Chapter 60. Rivalry Reframed

The studio lights were merciless.

They flattened everything—faces, colors, even doubt.

Nadia had learned to hold still under them, to let heat roll down her spine without showing it.

The earpiece crackled. “Thirty seconds, Vale segment, camera two.”

She adjusted the mic on her collar, nodded once to the director behind the glass.

“Three… two… one…”

The red light flared.

“Welcome back to Inside the League.” Her voice slid easily into the practiced register—low, confident, a razor wrapped in silk. “Tonight we’re looking at the aftershocks still reshaping combat sports in the wake of the Vale scandal.”

Behind her, the screen bloomed with motion: Lia Chen’s final fight, slowed for drama—the slip, the strike, the fall, the victory.

The same clip they’d used a hundred times, but tonight Nadia saw new things.

Not just the win.

The stillness before it.

The decision not to kill momentum, but to surrender to it.<