“Get Off My Mat!” Black Belt Shoved a Hotel Cleaner — Then She Recognized His Fighting Stance
Chapter 5
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But as he looked into her eyes—eyes that had entirely shed the subservient, frightened glaze of Saffron Howard—he knew: the woman standing before him wasn't a ghost. She was a weapon that had simply been sheathed.Saffron held the stance for three agonizing seconds. Her brain raced, calculating the variables: there were cameras in the room; smartphones were undoubtedly resting in the gym bags lining the walls; if she broke this man in half, the footage would be on the internet in 10 minutes; Terrell Adams's data miners swept the web daily for facial recognition matches. If she fought, she was dead.Slowly, deliberately, Saffron forced the ghost back into the box. She let her weight shift upward; her hands dropped; she allowed her shoulders to slump, instantly shedding three inches of height, and brought her hands up to her face in a gesture of pathetic, trembling fear."I... I'm so sorry, sir!" Saffron whimpered, her voice cracking perfectly. She purposefully stumbled backward, letting her foot catch on a stray ice cube so she fell hard onto her rear. "I just tripped! I have bad ankles! Please don't report me to the manager!"A collective exhale swept through the room. The terrifying illusion was broken. To the untrained students, it was just a clumsy cleaner who had flailed her arms to catch her balance and ended up on her backside.But Darby wasn't entirely untrained—he had felt the kinetic density of her base. He took a step forward, his shadow falling over her as she knelt on the floor, frantically sweeping ice into her damp towel. Darby crouched down, bringing his face dangerously close to her ear. The scent of peppermint rub and stale coffee washed over her."You didn't trip, Abigail," Darby whispered, his voice barely audible over the rustling of the students shifting on the mats.Saffron's blood turned to Freon. She kept her eyes on the floor, her hands trembling—this time, not entirely acting. "I don't know what you're talking about," she mumbled, clutching the trash bag."Save it," Darby hissed, his eyes wide with a sudden, intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline and staggering greed. "I know exactly who you are. The Ghost of Vegas. You cost Tommy Adams $5 million on that Miami fight. Word is there's a six-figure bounty just for a confirmed picture of your face."Saffron froze. The worst-case scenario had just materialized in the form of a fragile-egoed fraud in a custom gi."Here's how this goes," Darby murmured, a sickening smile spreading across his face. He saw an opportunity that was vastly superior to just turning her in: Darby's gym was bleeding money, his reputation as a fake black belt was slowly catching up with him, but if he was the man who defeated the legendary, undefeated Abigail Preston, he would be a god in the grappling community. "You're going to stand up," Darby ordered softly. "You're going to demand a spar. You're going to attack me, and I'm going to put you to sleep in front of my boys. You make me look like a world beater, and I let you walk out of this hotel. You refuse, and I pull out my phone right now, snap a photo, and text it to a buddy of mine who works collections for Adams in Chicago."