Chapter 3. Jun’s Warning

Jun didn’t move for a long time after Lia walked out.

The café emptied by degrees—chairs scraping, milk frothers sighing, the normal life closing back in. He stayed still, elbows on the table, eyes fixed on the faint ring her cup had left on the wood.

Lia’s coffee had gone cold half an hour before she even arrived, but she hadn’t touched it. He lifted the cup now and drank it anyway, just to feel the taste of something she’d left behind. Bitter, burnt. Perfect.

He noted the tiny red line along the rim—her lip must have reopened when she smiled. He shouldn’t have noticed. He always noticed.

Information was safety; details were control. That’s what he told himself every time he saw her.

He leaned back in his chair, scanning the reflection in the window. The rain outside turned the street into a moving mercury, every passing car a smear of white. He watched for tails, for patterns. Habit, not paranoia—though those lines blurred easily these days.

Two exits. Four cameras. One cop car idling a block down.

He catalogued them automatically while his mind replayed the last five minutes.

Her voice—defiant but fraying at the edges. Her hands, restless under the table. The way she flinched when he said Cassian’s name.

He’d thrown that deliberately, like a punch meant to test range. She’d taken the hit, but not broken guard.

Still a fighter.

He closed his eyes and saw her again, framed in that doorway, ribbon around her wrist, jaw set.

Jun exhaled slow. He didn’t like being the messenger. He was better as the shadow—observing, nudging, never seen.

But the moment she registered for the tournament, she became visible again. And visibility drew predators.

He tapped a finger against the table, counting beats. One for every year since Cassian’s fall. Three, four, five.

The same name kept echoing behind his ribs—Dominic. The man everyone thought long gone, buried under old debts and older sins. The man whose ledger Jun had seen once, accidentally, in a safe he’d been told to ignore. Lia’s name hadn’t been there then. Ethan’s had.

Now both of them were on borrowed time.

He finished her coffee, set the cup down, and stood. His movements were efficient—coat, gloves, hood. No wasted motion.

Outside, the drizzle had turned to fine rain. He slipped his phone from his pocket. The burner. The one with no contacts saved, only numbers memorized.

He walked two blocks before calling. Always two blocks. Always moving.

The line clicked twice before a voice answered.

“Report.”

Jun kept his tone even. “She bit.”

“Good.”

The voice on the line was low and smooth—that kind of expensive calm that always came with a threat just below it.

Jun hated how familiar it felt.

“She registered?”

“Yes.”

A pause. Then the quiet, deliberate clink of coins. Not fidgeting. A signal.

“And Cassian?”

“Still out of play.”

“Not for long.”

Jun stared straight ahead. His reflection blurred in the darkened glass of a pawn shop window. He looked tired.

“You said she’d have a choice.”

“She does,” Dominic said. “Fight, or bury her brother.”

Jun stopped walking. The wind dragged a long, dry sigh across the eaves, tracing a slow string section through the silence.

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“Deals change.”

Static buzzed softly. A match struck. Sulfur flared. Jun could almost smell it.

“She doesn’t know the stakes,” he said.

“She doesn’t need to,” Dominic replied. “Only you do.”

Jun was silent.

Then the voice turned colder.

“You think I forgot about the cameras?”

The punch landed clean. Jun said nothing.

“You were the one who looped the footage. The ‘Cassian incident’? The night the press didn’t get? That was your hand on the feed. You cleaned it. You silenced the right people. And you did it not because you owed him—but because you liked your place on the ladder.”

Jun exhaled through his nose.

“I did what I had to.”

“You always do,” Dominic said softly. “Now do it again.”

Jun’s silence cracked a little. His jaw clenched.

“She doesn’t know the terms. That’s not a fight. That’s coercion.”

Dominic laughed—once, dry. “You’re getting sentimental, Jun. Not like you.”

Jun’s voice lowered. “It’s not sentiment. It’s structure.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Structure has rules.”

Dominic didn’t respond. But Jun could feel the line cooling between them.

“You want her desperate,” Jun said. “But you made it zero-sum. You crossed a line.”

“Then redraw it.”

The line went dead.

He lowered the phone, stared at the dark screen until his reflection stared back.

For a long moment, he didn’t move. Just listened—to the city breathing, to the slow drip from the awning above, to the hum of everything closing in.

You wanted control, Jun.

He slid the phone into his pocket and started walking again, the rain needling through his coat.

He walked until the sound of his own footsteps vanished under the city’s pulse. Rainwater sluiced along the gutters, swallowing cigarette ends and secrets. Jun’s route bent east, toward the Loop, where the traffic never truly died and anonymity was easier to wear.

