Todos os capítulos de Fight or flight beauty: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 6

The evening shift at Rusty's was always the same. The regulars filtered in first—Old Joe, who nursed the same beer for three hours while he watched whatever game was on the TV above the bar; Maria and her girlfriend, who sat in the corner booth and spoke in low, urgent Spanish; the construction workers who came in still covered in drywall dust and ordered shots of whiskey with beer chasers. Then, as the night deepened, the clientele changed. The dangerous ones came out after dark. The dealers who conducted business in the bathroom. The gangbangers who eyed each other across the room, hands never far from their waistbands. The women with hard eyes and harder lives who drank to forget. Emmaline watched them all. She'd learned to read people in the five years since she'd run—learned to spot trouble before it started, learned when to call Rusty (who was never actually at Rusty's but who would show up with a baseball bat if things got really bad), learned how to defuse a situation with

Matteo Valentino stood in the warehouse, watching the space where Il Assassino had disappeared, and felt something he hadn't felt in a long time.Intrigue.He'd been coming to these fights for two years, ever since his uncle had tasked him with keeping an eye on the underground scene, making sure no one was moving in on Valentino territory. He knew every fighter, every regular, every face in the crowd.But her? She was new. And she was different.The way she fought—it wasn't the brawling style most cage fighters developed. It was precise, controlled, and lethal. She'd taken down Razor, a man twice her size, without breaking a sweat. And those eyes...Amber. Unusual. Unforgettable.There was a story there. A mystery. And Matteo had never been good at leaving mysteries unsolved.He pulled out his phone and dialed a number."Yeah, it's me," he said when the line connected. "I need you to find someone. Fighter at the warehouse. Goes by Il Assassino. Woman, early twenties, amber ey

Emmaline's hands were shaking as she lowered her phone.Five years. Five years of looking over her shoulder, of building a new life, of becoming someone her father could never control. Five years of freedom, hard-won and carefully maintained.And now someone was asking about her.She was in her apartment—a tiny studio in a building that had seen better decades. The walls were thin, the plumbing was questionable, and the neighbors were loud, but it was hers. She'd paid for it with money she'd earned, not with her father's blood-soaked cash. That mattered.Her heart was racing, her breath coming too fast. She forced herself to slow down, to think. Leon had said the man was connected. That could mean anything in this city. There were a dozen organizations, families, crews. It didn't necessarily mean her father.But the timing was too coincidental. She'd been fighting in those clubs for six months without incident, and suddenly someone was asking questions?Principessa.She could a