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Making my way through the underground arena of bloodthirsty onlookers that reek of desperation and self-indulgence. I’m surrounded by those who are screaming at the fighters in the cage to move this way or that in hopes to win big on whatever fighter they’ve bet on and it has my blood pumping. The smell of blood ignites an insatiable thirst in me and I’m living for it.
I pull SB with me to the front of the massive crowd by the time the current fight ends in a TKO, only to look up and spot exactly who I came to find. Instead of warming up like anyone else would do before a big fight, he stands with his back to the crowd, his hoodie pulled up, eyes closed as he bobs his head to a song none of us can hear. Meanwhile his opponent, a literal giant, is shadow boxing in the cage directly in front of me. He must feel me looking at him though because his blue eyes open and meet mine in an instant, getting heated the very moment he realizes I’m here.
Turning my attention away from him, I decide to deal with his opponent. Hopping up and over the cage, I call out to him, “hey big boy. Stand down. I’m fighting now instead. You weren’t going to win anyway,” I shrug a nonchalant shoulder as I come to a stop in front of the colossal dude. “If it helps, you can have my winnings. Trust me, you’ll want to take this opportunity and run.”
“The fu—” muscle man starts but gets cut off by my favorite psychopath. Noah’s stepped in between me and the ogre and his very presence has me shivering in violent anticipation. Turning to face him, I breathe in his fierceness and his fury—living for it.
“Go awayAlessandra. You aren’t welcome here.” The angry voice reaches my ears and I can feel the veiled threat underlying the simmering rage in his tone. I’m thriving on it. I know he’s reigning in his unhinged-ness, barely holding onto his sanity. I can see it in his eyes as he tries as fails to stay calm.
“Nah, I like my idea better. I get to fight your punk assandsend a message to the owner of this place all at once just by showing up here tonight. How could it not be a win for me?” I smile in a predatory way, letting some of my crazy match the intensity of his. “Your bitchy ass girlfriend tried to threaten me yesterday because of the bullshit you spewed when you ran your mouth, so I thought I’d come and deal with the source directly. If you want to keep Princess Peach breathing, you’ll keep a better leash on her. In the meantime, you and I can work out our shit right the fuck now.”
“No,” he spits, unwilling to comply with my demands of us dealing with shit that needs dealt with. The stubborn asshole needs to learn to deal with his problems instead of beating the shit out of these pathetic fucks that stand no chance against him.
“Why are you here alone? The guys not supportive of your…work? That can’t be it. We all know that homicide is your love song, Noah, and no one loves you more than Matteo and Cohen. Isn’t that right? Ride or die. Just the three of you and no one else,” I state derisively.
“Why are you really here? Why do you keep pushing us so fucking hard? Leave. Us. Alone. You clearly don’t need me or the guys. You’ve made that abundantly apparent time and time again and yet you still show up here and pull stunts like this, unable to let us move on with our lives. What’s the point? You look like you’re doing just fine to me,” he says, redirecting the conversation. It pisses me off because it works and I get defensive, reacting without thinking.
“What’s my alternative? I hadn’t realized there was an alternative option to being ‘fine’, as you so stupidly stated. As if you know anything about how I truly feel. You left and I didn’t get a choice or a chance to explain. So, yeah, it was business as usual for me. Dust myself off and make shit happen. That’s what I’ve been conditioned to do my whole god-damn life. I get knocked down and I get up stronger. I do it all alone. I can admit that I’ve fucked up, but so the fuck did you! Ihaveto get up and be strong or I’ll cave to the demons that are itching to pull me into the darkness on the regular. If I weren’t this way, I’d be dead. I have to actively choose to find the light every day and it’s the hardest thing to do in the world sometimes, because my biggest obstacle will always be me. I chose to fight and it led me here, so let’s do this. Let’s fight!” I yell, ripping my shirt over my head and tossing it to my best friend, noting that Ren has her protected already with a gleam of violence in his eyes.
“I said no, and I fucking meant it, Feisty. I’m not going to do this with you. This clingy bullshit is beneath you. Go live the life you were meant to live and leave us in the dark. You know, that place you fight so hard to stay out of—it’s where we belong.” He turns to walk away from me so I grab his hood and pull as hard as I can, knowing he only stumbles back because he lets me gain the upper hand. His reflexes have always been on point and aside from the first time I caught him off guard, he’s been a hard one to get the jump on.
Now that he’s back in the same space as me, I come unglued, flipping him back around so I can get a good swing to his jaw and he lets me. He fuckinglets meand it only makes me more mad. I’m fighting stupid as I attack with a series of punching combinations. I’m acting reckless, fighting emotionally instead of intelligently, or even instinctually. I may as well be crying for all of the feeling bleeding out of me and onto the mats as I wail on one of the men my heart craves more than anything. I’m sure I look like a little bitch right now for letting my emotions rule me instead of keeping a clear head. I’m screaming on the inside, sobbing internally as I punish myself with internal ramblings as he blocks and evades all my attacks.
Why don’t you love me? Why did you leave me? Why can’t I let you fucking go…
Pushing him down on the ground, I pounce on him. “Fight me! Fight back!” I scream. “You act like you hate me, show me your hate!” I cry furiously. “You act like you wish I’d stayed dead, knock me the fuck out. Keep me down. Prove to me what you’ve been trying to prove to the world since I came home. Make me believe it. No—makeyourselfbelieve it. That’s who you’re constantly trying to convince, right Pretty Boy?” I’m speaking so low now, straddling his abs and bent into his face so only he can hear me.
