Sophia was in the changing room, with Eric Bates helping her put bandages on her wrists. She was looking at her hands, lost in deep thought, when he said, “You are strangely quiet. Afraid of losing your match tonight or what?”

“Are you delusional? How would I lose to that bitch? This will be the third time I defend my MMA world title! It will end like the previous times, with me looking at my opponent’s fainted body and her face a complete mess! And if Emma ever hears you ask such a thing, she will split your head in half!”

“Yeah, that manager of yours is crazier than you! Last time you got an MMA match, just because you got hurt on your eyebrow, she tried to murder me!”

“Hey! You are my coach! You are supposed to advise me! You shouted for me to look at her leg, and she punched my left eye! It was your fault! You distracted me!”

While tying the last bandage, Eric said, “It worked, didn’t it? I was right all along. So, you want me to tell you what to look for once again, or have you already memorized everything I told you before?”

“I have it engraved on my eyelids. You have been annoying the heck out of me with all those recorded matches of my opponent, her background, and all the moves she used in previous fights. I know them all. You are worse than my old coach! Why did he have to retire? If you don’t shout in the middle of my fight, I will definitely win. But if you distract me, I am going after your head! And Emma will help me hide your body!”

While leisurely taking out from his pocket a small dark box wrapped in velvet, Eric said, “Well, just to give you some motivation, if you win the fight, and you don’t get hurt, I am going to take you to a restaurant where I made a reservation, and I am going to give you this.”

Sophia gasped. “Is that… what I think it is…”

While skilfully helping her put the gloves on, Eric answered. “It might be. But you will only get it if you win and don’t get hurt. If you end up in the hospital, I am not going to give you this, and I will cancel that reservation. So, you better win.”

With a jump, Sophia got out of the bench and rushed to the exit, calling him out as she was leaving, “What are you waiting for, moron? I have a fight to win!”

Eric smiled and said as he walked with her along the underground corridor that led to the ring in the middle of the national stadium, “That’s my girl! And did I mention that some of your friends, together with Mia and your father, are also in the audience? Or do I need to remind you that she is going to mock you for years to come if your opponent knocks you out?”

“I am going to win; I am going to get that ring you have in that box, and then I will rub my trophy in that entitled rich brat’s nose! Again! It baffles me why she keeps trying to fight me after I win a fight, and I have to knock her off every single time!”

“I got used to that over the years. I think it is her way of congratulating you on another win. And you also enjoy those fights with her, so don’t you pretend to hate her when we both know you really love each other. Just like mother and daughter!”

Sophia shot daggers with her eyes at the smiling man at her side and said, “I love to see her bleed; that is what I like! And if you don’t shut up, you are also going to bleed! I might use you as a warm-up for my fight!”

“Yeah, right, as if you wanted to be grounded and do the dishes for an entire month. Don’t mess with me, girl, because I am way above your league in finding proper punishments for your threats. Unless you want to sleep on the couch for the next month as well, shut up and focus!”

“Annoying brat… I am so going to-” Noticing that Eric was grinning, Sophia immediately completed, “I am so going to win this, you will see.”

As they approached the ring, the crowd in the stadium cheered for her, and she lifted one gloved hand and kept walking with a serious face, her usual greeting move to her fans.

Eric helped her by pulling the top rope of the ring, and Sophia entered, staring at her opponent in the blue corner, the fool who dared to challenge her.

While Eric was helping her put the mouth protector on, Sophia kept staring at the other corner. Her opponent was glaring at her in a vain attempt to make her doubt her chances.

Sophia knew that her opponent was an excellent fighter, but that night, it didn’t matter if there were ten of her. She had somewhere to go after that match.

The announcer introduced both fighters to the audience, but Sophia could barely pay any attention to it or the noise and cheering around.

The referee signalled for them to approach the middle of the ring, and while looking at them both, he warned them, “I want a clean fight, by the rules! You both are professionals, so I don’t need to remind any of you to fight properly! These people around us didn’t come to see any of you make a foul move, so don’t disappoint any of them, your coaches, or me. Understood?”