The burner phone felt too warm in his pocket, as if the last voice on it had left a residue. He found an alley, ducked into its mouth, and snapped the device in half. The plastic cracked like bone.

He dropped the pieces into separate trash bins, one on either side of the street.

People passed without seeing him: umbrellaed office workers, a kid on a bike, a courier with a face lit blue by his phone. None of them noticed the man in the dark coat, standing still while everything moved around him.

He counted license plates again, out of habit. Then storefront cameras. One, two, three. Too many. The air felt wrong.

When the black sedan rolled by, engine idling low, he didn’t look at it directly. He saw the reflection instead—paint sleek with rain, the outline of a driver’s head barely visible.

Same car. Third day in a row.

He crossed the street casually, checked the mirror of a parked delivery van. The sedan slowed at the next intersection.

Confirmation, not panic.

He turned into another street, where neon from a bar sign bled pink over the wet pavement. The smell of fried onions hit him; the sound of laughter spilled out. He walked through it, anonymous.

Inside the bar’s reflection, the sedan passed again—two silhouettes this time.

He let them think they were invisible.

In the narrow alley behind the bar, he ducked under a fire escape, pulled out another phone—his own this time, unregistered, old. He sent one text to a number listed only as R.

J: She’s in motion. They’re watching.

R: You warned her?

J: Enough to keep her cautious, not enough to make her run.

R: Then you’ve done your part.

He didn’t reply. He waited until the typing bubble disappeared, then deleted the thread entirely.

The streetlights flickered above. Somewhere nearby, a siren started, its echo chasing itself through the city.

He remembered Lia’s face in the café window—the way she’d watched the rain like it was a thing she could outwait.

People like her didn’t wait. They endured until something broke.

A car door slammed nearby. He didn’t turn around.

Instead, he muttered to the night, “If they want her scared, they’ll have to go through me first.”

By the time Jun reached Wabash, the rain had eased to mist. The city lights scattered in it, soft and deceptive, turning every window into a lens. He preferred it that way—when everything looked like something else.

He crossed near the elevated tracks, following the hum of the L overhead. The sound vibrated through his bones, pulsing, like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. The wet pavement reflected the grid of orange light, fractured by his steps.

He adjusted his pace without thinking. The sedan had vanished, but he knew it hadn’t gone far. People who hunted didn’t quit after one loop—they circled until you forgot they were there.

He stopped at a crosswalk, looked into the glass of a darkened storefront. His own reflection was a ghost version of himself: shoulders slightly hunched, jaw tight, eyes calm because calm kept you alive.

A movement behind the reflection caught his attention—half a second, maybe less. A figure leaning against the entrance to an old print shop, face shadowed by the awning. Smoking. Watching.

Jun’s muscles tensed, but only enough to notice it. He turned, walked toward the man. The distance between them closed in silence except for the hiss of traffic.

The man dropped the cigarette and stepped aside, hands raised slightly, palms open. “Still quick,” he said.

Jun knew the voice before the face. Rafael Ortega. R.

Jun didn’t stop walking. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Rafa smiled faintly, rain catching on his lashes. “You said they were watching. Thought I’d see it for myself.”

“They don’t like witnesses.”

“Neither do you.”

They faced each other under the broken neon. To anyone else, they looked like old friends meeting by chance. Jun knew better.

“She registered,” Jun said.

Rafa nodded. “Then it starts.”

Jun’s jaw tightened. “You could still pull her name.”

“She made a choice.”

“No, she made a mistake.”

Rafa’s smile faded. “You of all people should understand mistakes are what make the fights interesting.”

“She’s not a piece on your board.”

“You’re right. She’s a wildcard.”

Jun’s eyes flicked to the street. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

Rafa shrugged. “I analyze outcomes. Doesn’t mean I enjoy them.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Cassian’s already in the loop. Dominic’s people will move soon. You can’t shield both of them.”

Jun’s pulse didn’t change, but something deep down twisted. “I’m not shielding anyone.”

“Then why burn your trail?”

His lips remained sealed.

Rafa took a step back, studying him. “She matters to you.”

Jun’s mouth moved before he could stop it. “She’s leverage.”

Rafa tilted his head, reading the lie. “Keep telling yourself that.”

The wind picked up, carrying the smell of rain-soaked concrete and exhaust. A train thundered overhead, and when it passed, Rafa was gone.

Jun stood alone under the flickering sign. The smoke from the discarded cigarette still curled upward, breaking apart in the drizzle.

He slipped his hands into his pockets, feeling for the edge of the lighter, grounding himself in the familiar weight.

He took a slow breath and turned east toward the river, where the city opened wide enough to think.

He didn’t believe in omens, but the night had one—someone always vanishes after the first call.

