Counterpunch Here

The gym stayed. Vane went to trial. It turns out, in boxing and in life, the hardest hit is the one you never saw coming—the one you practically walked into yourself.

His opponent, a mountain of a man named Viktor, threw a haymaker that could have decapitated a bull. Elias didn’t flinch. He slipped the punch by a fraction of an inch, the wind of the glove whistling past his ear. In that heartbeat of overextension, Elias saw it: the opening.

The dim lights of the "Broken Rib" gym hummed with the smell of old leather and stale sweat. Inside the ring, Elias "The Ghost" Thorne danced. He wasn’t a heavy hitter; he was a surgeon.

"That’s the thing about a counterpunch," Elias’s trainer, Pops, whispered from the corner. "It’s not about being stronger. It’s about letting the other guy’s momentum do the work for you."

"You spent so much energy trying to knock us down," Elias said calmly, leaning against the ropes. "You forgot to keep your guard up."