Rain moved sideways across the windows of the penthouse, streaking gold where the city lights caught it. Stiles stood at the glass with a tumbler he hadn’t actually drunk from, holding it mostly to give his hands something to do besides tap against his leg — a habit he’d never quite grown out of.
Behind him, a chessboard sat between two chairs, mid-game, pieces scattered the way they get when both players are actually paying attention.
"You gonna move, or just stand there being dramatic at the weather?" said the man in the second chair.
Stiles dropped into his seat and studied the board with the exaggerated focus of a man buying himself thinking time. "I’m not being dramatic. I’m being contemplative."
"So dramatic."
"Rude." He slid his bishop three squares like he’d known that was the move the whole time, which he hadn’t. "Most uncles show up, bring a bottle of something nice, ask how the family business is going. You show up and start critiquing my chess and my personality in the same breath."
Desmond huffed something close to a laugh and moved his knight. "My favorite nephew. I’ve got a lot of years to make up for. Efficiency seemed like the way to go."
"Efficient uncle. I like it." Stiles gestured vaguely at the room, the building, the whole implication of everything around them. "You vanish for a decade, more, and now you’re back."
"Chess doesn’t change much in a decade," Desmond said. "People barely do either, from what I’ve seen."
"Ouch." He was smiling when he said it.
They played a few moves in quiet, the rain doing most of the talking, and Stiles found himself watching his uncle’s face more than the board — the careful, unreadable calm of a man who’d clearly practiced looking calm for longer than Stiles had been alive.
"So," Stiles said eventually, capturing a pawn he didn’t especially need. "You gonna say it? Or are you just going to sit there pretending you drove over for the chess."
"Say what?"
"You already know about the seat. That’s supposed to be need-to-know for another week yet, and somehow you know. So where’s my thank-you? Where you tell me you’re proud I actually took it."
Desmond turned his glass slowly. "You did good, my favorite nephew. Unlike your coward of a father."
"Insult to him, or compliment to me?"
"Can it be both?" Something old sat underneath it, something that had waited a long time for a socially acceptable moment to surface. "Your father liked to weigh things. In practice that meant good moves sat on the table long enough to go bad. Four years back, two of the smaller families tried to break from the roster. He spent eleven months *considering* the response while they moved half their fighters out from under him. By the time he decided anything, there was nothing left to decide." He set his glass down, untouched. "I watched that happen up close. It’s part of why I left. I couldn’t sit at that table and call it strategy anymore."
Stiles went quiet, something dropping out of the rhythm of the joke. "You never told me that part."
"You never asked what I was actually watching happen. You just knew I left." Desmond folded the moment back into something lighter with a shrug. "You went out and signed fighters your father would’ve spent another year ’considering.’ You didn’t consider. You just did it. That’s the difference between you and him. It’s not a small one."
"Careful," Stiles said, lighter now, watching his uncle closely all the same. "Almost sounds like you’re saying something nice about me."
"It’s well deserved," Desmond said dryly, and Stiles laughed at that, short and genuine.
Stiles moved his queen, more careless than he meant to, and finally brought the tumbler to his mouth. "You know why I actually moved fast on the roster this cycle."
"I assume it’s not for ticket sales."
"It’s never for ticket sales." Something shifted in his voice, quieter now, the joking edge sanded down. "I want to see him."
Desmond didn’t ask who. He didn’t need to.
"Number One," Stiles said anyway, just to hear it out loud. "You know how long it’s been since anyone’s actually seen him fight?"
"I know the stories."
"They’re not stories. That’s the problem. Stories mean somebody was there to tell them. Nobody was there — not even my father, and he controlled the arena for thirty years." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chess forgotten. "Last confirmed sighting predates me. Actually predates me. I wasn’t a person yet." He shook his head. "A career that long, and the timeline just stops."
"And you want to be the one who ends the silence. Ruthless of you, stealing my dream."
"Obviously." Stiles turned his glass once in his hand, and the humor thinned to something closer to the bone. "When he finally comes out, I’m not letting him disappear back into whatever hole he’s been sitting in for twenty years. That’s the whole point of pulling him out at all. He answers to me after that, or none of this was worth doing."
"How exactly do you plan to manage that," Desmond said. "A man nobody’s beaten in longer than you’ve been alive doesn’t strike me as the type who takes instruction well."
"You know i can’t tell you that.," Stiles admitted, and there was something almost unsettling in how easily he said it, like the gap in the plan didn’t bother him at all. "You just have to wait till he actually shows."
"Although, it’s still a big bet."
