Act I – Chapter 3: "Didn't see that one coming"
The day Leo was shot
"Argh… wait, Gregorio!"
"Yes, boss?"
Don Javier, still staring at the pool, shifted nervously.
"Stay with me. The others, go."
Gregorio nodded.
The guards scattered. He stepped up to the edge of the water.
"Hm… Fish him out. I need to check something," Javier added, eyes never leaving the surface.
"You're the boss," Gregorio replied.
Without another word, the man dived in. A few seconds later, he resurfaced with Leo's body and hauled him roughly onto the poolside. Leo started coughing, spitting up water, half‑conscious, half gone.
Don Javier squinted, leaning over him.
"Not a lot of blood for someone who just took a bullet," he remarked.
He leaned in closer, pulling back Leo's jacket a little. In the inner pocket of his blazer, a gold watch hung, split clean in two. As he pulled it out, Javier felt something hard in the middle.
He examined the shattered back of the watch case.
"What the hell is this?" he muttered. "What kind of lunatic puts a reinforced steel plate inside a gold watch?"
He slipped the small plate out, intrigued.
Then, with casual ease, he smacked Leo twice across the face.
"Hey, hey… You with us, kid? Come on, wake up."
Leo groaned, blinking slowly. The bullet hadn't gone through, but the impact and the fall had at least cracked a rib. Every breath felt like it was tearing him open.
"Where'd you get this?" Javier asked, showing him the broken watch.
"I… stole it," Leo managed, voice tight.
"From who?"
A crooked smile pulled at Leo's lips.
"Your mom…"
Don Javier rolled his eyes for a second, then drove a sharp punch straight into his face.
"Fuck…" Leo hissed as his nose started gushing blood.
"Good, you're awake?" Javier said. "Second question: where did you get this?"
This time he showed him the small platinum plate, the one with a name engraved on it: Andrea.
Leo's gaze locked on the piece immediately.
He tried to reach for it, but Javier's fist crashed into his face a second time.
"Argh! It's my mother's, damn it!" Leo spat, clutching his broken nose.
"Where is your mother?" Javier asked, his tone gone cold.
"I don't know… She abandoned me," Leo panted.
Silence hung for a beat.
Don Javier sighed.
"So that's how you ended up getting picked up by one of my whores, I'm guessing," he grumbled.
He straightened, smoothed his immaculate suit, and pinched the bridge of his nose as if fighting off a headache.
Then he exhaled, almost amused.
"Well… congratulations, Leo. You just earned yourself a second life."
Leo, one bloody hand still pressed to his face, raised the other to flip him off.
A faint, crooked smile tugged at Javier's mouth, somewhere between annoyance and misplaced pride.
"You really do have it in your blood, huh…"
Without warning, he kicked Leo hard in the temple.
Leo collapsed instantly, slipping back into darkness.
After he recovered from his injuries, Don Javier brought Leo to a smoky room lit by tired neon signs.
In the center stood a chain‑link cage. Inside, underground MMA fights raged without rules, under the screams of a packed crowd.
Surrounded by bodyguards, Leo didn't try anything stupid.
He watched in silence as a man crumpled to the floor, jaw shattered, while another roared his victory, pounding the mat with his fist.
"Listen carefully," Don Javier said calmly, leaning toward him. "If you survive more than a year in there, then I'll consider what place I'll give you in the organization. Deal?"
Leo stared at him.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Not really," Javier replied with a playful wink.
A few minutes later, they left him in the cage, facing a nearly two‑meter‑tall brute.
Leo was sixteen, already 1.75 meters, wiry, but far from impressive next to him.
A guard leaned toward Javier.
"You sure about this, boss?"
"Life lesson," Javier laughed. "I'm not expecting miracles."
The two‑meter man looked Leo up and down with something like awkward pity. He tightened his gloves, rolled his shoulders. Leo did the same, never breaking eye contact.
He hadn't grown up in a fight school or a fancy gym.
He'd grown up taken in by Maria, a discreet, devout woman in a rotten neighborhood, doing her best with almost nothing.
Later, Maria had taken in a mysterious child with silver hair and bright blue eyes. A child of the Zero Program, with no name and no past, an anomaly the world wanted to erase.