His face drops from a neutral expression into the saddest look I’ve ever seen etched onto his beautiful face, when his gaze locks with mine as he taps the mat to indicate the end to the fight. I sit up, though I’m still sitting on top of him, unable to make myself move because I’ve missed the contact with him despite hating his guts. I’m breathing so hard that I’m practically panting. My skin is covered in a sheen of sweat and I feel like I’ve gone round for round with him even though we only fought for a few minutes if you can even call it a fight.
The crowd is watching us in a stunned sort of manner, the jeers and taunts have quieted down since I first walked in here. Noah picks me up as he stands and tosses me over his shoulder. When I look to Ren to tell him to stand down, he’s not even bothered like I expected him to be. In fact, the asshole smiles and blows me a kiss and shouts, “I’ll see you back at the hotel,mi amore.” Then he turns SB around and pushes her back through the crowd to leave.
The bookie comes over and mumbles his congratulations on the win as he hands me a wad of cash, which I toss to the guy Noah was originally meant to fight. The one who’s now standing off to the sidelines looking stunned. These guys don’t run underground circuits because they love it most of the time. Chances are, he really needed that money if he was willing to fight Mr. Jekyll and Hyde over here. He looks at me in shock as I get carried out of the arena over the shoulder of one of the most lethal men I’ve ever known.
Twelve
Noah
My fingers clench on my steering wheel as I think about how this has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. My dick is hard and there’s no blood rushing to the right head. I’m making what could be a terrible life choice. The guys are going to lose their shit when they find out that I’ve got our girl with me. I’m putting her at risk. I’m being a selfish piece of shit and a big part of me doesn’t even care. The part of me that lives for the chaos and craves the back and forth of the psychosis that lives in my mind is riding a major high right now. The other side of me is begging me to think about my woman’s safety, but it’s the losing argument at the moment.
We’re supposed to be keeping our distance for a reason, I get that. I just don’t want to anymore. I won’t keep wearing a mask of hate or indifference, parading around with these fake ass bitches on my arm that mean less than nothing to me. Only to bleed out my self-loathing by killing these men in underground fights. Why should I have to? The simple answer is that I shouldn’t. Most of them more than deserve the punishments my fists dole out each week. In fact, a lot of them even give me some useful information, but some of them are there purely for survival purposes or because they’re forced into the underground circuit as a proxy for the depraved culture that encompasses that place. One round in the ring with me means they likely won’t make it out of there in one piece, or even alive.
My feisty girl wasn’t wrong.Homicide is my love song. Every drop of blood I spill places a flimsy, inadequate bandage over the cuts and breaks in my heart. It offers solace to the most broken parts of who I am, if only for a little while. It’s nothing compared to the touch of the woman beside me though. She’s everything I need in this life to bring peace.
I refuse to hold back anymore and pretend that I hate the woman that owns me in every way possible. We should’ve been fightingwithher all along, not against her. Because as it stands, we’re doing the same thing to her that we’ve penalized her for over and over again since she woke up in an empty hospital room with only one person left to count on. Matteo has kept us in the loop and I know Cohen is busting his ass to try and figure out how to right all of the wrongs we’re living through. Just having our girl back in California puts her at risk. Reconnecting with her is a death sentence.
From what we’ve gathered based on my weekly fight nights, Cohen’s backdoor computer research, and Matteo maintaining a strained if not volatile relationship with his dad, she’s got a price on her head worth millions right now, but only if she’s with us three. There’s something bigger going on for sure, because there’s no reason to keep us all apart other than they don’t want our combined forces coming for the new big bad in our life anymore, aka, Lorenzo DeLuca. I just wish we knew what he was up to and how he amassed so much power without anyone noticing. We’re missing something and it’ll come to light sooner or later, but I’m done hiding how I feel. We’re all stronger together so we should stick together as one unit. No more playing defense to an unknown game. It’s time to take control and make shit right again.
Pulling into the underground parking lot for the condos my family owns, I look over to the woman sitting next to me and take note of her even breaths causing her chest to rise and fall. The calm serenity that she exudes, as if I’m not a dangerous man—a criminal—that’s made no secret of his killing tendencies. Instead, she welcomed them and flirts with the danger that is me. She’s loved me in spite of my madness, or maybe because of it.
I can’t help but think back to the moment that her chest no longer moved because her beautiful lips no longer drew in air. The immediate pale complexion that came about with loss of blood as her eyes drifted close and she was lost to another place. If I weren’t such a selfish bastard, I’d have wished for her to find peace wherever she’d gone, but I’m not a good man, instead hoping she’d fight the devil himself to come back to us. Only, we did her dirty and weren’t there by the time she finally opened those big blue eyes of hers.
“Where are we?” she questions, finally breaking the sound of silence that filled the car from the club to here. It wasn’t uncomfortable or awkward like it should’ve been. She clearly got what she wanted and has been happy to wait me out.
“The guys and I have a condo here that we use when we have to come down this way for business. My family owns the building.”
“Ha, is that what you call these fights?Business? Or are you talking about the real down and dirty shit? I heard you’ve all been working out some contracts for the head DeLuca these days. Is that what you’ve stooped to? Blood money for people’s skin, drugs, and death? Why were you at that specific underground ring tonight? It didn’t take much to figure out who owns it and what the real deal is. The gambling I could take, but some of those bets weren’t cash. How many women were traded tonight Noah? How many lives were deemed unworthy enough to save? If this is who you want to be, I promise you, you’ll come up empty handed because I’ll destroy every single one of his businesses and when I finally get my hands on him, I’ll cut his throat and laugh while watching him bleed out. You’ll all be left with nothing.”
“You’ve got a pretty low opinion of me these days don’t you?”
