During the day, I was at the office, casually discussing bridal styles with my coworkers and tasting wedding cake samples, playing the part of a blissfully happy woman without dropping character for a single second.
But the moment the clock struck five, I dove straight into the gym.
Guards on, gloves laced. One minute I was calling him “honey” over text, and the next, I was
grit-toothed, counting reps as I slammed my fists into the heavy bag.
Following my precise instructions, Coach Briggs had put together a brutal defensive
counter-routine designed specifically to dismantle a spinning heel kick.
“You said your opponent is known for her spinning kicks?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“What level are we talking?”
“She started as a sparring partner in an underground ring.”
Briggs frowned, his brow furrowing deep.
“Fighters coming out of those illegal underground gyms have filthy legwork. They don’t stick to regulation forms; they go straight for the vitals.”
He pulled up a grainy video of a black-market match on his tablet to show me.
“See that right there? Before they commit to a high kick, there’s a micro-tuck of the hip. It’s incredibly fast-less than 0.3 seconds. Your only job is to slip the force by pivoting within that 0.3-second window, close the distance, and tear into her from the inside.”
I nodded, practicing the motion over and over and over again.
At one point, a six-foot-two heavyweight partner was backed so hard into the corner by my aggression that he instinctively covered his groin. Briggs chewed him out from the sidelines for
being a coward, but I caught the ghost of a proud smirk tugging at the edge of the coach’s mouth.
Late that evening, my best friend, Maddie, came by the gym to pick me up.
The moment she saw the brutal black-and-purple bruising littering my arms, her eyes welled up with immediate tears.
“Sienna, have you completely lost your mind? Why the hell are you doing this to yourself?”
I unstrapped my guards, cracked open a bottle of mineral water, and downed half of it in one go.
“Take a look at what I dug up.”
I unlocked my phone and slid it across to her.
On the screen was a screenshot of a bank ledger provided by a private investigator. Garrett had pulled a payday loan for eighty-three thousand dollars. Sixty-two thousand of it had been spent at Cartier-shipped directly to Roxy.
Maddie’s eyes went completely wide.
“That miserable piece of trash took out a high-interest payday loan just to buy that bitch Cartier What has he ever bought you? A twelve-dollar bouquet of carnations from a Kroger clearance rack for your birthday! Call it off, Sienna! Drop this wedding right now!”
I shook my head slowly, taking the phone back.
“That’s exactly why I can’t call it off. I’m going to make him crawl on his knees and choke up every single cent he stole from me.”
Maddie stared at me, the expression in her eyes shifting into something heavy and profound.
“Sienna… I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but no matter what you do, I’ve got your
back.”
I watched her car pull away, then bent right back down to tear into the heavy bag again.
Three nights before the wedding, the investigator sent over the final piece of the puzzle: an audio
file recorded from the bug hidden inside Garrett’s car.
Roxy’s voice cut through the static, dripping with sweet malice.
“Garrett, babe, after the wedding, she’s going to be a vegetable anyway. That apartment of hers was bought cash, right? Once it’s transferred into your name, we can move right in. It’ll be perfect.”
Garrett chuckled, a low, sleazy sound. “What’s the rush? Once I lock down the deed to her place and drain the rest of her savings account, this entire marriage will finally be worth the trouble.”
Roxy giggled, teasing him. “God, you’re so bad, Garrett.”
“But you love it, don’t you?”
“Obsessed with it.”
The recording cut out there.
I sat on the wooden bench of the gym locker room, playing those words back three separate times. My hands were rock-steady as I backed the audio file up across three independent cloud drives.
Then, I wired the investigator his final payment with a brief note: Excellent work. Worth every