Sophia nodded, while her opponent said, “I don’t need to work hard for this! You are going down in no time!”

“Five seconds.”

Intrigued, her opponent asked, “Five what?”

“I will end this in less than five seconds. I have somewhere to go, and I can’t be late.”

“You have somewhere to go, alright, to a hospital bed! I am going to hit you so much that you are going to see stars!”

The referee pushed each fighter apart because they were dangerously close to each other’s faces. Sophia and her opponent went to their corners and waited. The moment the referee gave the signal, and the bell rang, the girl in the blue corner walked forward, with Sophia dashing against her.

At a mere one metre from her, and while the other girl had both hands raised to protect her face from what she thought was a high attack to the face, Sophia kneeled on the floor and slid, letting her body hit the girl’s left leg while wrapping one arm around her waist and another around the other leg.

Using sheer strength, Sophia rotated the other girl’s body and ended side by side with her, firmly twisting her leg and ankle into an awkward position. She felt something about to snap and kept twisting just a bit more. The girl tapped the floor desperately, feeling her knee and ankle collapsing from pain, and Sophia let her go when the referee called her out.

While the entire stadium was silent, with the crowd too dumbfounded because of how fast the match ended, Sophia raised both arms, with the referee announcing her as the winner.

It was then that the crowd went wild. But not in the good sense. They were angry. Many of them saved money for that particular event; it was announced all over the place for months, and the previous fights were longer than the most expected fight of the night.

The announcer came with a microphone, asking for everyone to calm down. Among all the noise, he asked the seriously angry winner, “Sophia Cross, that was a personal record for you! Three seconds to a technical knockout! Everyone was expecting a longer fight, and everyone seems to be disappointed it ended so fast!”

Suddenly, Sophia grabbed the microphone and shouted to the audience, “Shut the fuck up! Before I came here, my boyfriend showed me a small velvet box and said that he made a reservation in a restaurant, and he was going to give me what was inside that box if I won, and I didn’t get hurt! I won, and I didn’t get hurt! I don’t care if you were expecting to see a long fight! I don’t care if you were expecting that I got hurt, or that I hurt my opponent! I am going to get a wedding ring, so you can all go fuck yourselves!”

She dropped the microphone and kissed her coach, the happy man she loved, Eric Bates, the boy she met years ago, and annoyed the heck out of her every time he was waiting for her outside school to take her home, even with her saying that she didn’t need nor wanted company.

As they both left the ring for the corridor that would lead them to the changing room for Sophia to get ready for her night out, half of the crowd was cheering for her, while the other half was still booing, angry with her words and insults.

Among the crowd, a smiling Mia Mills said to the sighing man at her side, “Well, you can’t say she is not your daughter, can you? But this ended so fast that I barely had time to see what she did! What the heck was that?”

“I think Eric caused all that by showing her the box. Darn fool, he was supposed to wait until they got to the restaurant!”

“You know I helped him choose the ring, but don’t you think it would be funny if he forgot to put the ring inside the box and when Sophia opened it, it was empty? The look on her face would be hilarious!”

“Yeah, right, then she would kill him, then go after you and me!”

From the seat on their left, a smiling Emma Pearson said, “I can help you disappear! You just say the word, and I can put you both on a plane with a false name!”

With a defeated sigh, Jack Cross said, “You know Emma, sometimes you sound crazier than Sophia…”

“Hehehe!”

“I don’t know why you are laughing. You are the one who will have to explain to the press what happened tonight!”

Emma pointed to a group of reporters who were surrounding a woman near the ring and said, “Not me. Eliza Francis. She is Sophia’s public relations representative. It is her job to pull Sophia out of trouble and to protect her image. And she is well paid for that! As for me, I just need to check who will be Sophia’s next target! I mean, opponent! Yes, opponent! Hehehe!”