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“He did.” Victor leans back. The chair creaks under his frame. “I watch my gym. You know that about me. I built this place out of nothing, and the way I keep it standing is I pay attention. To everything.”

“Okay.”

“Dakota looks for Brady every water break. Every single one. Cruz and Dante show up within five minutes of each other, every single day, like they synchronized watches. And you.” He taps one finger on the laptop. “You track her across the floor even when you’re holding pads for someone else. This morning you missed Kai dropping his right hand three times because your eyes were on the far cage.”

My pulse hits my throat. I keep my hands loose on the armrests, keep my breathing even, fall back into the same body I use cornering a fight that’s going wrong.

“What are you asking me, Victor?”

“I’m not asking anything yet. I’m telling you what I see. Five people who move around each other differently than teammates do.” He watches my face. “So now I’ll ask. Is there anything happening under my roof that could put fighter licenses at risk? Anything the commission could use?”

“The commission would need actual grounds.”

“That’s not an answer.”

It isn’t. I make myself hold his eyes.

“This gym builds close teams. That’s the whole design. You put out a call to every fighter who never had a safe room to train in, and they came, and they bonded harder than fighters bond anywhere else because for most of them it’s the first timethey’ve been accepted unconditionally. Dakota showed up with a duffel bag and nothing else. Brady’s family doesn’t speak to him. Of course they orbit each other. You built the gravity yourself.”

Every word is true. None of it is responsive. Victor knows the difference.

“I fought to get where I am,” he says. “When I came out a year ago, I lost four sponsors in a week. Fighters walked. The commission sent an auditor sniffing around my books looking for any excuse, and they found nothing because there was nothing to find. They’re still looking, Eli. Every sanctioning body in three states would love a reason to say the queer gym runs dirty. A coach involved with a fighter, that’s not a headline we survive. That’s revoked licenses. That’s an ethics investigation with my name on the folder.”

I swallow hard. “I understand what’s at stake.”

“Do you?”

“Better than most.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Through the glass behind him, Cruz laughs at the squat rack, and the sound comes through faint and warm and completely wrong for this room.

“I like you,” Victor says. “I like all of them. Whatever people do on their own time, in their own homes, I’ve got no interest in policing. But professional boundaries inside these walls aren’t optional. We don’t get the benefit of the doubt other gyms get. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Then we’re good.” He opens the laptop. “Send Marco in on your way out.”

I stand on steady legs, which surprises me. At the door I pause with my hand on the handle. “Victor. There’s nothing you need to worry about.”

He doesn’t look up from the screen. “Then I won’t.”

The gym noise hits me when I open the door, all thudding bags and the whir of jump ropes and someone counting out sprawls, and I walk back into it feeling like I just went two rounds without landing anything.

Dakota catches my eye from the far cage. She’s mid-drill with Lisa, but her rhythm hitches.

I turn to Kai on the bags. “Your right hand’s living at your hip. Fix it.” I hold pads for the next three hours and see almost none of it.

The message I send that evening takes me four drafts.

Eli:Team dinner at Dante’s tonight. 8pm. Need to go over some scheduling stuff. All five of us.

Scheduling stuff. In a chat that any investigator would read for tone, it’s the best I can do.

Cruz:wouldn’t miss it coach

Dakota:I’ll bring food

Dante:door’s open