I had looked forward to managing Maio House when I’d been younger.

For some reason, my brain had chosen to block out most of the other shit that went along with the job—specifically, the moments when I would get yelled at to go break up an argument or a fight between two grown-ass men. Or act like I gave a shit when members complained or threatened to cancel over really basic-ass reasons like when the butt blaster machine was out of order.

“What’s up?” I asked, feeling almost exhausted even after sleeping a whole six hours.

“John just came by and told me he was in the locker room in your building and he saw two of the MMA guys getting ugly with each other,” Bianca said, not bothering to explain what that implied because we both knew damn well what it meant.

Someone had to go stop it, and none of the employees got paid enough to want to get involved with two grown-ass men arguing.

That was my job.

I just didn’t get why John, the custodian, didn’t just stop by my office and tell me. I hadn’t been an asshole to him or anything that morning... I didn’t think. I’d have to make time to go talk to him and make sure we were good later, when I didn’t have two idiots to go deal with.

“All right, Bianca, thanks. I’ve got it,” I told her with another sigh as I got to my feet.

“Sorry! Good luck!” she replied in her happy, likable voice that had won me over when I’d interviewed her four months ago.

Who the hell was dumb enough to be arguing right now and over what? I left the office and headed out to the main floor. I looked around for a clue, taking in the empty sea of blue mats. There were four guys hanging around the cage, but they were in their own little worlds. Just about everyone from the morning session was gone.

I made it to the doorway that opened into the hallway that led into the showers and lockers and didn’t slow down my pace as I yelled, “Hide your ding-dongs. I’m coming in!”

I wasn’t in the mood to see any dicks flapping around or anybody’s buttholes winking at me. I could go the rest of my life without walking in on someone bent over naked. If I was going to see any balding, brown-eyed demons, I wanted to choose whose.

No one called out in response. All right then.

Maybe it was my lucky day and they had left, but I still had to check to make sure nobody was knocked out unconscious on the floor. That had fortunately never happened, but it was only because the rules at Maio House were so strict about fighting. The smart ones knew better than to do something that stupid, and even the cocky idiots could usually be reasoned with before they did something they’d regret.

Usually.

I barely had to clear the short hallway into the locker rooms when I immediately spotted the two guys standing in front of each other, silently, face-to-face. Forehead to forehead more like it. Really?

There were a lot of things I had always loved about having Maio House be a part of my life. About it being in my heart. In my blood. About knowing it was mine as much as it was Grandpa Gus’s. Like princes and princesses who knew the kingdoms they would inherit, I had always known what would one day become mine too. So I had known, even back when I had been about Grandpa’s hips’ height, what happened when you got into a fight when it wasn’t for training purposes.

Time and time again, he had made me sit at the tiny foldout couch he’d had in the corner of his office back in the old building where Maio House had been born while he suspended one person after another for violating the rules. The rules that were posted right in front of the main doors everyone walked through to get into the building. The very same rules that had been around since before I was born.

NO BRAWLING

NO DRUGS

NO CHEAP SHOTS (LEAVE GENITALS AND NECKS/SPINES ALONE)

***Violating the rules is cause for suspension or termination.

It had always seemed easy enough for me and for most of the people who had come and gone throughout the years to follow them. They were common sense. Don’t fight without a reason—which, hello, you had to be an idiot to cross that line. Don’t take drugs on the premises that weren’t prescription or over-the-counter painkillers. Leave each other’s ding-a-lings, egg sacks, and spinal cords alone. We wanted people to be able to walk out of the gym and reproduce if they wanted to. Basic shit.

It was rare that anyone broke the rules, but it happened. Just two weeks ago, I’d had to suspend one of the guys for purposely hitting the guy he’d been sparring with in the balls. Needless to say, he’d been fucking pissed and had tried to play dumb.

I really didn’t want to have to suspend someone else again, not so soon.

I recognized the smaller of the two as a nineteen-ish kid with cornrows named Carlos. He was bucking his chest out. The other man was Vince, who topped the younger guy by about fifty pounds and four inches and was five or six years older. He hadn’t been a member of Maio House for long. And they were both lovingly gazing into each other’s eyes.

Not.

“Are you two for real right now?” I asked, honest to God disappointed in both of them. What the hell could they possibly get so mad over that they were in the locker room millimeters away from being able to kiss each other? “Would at least one of you fucking stop?”

It was Vince who blinked first, maybe being the first one to have some fucking sense in him.

“Now, please.”

Vince blinked again, but he still didn’t take a step back, and Carlos, if anything, puffed out his chest even more.

I rolled my eyes. These two idiots might make their livings fighting people, or at least make part of their living doing that, but I had been in more fights than either of them… even if mine were always with a referee and for points, not because someone made me mad, and I wanted to prove something. Thank you, judo.

“Look,” I told them, reaching up to tug on the corner of my eye from how annoying these two were being, “I don’t give a shit if you get into a fight with each other, I really don’t, but I’m not going to feel bad suspending either of you if you do. And it’ll be for a month, and, Carlos, you have a fight coming up, and Vince, you’ve got one in two months. So… what do you want to do?”

It was Vince who reacted first. Him being a light heavyweight, I was relieved he snapped out of it, taking a step back and opening his mouth, loosening his jaw. Meanwhile, Carlos stood exactly where he was, tipping his chin up higher than it had been and basically fucking asking to get popped. His choice in friends suddenly made a hell of a lot of sense.

God needed to grant me some strength. Soon.

“Do I need to ask what happened or are you both good?” I asked, not giving a shit which of them replied.

“We’re good as long as he shuts the fuck up and minds his own business,” Carlos answered, and I didn’t miss the way Vince shook his head just a little bit in what seemed like disbelief. “I don’t need your advice, Vince.”

That’s what this was over? I tugged on the corner of my eye again. “Vince?”

The bigger guy smiled smugly, and after a moment, he shook his head and glanced back at me, his face intense. His eyes slid toward Carlos once more before yet again coming back to me. “I’m fine,” he responded after a second. “I’ll keep my advice to myself next time, Carlos.”