My Family Wanted a Sacrificial Bride, They Got a Boxing Queen Chapter 08

My Family Wanted a Sacrificial Bride, They Got a Boxing Queen Chapter 08

My phone buzzed like crazy while Magnus and I were drilling low kicks in the octagon.

It was a voice message from Cleo. She was crying, and there was shouting in the background.

“Vesper! Help! That drunk bastard Jett-the one you threw into the champagne tower-he’s got people blocking the campus gate, and they said they’re taking me as collateral… ah!”

My pupils contracted, and I ripped off my gloves.

Magnus’s expression went glacial as he grabbed his jacket.

“I’m driving.”

Five minutes later, Magnus’s black Hummer screeched to a halt in the back alley behind St. Mary’s

University.

I shoved the door open and jumped out.

At the far end of the alley, Jett-the same idiot I’d sent swimming in glass-had Cleo cornered with four tattooed thugs backing him up.

“You think your bitch of a sister can humiliate me and walk away clean? I’ll start by taking it out of

you.”

Jett’s face twisted with venom as he reached for Cleo’s hair.

“Get away from her!”

I roared and lunged forward, but what happened next stopped me cold.

Cleo squeezed her eyes shut and let out a scream that could’ve shattered glass.

“Screw you, you absolute jackass!”

Her petite frame exploded with a ferocity no one saw coming. She snapped her right leg up and executed the first women’s self-defense technique I’d casually shown her in the living room the night before and her foot connected flush with Jett’s groin.

Jett’s face went from flushed purple to ashen white. He couldn’t make a sound. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to his knees, retching uncontrollably.

The four thugs stared in shock. I stared too. This girl had raw talent.

The thugs snapped out of it and started forward, but Magnus had already reached my side.

He didn’t even lift a hand-he just stood there with one hand in his pocket and swept that death glare over them, and pure killing intent sent every last one of them running.

“Vesper… waaah!”

Cleo threw herself into my arms like a terrified rabbit the moment she saw me, smearing tears and snot all over my expensive dry-fit shirt.

She looked up at me through her sniffles, and her eyes held a determination I’d never seen before.

“Vesper, I get it now! Being a lady won’t protect me! These stupid dresses get in the way, and I can’t even run in heels!”

She clenched her pale little fists with absolute conviction.

“I’m done with piano. I want to come to the Thorne basement with you. I want to lift iron and build the kind of muscle that can drop a bull with one punch.”

I looked at her tear-streaked face, absolutely glowing with zeal, and patted her head with genuine approval.

“Alright. We start tomorrow. Full regimen, no discounts.”

And that was how the Hayes family’s carefully constructed world came crashing down

Two weeks later, Reginald and Emmeline stood in their yard, staring at their property in the grip of an existential crisis.

The prized rose garden had been bulldozed and replaced with four-hundred-pound tractor tires.

Every morning at six, their sun-bronzed jock of a daughter was already grinding through weighted

runs.

And Cleo-the delicate, piano-playing fake heiress-was out there too, in a fitted tank top, her skin now tanned and glowing, flipping those massive tires across the garden with a snarl.

“Cleo, you’re a society lady. You need to practice piano…”

Emmeline clutched her chest and called out weakly.

Cleo flipped the tire another rotation, wiped the sweat off her forehead, and flexed her newly defined biceps.

“Mom, don’t interrupt my back day. Magnus said if I finish this hundred-hundred-yard push, he’s taking me to the shooting range next week to train with live rounds.”

Reginald looked from one daughter’s shoulders-broader than his own-to the other, and then at

the crumbling facade of Hayes family dignity.

It was finally sinking in that this household was no longer his to command.