To Leo, she was something else entirely: his little sister.
He'd built with that strange girl a deep, unshakable sibling bond.
She was his family.
In the cage, the two men raised their guards, waiting for the signal.
The bell rang. The crowd roared.
Facing the dangers they'd gone through together, Leo had understood early: be strong, or die. So he'd trained hard, every day, on empty lots, in parking garages, in rundown gyms. His sister had understood what he was trying to do from day one. She trained with him.
And very quickly, he'd realized one thing: he never won.
Out of thousands of sessions, thousands of exchanges, he had not won a single fight against her.
His sister was nothing human.
Every time he thought he could touch her, she wasn't there anymore. Every time he was sure he'd found an opening, she'd crush him into the ground without effort.
In his mind, that meant only one thing: he was bad.
Very bad.
The bell had barely stopped ringing when the giant in the cage charged.
Leo didn't move. He watched him come, hands up, body loose.
One step, two steps, a massive right hand.
Leo slipped half a step to the side.
His fist shot out almost on its own—short, precise, straight down the line.
The sound of the body hitting the floor echoed through the whole room.
"Already? That was quick…" Don Javier said, genuinely surprised.
The giant lay sprawled on the ground, eyes rolled back, without even knowing what had happened.
After those years of training where Leo was convinced he sucked, someone had finally proved him wrong.
Michael Darwin, a former MMA legend, undefeated until his fight with Jon Jones—a fight that ended his career—had crossed his path.
After training him, Darwin had decided he'd never seen anything like it.
For a man to reach that level, he had to be fighting a monster every single day.
Leo was the only one he ever called, without a hint of irony, "my student."
In the hotel's fight room, the bettors stared at each other, speechless.
Don Javier, though, had his eyes glued to the kid.
Leo was standing.
The giant was out cold on the floor.
Leo lifted his chin toward Don Javier, a faint smile at the corner of his lips, breathing hard but completely clear‑headed.
"Didn't see that one coming, did you," he said calmly.
The guards traded glances.
Don Javier let out a small, incredulous laugh, somewhere between threat and pride.
What followed would have been a death sentence for anyone else.
For Leo, it was just a training ground.
For one year, then two, then three, he survived the underground fights without trouble.
The matches were streamed widely across the dark web: no rules, no referee, sometimes no way out but death.
The surprising thing wasn't that he won.
It was that he kept winning without killing.
Where others finished their opponents to please the crowd, Leo always pulled back at the last second. He snapped arms, cracked ribs, knocked men out for weeks… but he stuck to a code no one had asked of him: no killing blows.
At first, the mobsters laughed.
"Who's this boy scout?"
"He hasn't figured out where he is, or what?"
Months later, those same voices had changed tune.
"He could've finished him right there."
"He never does. And he still wins…"
By sheer persistence, Leo earned their respect.
Not the respect given to the cruelest, but the one reserved for those who stay standing without bending, even among monsters.
His relationship with Don Javier remained explosive.
The boss kept the truth from him, hid that he was his father, preferring to provoke him, dare him, push him to dethrone him rather than call him "son."
"You want my spot? Then take it," he would say sometimes with a crooked smile, glass in hand.
Leo, for his part, climbed the ladder in his own way.
More fights, more missions, more responsibility. Always the same rule: no unnecessary blood. And in the shadows, a gaze that never really left him.
Don Javier watched everything.
Every victory.
Every refusal to kill.
Every time the kid risked his life to shield a stranger in the middle of a firefight.
He never said a word.
He complained, he cursed, he hit him sometimes.
But deep down, he hid a fierce, almost painful pride.
Four years passed.
The sixteen‑year‑old boy who had nearly died at the edge of a pool was gone.
In his place stood a twenty‑year‑old man, 1.93 meters tall, wide‑shouldered, dreadlocks falling over a scarred back, suit tailored to his frame.
People no longer whispered "the Hero" in the halls to mock him.
They said it with a touch of respect… and a hint of fear.
And in the hotel office, facing the window, Don Javier coughed, a smile tugging at his lips.
"Well, well… looks like it's almost time for the succession…"
Behind him, the tall shadow did not move.
"…Still not much of a talker, huh, Leo."
To be continued.