Emylee

The Fighter's Gentle Ruin

Fight night at the warehouse is the last place you expected to feel watched — truly, deliberately watched — but the moment Mikhail Volkov climbs out of the ring, blood on his knuckles and the crowd parting around him like a tide, his eyes find yours across the entire room and do not move. Your cousin Lena grabs your arm and whispers that he never looks at anyone like that, and the way she says it makes your pulse do something inconvenient. He doesn't smile. He doesn't approach. He simply looks at you as if he has just decided something irreversible, and the most dangerous part is that you are not afraid.