The Docks didn’t care about ten-million-dollar contracts or the glitz of the Metropolitan Arena. Here, the air was a thick soup of salt, diesel, and rotting timber. This was the only place Silas Vance felt like he could breathe without a Sterling holding a leash.
His home was a cavernous, drafty warehouse at the end of a rusted pier. There were no marble floors or velvet curtains here. The walls were exposed brick, and the only luxury was a massive, industrial-grade heater that groaned like a dying beast every time it kicked on.
Silas stood in the center of the room, stripped to his waist, his body a map of the violence he’d endured. He didn't look like a star athlete; he looked like a soldier in a war that never ended. He approached the heavy bag hanging from a steel I-beam and began to
