Marco
The rain hammered against the tall gym windows in a relentless rhythm, turning the city lights outside into blurred smears of gold and red. I stood alone in the center of the room, my fists raw and split open from pounding the heavy bag until the leather split.
Sweat poured down my bare chest, mixing with the blood that trickled from my knuckles and dripped onto the mat. Pain was the only thing that cleared my head these days. It drowned out the noise, the doubts, even her voice echoing in the back of my mind like a ghost I couldn't shake.
I flexed my fingers and watched the skin pull tight over the cracks. Too many hits. Not enough answers. My phone buzzed on the wooden bench near the weights, the sound cutting through the steady thump of my pulse.
I knew who it was before I even picked it up. Encrypted line. One of the few I still kept open under the old protocols, the ones that didn't trace back to anything official.
