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“ I punched someone!” Marcus crowed as he met Felix on the steps of the gymnasium. “Look.” He held out his knuckles, reddened and bruised.

Felix inspected his hand, then looked over the rest of him. There didn’t seem to be any significant damage—no other bruises or bloody wounds. “What happened?”

For the last several weeks, Felix had been meeting Marcus at the gymnasium to train.

The boy had been steadily improving in his boxing technique, and Felix had been making him run laps and lift weights as well.

It was early days, but Felix could see the beginnings of muscle filling out Marcus’s lanky frame.

In the back of his mind, he knew it was wrong to meet with Marcus like this, without Lucretia’s knowledge, but he told himself he was going to be at the gymnasium anyways. If Marcus happened to show up at the same time, well, that was merely a coincidence.

“Two boys tried to steal my coin purse after school. I pretended to give it to them”—Marcus mimed handing over a purse with his left hand—“and then punched one of them in the nose!” He dealt a quick jab with his right hand. “They were so surprised they didn’t even run after me.”

”Well done. Perhaps it’s time we try some sparring.

” There was a peculiar satisfaction in watching Marcus improve, and Felix realized the last time he’d felt this way was while building his shipping business years ago.

He had used an initial loan from his mother to purchase a stake in a merchant ship.

When the ship completed its journey and sold its cargo, he’d been paid back with significant interest, which he’d used to acquire a ship.

Sail to Greece, stock it with cargo, return to Rome, sell for a profit, invest in more expensive cargo, repeat until he could buy another ship.

And then another, and another…He might not wear the imperial purple, but he was building an empire of his own.

He had never expected that teaching Marcus how to box would elicit similar feelings, but Marcus’s progression from a hapless, scrawny adolescent to someone who could land a solid punch lit a fire of pride inside him.

Like the day he’d looked out over Ostia harbor and noticed that four out of the five ships docked there were his own.

The fifth, of course, had been Lucretia’s.

“I get to punch you?” Marcus asked, distracting Felix from his thoughts. “What if I hurt you?”

Felix snorted. “I think I’m more in danger of stubbing my toe on the gymnasium steps.”

Marcus scowled, but followed him into the gymnasium.

They trained for about an hour, until Felix could tell Marcus was growing frustrated by his inability to land a punch on Felix. Then, they washed off and headed home. Marcus’s house was in the same direction as Felix’s, so they walked together, cutting through a slanting alley for a shortcut.

The alley was so narrow that if Felix stretched his arms out, his fingertips would brush both sides. It reminded him of the fight he’d interrupted when he first met Marcus, the bullies who had cornered him in an alley just like this one.

“Stop a second,” Felix said. “This could be useful.” He gestured to the enclosed space. “A bully is never going to fight you out in the open. And fighting in such a restricted space has its own challenges as well as benefits.”

Marcus glanced around. “Oh?”

“A wall can be a weapon,” Felix explained. “If you can use someone’s own momentum to shove them into it, that could incapacitate them as easily as any punch.”

He began to demonstrate, and Marcus watched with interest.

Lucretia couldn’t hold back a smile as she walked to the harbor to oversee the arrival of one of her ships.

Dihya and Caeso had straightened out their misunderstanding, and things seemed to be progressing between the two—so much so that Lucretia had noticed Caeso escorting Dihya to their office this morning, as if the two had spent the night together.

So far, Dihya had been private about the details, which Lucretia respected, but all signs pointed to a blossoming relationship.

Lucretia’s enlightened self-interest had also paid off: Caeso kept finding excuses to drop off any unsold loaves or pastries at their office at the end of the day, and he no longer accepted any payment from her when she visited his stall.

She was happy for her friend; Dihya deserved all the joy she could find with Caeso.

Passing the mouth of a crooked passage between two buildings, Lucretia stopped short.

Something caught her eye, a flicker of pale green fabric that was unsettlingly familiar.

She spied two figures further down the alley.

One was taller than the other, and the smaller one wore the pale green tunic that had caught her attention.

She knew that color…knew that fabric. It looked exactly like the fabric she had woven and dyed with her own hands when Marcus had outgrown his last batch of tunics.

She squinted, struggling to make sense of what she saw in the shadows.

