Chapter 2Trained to KO My Bridesmaid

During the day, I was the perfect, glowing bride-to-be. I gossiped with my coworkers about floral arrangements, tasted samples of vanilla-bean cake, and smiled until my cheeks ached.

But the moment the clock struck five, I shed the corporate clothes and threw myself into the ring.

I strapped on the headgear, laced up the gloves, and let the rage take over. The same mouth that whispered sweet nothings over the phone to Garrett spent three hours a night screaming through heavy bag drills.

Coach Briggs focused entirely on my defense against high kicks.

“You said this opponent has a background in dirty combat?” he asked one night, throwing a towel over my shoulders.

“Underground street fights,” I replied, taking a long drink of water. “She spent years as a paid sparring partner in unlicensed gyms.”

Briggs frowned, rubbing his jaw. “Street fighters don't follow regulations. They don’t care about points; they care about damage. They go straight for the soft tissue—the temples, the throat, the knees.”

He pulled up a video on his tablet, showing a grainy clip of an unsanctioned match.

“Watch her hips,” he pointed to the screen. “Before she launches a spinning kick, there’s a tiny, almost imperceptible twitch in her left hip. It’s a micro-adjustment to find her balance. It happens in less than a third of a second.”

I leaned in closer, memorizing the movement.

“Your window is right there,” Briggs continued. “The second you see that hip drop, you don’t back away. If you back up, you put yourself directly in the path of her maximum force. You have to slip inside the arc, close the distance, and strike from the blind spot.”

I nodded. And for the next three hours, I practiced the slip-and-strike over and over until my muscles memorized the rhythm.

By the end of the week, I was sparring with a six-foot-two amateur lightweight. When I managed to slip his guard and land a liver shot that brought him to his knees, Briggs let out a rare, genuine grin from the sidelines.

Later that evening, my best friend, Naomi, came to pick me up from the gym.

When she saw the dark, ugly bruises mapping my shoulders and ribs, her eyes welled with tears.

“Flora, what are you doing to yourself? This is insane. You’re getting married in three days!”

I pulled off my hand wraps, the coarse fabric scraping against my calloused skin. “Take a look at this first.”

I handed her my phone, showing her the files my private investigator had delivered that afternoon. They were bank statements and credit logs under Garrett’s name.

A high-interest personal loan for eighty-three thousand dollars.

And a pending charge of sixty-two thousand at Cartier. The shipping address? Sabrina Kelly’s apartment.

Naomi’s jaw dropped. “That absolute bastard... he took out a predatory loan to buy her Cartier? What did he get you for your birthday, Flora? A ten-dollar grocery store bouquet! Call it off. Cancel the wedding right now!”

I shook my head slowly, taking the phone back.

“If I cancel, he just walks away with a few bad debts and a bracelet. No, Naomi. I’m going to make sure he crawls out of that venue on his hands and knees.”

Naomi stared at me, her expression shifting from horror to a quiet, fierce understanding.

“I don’t know what your plan is,” she whispered, “but whatever you need, I’m in.”

On the night before the wedding, the investigator sent over one final audio file, recorded via a small tracker planted in Garrett’s car.

I pressed play, and Sabrina’s voice filled the quiet locker room.

“Garrett, babe, once she’s out of the picture after the wedding, that brownstone is completely paid off, right? We can just transfer the title to your name and move in. It’s perfect.”

Garrett’s low chuckle followed. “Don’t rush it, sweetie. Once we get her off the deed and drain her trust account, this whole circus will have been worth every penny.”

Sabrina giggled, a sound that made my skin crawl. “You’re terrible, you know that?”

“But you love it.”

“Obsessed.”

The recording clicked off.

I sat alone in the dim locker room, listening to the file three more times. My hands were perfectly steady as I uploaded copies of the audio to three separate secure cloud drives.

Then, I wired the investigator his final payment with a short note: Perfect work. Worth every cent.