Irena broke his nose in the first thirty seconds. By the second round, she’d cracked two of his ribs. By the third, Leo was fighting blind through a mask of blood, and the cello music had twisted into a discordant shriek. He wasn’t dancing anymore. He was drowning.

“You’re done,” Silas said.

“You helped her up. You showed mercy. That’s not the Bad Apple way. The Bad Apple is about the spectacle of decay. You gave them redemption. Redemption is bad for business.”

“You don’t fight with anger, kid,” Silas said, leaning on a heavy bag that had seen better decades. “Anger is a cheap shot. You fight with rhythm. Boxing is not a sport. It’s a song. A bad, dirty song in a minor key. And you? You’re the bad apple.”

Silas knew he’d found his next star.

His opponent was a hulk of a man named Brick, a former enforcer for a dockworkers’ union. Brick had thirty pounds on Leo and a scar that split his upper lip like a second mouth.

The neon lights of the Lotus Lounge bled into the rain-slicked streets of the Lower Ward. Inside, the air was thick with jasmine smoke, the clink of ice, and the low, predatory hum of a crowd that dealt in secrets. On a small stage, a woman named Eden bled from a split in her eyebrow, but she was smiling. She wasn’t fighting; she was dancing. The rhythm was a slow, bruising heartbeat—the same tempo she’d used last week to drop a middleweight contender in the third round.