Shane Jones stood at his woodworking bench, his hands steady as he shaped a cherrywood box, a birthday gift for his daughter, Marcy. The garage smelled of sawdust and linseed oil, familiar, grounding scents after fifteen years of teaching young Marines how to break bones and end threats. At forty-eight, his beard showed more gray than brown, and his frame carried an extra thirty pounds that a soft civilian life had added. But his hands never forgot. They remembered every pressure point, every joint lock, every devastating strike he had drilled into thousands of warriors.
“Hey, sweetheart. Come see this.” Shane held up the box, its dovetail joints perfect. “What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful.” She stepped closer, and Shane noticed the careful way she moved, favoring her left side. His instructor instincts kicked in, the same senses that had kept him alive in Fallujah and Helmand Province during his Force Recon days, long before he became the Marine Corps’s top hand-to-hand combat instructor at Quantico.
“How’s Dustin treating you?” he asked, his tone casual, but his eyes tracked every micro-expression, every subtle flinch.
“He’s good. Really good.” The pause was half a second too long. “Actually, we’re training together now. He’s teaching me some boxing basics.”
Shane’s jaw tightened. Dustin Freeman, twenty-six, a cocky MMA fighter who trained at some strip-mall gym called Titan’s Forge. They’d been dating for four months, and Shane had disliked him from the first handshake—too much grip, too much eye contact, the kind of insecure dominance display that screamed overcompensation.
“Marcy,” Shane set down his tools, his voice gentle but firm. “If anything is wrong…”
“Nothing’s wrong, Dad. I’m not a kid anymore.” She kissed his cheek and retreated before he could push further. “Mom needs help with dinner.”
That evening, Shane sat across from his wife, Lisa, at the dinner table, Marcy’s empty chair a silent accusation between them. Lisa, a trauma nurse at County General, had the same worried crease between her eyebrows that he felt forming on his own forehead.
“She’s covering bruises,” Lisa said quietly, her voice barely a whisper. “I saw them when I stopped by her apartment yesterday. Finger marks on her upper arm.”
