Brock blinked. Then laughed. A sharp, forced bark that bounced off the mirrored walls. "No? Did this old woman just say no to me?" He spun to his students, arms wide open. "You all hearing this? Grandma just said no to me." He pressed his hand to his chest in mock shock. "Oh lord, I'm terrified. Absolutely shaking." More laughter. Louder this time. Phones were out everywhere. Four, five, six of them recording.
Then something shifted in Brock's face. The performance dropped away. The grin thinned into something harder. What replaced it was real. A cold, humiliated fury that had nothing to do with cameras. Because Wanda Moore wasn't scared. She wasn't crying. She wasn't begging. She was standing on his mat looking at him the way you look at a child throwing a tantrum. Like he was small. Like he was nothing. And every one of his students was watching.
That was the thing Brock Anderson could never survive. Not bankruptcy. Not a losing record. Not bad press. The one thing that could destroy him was being made to feel insignificant by someone he considered beneath him. He walked to the front counter. Opened the cash register with a bang. Pulled out a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills. $10,000. His entire cash reserve. The money earmarked for next month's lease.
He walked back to Wanda. Slowly. Deliberately. The gym went dead silent. "You know what? I just got an idea." His voice dropped to a whisper. "$10,000. Cash. Right here in my hand." He held the stack inches from her face. "All you got to do is hit me. One clean shot. Anywhere. One shot, old lady." Wanda said nothing. "What? You can't even do that?" He laughed, but there was nothing funny left in it. "Your grandson couldn't do it either. Must run in the family."
He waited for her to flinch. To cry. To turn around and shuffle out the door so he could post the clip with a clever cruel caption underneath. Instead, Wanda Moore looked him dead in the eye. "You sure about that, baby?" Four words. No tremor. No hesitation. Brock's face went dark red. He slammed the stack of bills across her face hard. The money exploded off her cheek and scattered across the mat like leaves ripped apart by a storm.
"Hit me!" he screamed. "Pick up that money and hit me!" Wanda didn't pick up the money. She didn't touch her cheek. She set her purse on the floor. Slowly. Carefully. The way someone sets down a prayer book before standing to sing. Her left foot slid back. Her right foot anchored forward. Her hands came up. Open. Loose. Fingers slightly curved. Weight centered. Chin tucked.
Nobody in that gym understood what they were looking at. Nobody except one man. Derek Collins had been leaning in the office doorway, arms crossed, watching in silence. Thirty years in martial arts. He'd studied every fighting style. But this stance. He knew it. He'd seen it in competition footage from the '80s. In a Sports Illustrated photograph he never forgot. The Phantom.
He sprinted across the gym. "Stop! Brock, stop! You don't know who she is!" Derek's voice echoed off the walls. Every student heard it. Brock heard it too. He didn't care. But for Wanda, something strange happened in that half second between Derek's scream and Brock's first step forward. Time didn't slow down the way people describe in movies. It compressed. Like 34 years folded into a single breath.