Chapter I – A dark friendship

It was an ordinary Thursday, already past nine at night, when Sánchez entered the gym. The place was almost empty. Only two machines were still running and the distant sound of a dripping shower. Sánchez was forty years old, but he moved with the dangerous ease of someone who has never doubted his right to take up space. He wore branded sportswear, expensive and understated. His hair was short, graying at the temples, his jaw sharp, and his dark eyes didn’t ask permission to strip you bare inside.

Gustavo attended to him like any new client. He asked about goals, previous injuries, availability. Sánchez answered in short, precise sentences, looking at him directly and without any hurry. When Gustavo demonstrated a military press exercise, Sánchez didn’t just copy the movement: he dissected it. He observed the contraction of the deltoids, the way Gustavo controlled his breathing, the tension in his forearms, the slight tremor that appeared when he reached absolute muscle failure.

“You have interesting control,” he said when the set ended, in a low, hoarse voice. “Most trainers just lift weights. You seem to be punishing yourself with every rep. As if pain were the only thing keeping you on your feet.”

Gustavo smiled out of politeness, but something in those words stirred his stomach in a dirty, hot way. They finished the session. Sánchez asked for his number “in case he needed to adjust the routine.” Gustavo gave it to him without thinking too much, although his hands were sweating.

Three days later he received a short message:

Shall we get a drink tonight?

The bar was small, dark, with worn wooden tables and a matte metal bar top. The light was warm and low, almost indecent. Sánchez was already there when Gustavo arrived, with a half-drunk beer in front of him and his gaze fixed on the door. They first talked about training, progressive overload, how the body responds better when a strict and cruel order is imposed on it. Then the conversation drifted, almost without Gustavo realizing it, into dangerous territory.

“Discipline is a form of control,” Sánchez said, turning the glass between his fingers with predatory calm. “But there is another kind of control. The kind that is wrenched out. The kind that is surrendered until there is nothing left. Some people only find peace when someone else decides even when they can breathe.”

Gustavo laughed, uncomfortable, and took too long a sip of his beer.

“I don’t know if that’s for me.”

“You don’t know that yet,” Sánchez corrected without raising his voice. “But you seek it. It shows in the way you endure pain in the gym until you almost pass out. In how you deny yourself rest even when your body screams. You are training your body to be destroyed. You just need someone who knows how to do it well.”

That night they ended up talking until past one in the morning. When they parted, Sánchez placed a hand on his ...