"Everything’s a bet. Some of them just take longer to pay off." He gestured toward the window, toward the city and everything beyond it. "That’s why I moved fast this cycle. That’s why I brought in fighters my father would’ve spent a year deciding whether to even look at. I need enough of them good enough for long enough that eventually, one of these fights, he decides it’s worth coming to see for himself."
Desmond studied him for a long moment, something unreadable behind the calm.
"And if none of them are enough."
"Then I do it again. And the one after that. I’m patient — I just don’t enjoy being patient. Mostly I hope those idiots survive that long." He glanced down at the board and seemed to notice, for the first time, that his queen sat completely exposed. "Huh. When did that happen."
"About four moves ago," Desmond said. "I was wondering when you’d notice."
"You could’ve said something."
"And miss watching you talk your way into losing a queen? Not a chance."
Stiles huffed, almost a laugh, and reached for his glass instead of the board. "Take it if you want it. I’ve got bigger pieces on this board than a queen this cycle."
Desmond took the queen and set it aside without ceremony. For a moment neither of them spoke, the rain filling the space where conversation had been.
"I hope you know what you’re actually reaching for," Desmond said eventually, quieter than before.
"I don’t," Stiles said. "That’s the part that keeps me up."
Outside, the rain kept falling, patient in a way neither one of them entirely was.
---
Morning light came into Elena’s training ground, cutting long shadows across the grass. Liam stood in the middle of it already sweating, breath coming hard, a fresh bruise darkening along his forearm from the last exchange.
Wrath stood a few feet off, arms crossed, watching him with the stillness of a man who’d already decided what he thought and was simply waiting for the room to catch up.
"Again," Wrath said.
Liam reset his stance and came forward. What followed wasn’t pretty — fast and heavy and effective the way a hammer is effective, no elegance, just force applied until something gave.
Wrath let him finish, then held up a hand, calling it. "Better. Not good. Better."
"I’ll take better," Liam said, wiping sweat from his brow.
"You should. Considering where you started."
A comfortable quiet settled between them, the kind two people fall into once real work’s been done and both know it.
"You’ll be seeing footage this week," Wrath said, changing direction without warning, the way he often did. "Number Eight. Stiles’s people confirmed it."
"Marcus Vell," Liam said.
Wrath nodded, unsurprised he already had the name. "I watched one of his matches once. Years back, before I had any reason to care about him specifically."
"And?"
"And he’s dangerous. Beyond that I can’t tell you much."
Liam frowned, reaching for a water bottle. "You watched him fight and you can’t tell me anything?"
"I can tell you what I saw. I can’t tell you what it means." Wrath considered his words. "Watching a man fight and standing across from him are two different educations. What I saw was control. Precision. A man who doesn’t waste movement, doesn’t panic, doesn’t rush even when the moment calls for it. That’s rarer than you’d think in that arena. Most fighters get desperate eventually. He never looked desperate. Not once."
Liam absorbed that, capped the bottle, set it down.
Wrath’s expression sharpened, more critical now. "Which brings me to you. You still fight like a thug."
Liam huffed, half a laugh. "It’s the only way I know how."
"I know. That’s not an insult. Some of the meanest men I’ve known fought exactly like you do — straight ahead, heavy hands, no interest in finesse. It works. Until it doesn’t."
"So which is it going to be for me."
"Depends what you add to it. You’ve got power and nerve, and both matter. But power runs out, and nerve alone gets you hit by things you should’ve seen coming. You need something Marcus hasn’t seen before. Something that isn’t just you hitting harder than the last guy."
"What do you have in mind?"
Wrath didn’t answer right away. He walked a few paces off, crouched, and picked up a fist-sized stone that had apparently been sitting there the whole session without either of them noticing.
Liam watched him straighten, turning it once in his palm.
"What are you doing," Liam said slowly, "with a rock."
Wrath didn’t answer that either. He tossed it up, casual, caught it, tossed it again, higher, eyes following the arc.
*He’s not actually about to throw that at me,* Liam thought, watching the stone rise and fall, some older part of his brain already running quiet math on distance.
Wrath tossed it a third time, higher still, and Liam’s eyes went with it, tracking the stone against the light, watching it hang at the peak for half a second before gravity remembered its job.
Then a sound, quick and close — Wrath was already standing face to face with him, fist raised. Liam’s whole body reacted before his mind caught up. He was moving backward on instinct, hands snapping up to guard. Too late.
Wrath’s fist connected clean. Liam stumbled back a full step, catching his balance just before it gave, jaw stinging.
Wrath stood there, entirely unbothered, the stone forgotten on the mat behind him.
"That," he said, "is your first skill right there."
Liam worked his jaw once, testing it. "The rock was the distraction."
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