When the taller figure aimed a punch at the smaller person’s jaw, Lucretia’s feet carried her toward them at a run before her mind could process what was going on.

When her brain caught up, she reached for the small knife she carried for household tasks. She wrapped her fingers around it, took aim, and let it fly—straight at the center of the attacker’s back.

The man moved to the side, and the knife struck him in the upper arm before clattering to the dirt. The man yelped and clapped a hand to the bleeding wound, turning to see what had assailed him.

Lucretia darted forward, picked up the knife, ready for another strike—but froze as she saw Felix standing before her, Marcus at his back, wide-eyed.

Confusion ripped through her. Was it possible that Felix’s schemes to unseat her had gotten even darker?

Was he trying to kidnap or harm her son in order to force her to hand over her ships?

Her heart pounded, hands unsteady. She thrust out the knife, pointing it directly at Felix’s throat. Felix flattened himself against the alley wall, hands up.

“Lucretia,” he gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“You don’t ask the questions,” she snarled.

“Mother!” Marcus exclaimed. “Stop it!”

She cast a quick glance at Marcus, assessing his condition. She couldn’t see any blood, and he didn’t seem to be injured.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Felix said, still holding his hands up and eying her knife. Blood oozed from the small wound on his arm, darkening the sleeve of his tunic.

“What it looks like,” Lucretia said, striving to keep her voice from shaking, “is that you’re trying to murder my son.”

“I certainly am not!” Felix said, somehow daring to sound outraged.

“Put the knife down!” Marcus shouted. “We were just practicing!”

“Practicing what?” Lucretia demanded, keeping her focus on Felix.

Felix lifted his hands higher, as if that could intensify his surrender. “I have been teaching Marcus how to box.”

Lucretia blinked. “You…what?”

“It’s true!” Marcus said. “I-I heard that Felix was a good boxer, so I asked him to teach me.”

“You’ve never shown an interest in boxing before,” Lucretia said, her mind still struggling to catch up.

Marcus wanted to learn to box? And somehow Felix had ended up teaching him?

Though there was clearly still something she didn’t understand, her immediate terror eased just a bit, as it seemed that Felix wasn’t actually trying to harm Marcus.

“I would have gotten you a real teacher if you had asked.”

“I’ll have you know, I’m an excellent instructor,” Felix said. “Marcus’s skill increases by the day.”

She glared at him and thrust the knife even closer to his throat. “Now is not the time for your arrogance.” She turned to her son. “Marcus, please go home. I wish to speak with Felix in private.”

Marcus frowned. “But—”

“ Go. Home ,” Lucretia hissed. She hated speaking to Marcus in such an imperious manner, but she needed to get to the bottom of this and didn’t want him to see her threatening Felix more than he already had.

Marcus sighed, rolled his eyes, and left, throwing one last glance back at them as he exited the alley.

Lucretia returned her focus to Felix. “How long has this been going on? I will gut you like a fish if you lie to me.” In truth, this knife was much too small for any gutting, but the sentiment still made Felix’s face turn satisfyingly pale.

“I don’t know, a month?” A bead of sweat formed on Felix’s temple. “We meet at the gymnasium a few times a week.”

Her jaw clenched. Marcus had been going behind her back for an entire month. He didn’t necessarily know the depth of her contention with Felix, but he had to know they were competitors.

“How did it start? Did you seek him out?”

“He—” Felix bit back the words. “We met by chance.”

Lucretia had sensed there was something Marcus wasn’t telling her, which was why she wanted to interrogate Felix in private. She stepped closer, pressing the tip of the knife into the hollow at the base of his throat. “Tell me the truth.”

Felix swallowed, the movement pressing his pale skin against the knife.

He hesitated a moment, then something in his expression gave way, and words tumbled out.

“I came upon him being beaten up by a group of boys. I intervened to drive them off before I knew he was your son. The next day, he came to ask me to teach him how to box. So he could defend himself. That’s all it was—Marcus will confirm this story.

I expect he was too embarrassed to say it earlier. ”

Shock made Lucretia’s arm waver, and she had to renew her grip on the knife. “I-I knew he’d been getting into fights…”

“Not of his own instigation,” Felix said. “He’s being targeted by boys who like an easy win.”

“Who are these boys?” she demanded. “Did he give you any names? I will go to their houses—”