voice that fills these rooms belongs to whatever fight footage I’m studying, other men’s grunts and crowd noise standing in for company I’ve never quite let myself want.

I pull up Rivera’s fights around ten.

The first clip loads. Regional title fight, some no-name opponent who folds under Rivera’s pressure inside a minute and a half.

He doesn’t fight as Ironside fighters do. His movement has no economy, none of the restraint drilled into me since I was old enough to hold my hands up. Rivera throws like every punch might be his last chance to prove something, putting everything he has into every combination.

It’s sloppy.

It’s also impossible to look away from.

I catch myself leaning toward the screen during the second fight, elbows on my knees, and I don’t remember deciding to lean forward. Rivera drops an opponent with a body shot that shouldn’t have worked at that angle, and instead of the composed nod I’d give after a finish, he throws his head back and roars, arms wide, chest heaving with something that looks embarrassingly close to joy.

I’ve never made that sound in my life. Not once, not even the night I won the regional belt with my father’s ashes still fresh in the ground.

Third fight. Fourth. I stop taking the notes I told myself I’d take.

A post-fight interview clip from fight six: a local reporter shoves a microphone toward Rivera’s face while sweat still drips from his jaw. Someone off-camera says something I can’t hear, and Rivera laughs, head tipping back, the sound of it rough and real and entirely unguarded.

Something twists behind my ribs. I don’t have a name for it, and I don’t like things I can’t name.

I should close the laptop.