***

The river smelled of rust and old rain. Jun leaned on the railing, watching the current drag sheets of oil into thin rainbows. He could hear the soft hum of traffic overhead, a constant, steady pulse.

Memory crept in like damp through old wood—quiet, relentless.

Cassian’s gym, two years back.

The air heavy with sweat and cheap disinfectant.

The clang of chains on a heavy bag.

Lia had been there—leaner, younger, still carrying that kind of stubborn hope that doesn’t yet understand itself as pain. Cassian stood behind her, arms crossed, voice flat and commanding.

“She learns fast because she doesn’t trust anyone,” Cassian said.

Jun remembered answering, “That’s a survival trait.”

Cassian’s eyes had been dark, hiding his feelings deep inside. “It’s also a weakness. Fear disguising itself as control.”

Jun had watched Lia then—how she reset her stance after every mistake, as if erasing proof of it. Sweat dripped down her neck, caught in the hollow of her collarbone, ran along skin marked with small bruises that never fully faded.

She hit harder than the others. Cleaner. Because she was afraid of not hitting hard enough.

Cassian had turned to him. “She’s the only one who doesn’t flinch when she bleeds.”

Later that same night, he’d gone over the gym’s records for Dominic—Cassian’s father, the man whose debts funded half the underground circuit. He’d found Ethan’s name listed on a side ledger: borrowed money, unpaid, doubled in interest.

Cassian had never mentioned it, and Jun hadn’t asked why.

Back then, it hadn’t mattered.

Now it did.

He pulled his phone from his pocket—the old one. The screen was cracked near the corner. He scrolled through contacts he no longer called: Cassian, Dominic, Yara. Each name was a weight.

He stopped at Cassian’s and hesitated. The last message was months old.

Cassian: You don’t owe me anything.

Jun’s thumb hovered. He almost typed She’s back in.

He didn’t.

He pocketed the phone and looked at his reflection in the river—broken and reshaped by ripples.

Cassian had been right about one thing. Lia’s trust was both armor and target.

She thought she could fight her way out of the debt, out of her brother’s shadow, out of everything.

Jun knew better. The ring didn’t care what you fought for. It only cared that you stayed long enough to lose something worth taking.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the water slapping the concrete. For a second, the memory blurred into something else—a hallway, a door, Cassian’s voice raised, then a dull crack of something hitting metal.

He’d walked in too late that day. Cassian bleeding. Dominic gone.

There were no clean wins in their world. Just debts collected by other means.

***

Jun’s apartment sat three floors above a shuttered bakery that still smelled faintly of sugar and dust. He unlocked the door by touch—two turns left, one right—and stepped into the quiet.

The space was neat, almost surgical. No photos, no clutter. Everything had its place: keys on the counter, shoes aligned by the door, laptop on the small desk facing the window. The hum of the city came through the glass, softened by rain.

He hung his coat, then crossed to the table, where an ashtray sat beside a small burner phone—one of many. He lit a cigarette, not because he wanted it, but because smoke helped him think.

He exhaled toward the ceiling, watching the trail curl and break apart.

Cassian’s name pulsed in his head again, the same pace as the L train that ran a few blocks away. He wondered if the man even knew Lia was fighting again. Probably not. Cassian had buried himself long before Lia started clawing her way back into daylight.

Jun pulled the SIM card from the phone he’d used earlier, set it in the ashtray, and flicked ash onto it before lighting another match. The plastic softened, curled, and vanished in a curl of black smoke.

Every trace erased. Every loose thread burned.

He’d told himself this distance was control. That staying unseen meant staying safe. But tonight, distance felt like failure measured in inches.

He sat down at the desk and opened his laptop. The screen glow painted his face pale. A message blinked in from an encrypted account he didn’t recognize.

Subject: Timeline.

Body: You’re late. She moves tomorrow.

No signature. No threat. Just schedule.

He closed the laptop without replying.

That could mean anything—a new match, another setup, another debt trap disguised as opportunity.

He thought about calling Rafa, then decided against it. Rafa would say what he always did: She’s not your problem.

But she was. She had been from the moment Cassian told him to keep an eye on her, back when she still thought fighting was the fastest way out.

The medal flashed in his memory—the one she always wore, tied around her wrist now like a promise she didn’t want to explain. He imagined her sitting somewhere small and cold, trying not to shake, the city’s noise pressing against the walls.

He whispered into the quiet, “You think this is about money. It never was.”

He wasn’t sure if he was warning her, or himself.

The lighter clicked again, and another match caught. He let it burn down almost to his fingers before dropping it into the tray.

Smoke curled upward, soft and grey.

For a moment, the flame’s afterglow lit the edge of the window, reflected faintly in the glass—a thin halo over the city skyline.

Then it faded, and the room went dark.