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I landed a nice uppercut to the guy’s chin, making him stumble two steps back. Taking advantage of the way the inside of his head rattled right now, I advanced on him, locked a powerful hook to his cheek, and finished with a side kick to his stomach.
He went down with a groan.
The crowd roared and shook the wire cage fence.
The referee started counting. “Ten, nine, eight …” he went on, but the guy didn’t get up. The referee grabbed my arm and raised it high. “And the winner is Arwen!”
I almost winced at the fake name. I had been using it for the last three months, and I still hadn’t gotten used to it. The crowd's screams echoed through the underground fight club, hurting a little.
Not liking the attention, I pulled my arm down and marched out of the cage. The public advanced on me, but when I glanced at them with a frown, bared teeth, and my bloody fist raised, they let me pass.
I weaved through the cheering humans, disappearing through a thick metal door and into a large room with a big glass wall. Mr. Green sat in a leather chair, holding a glass of whiskey. Two of his goons stood behind him while he watched the crowd through the one-way glass.
He smiled at me.
Mr. Green was a short man with a generous belly and receding hair line. He wore fancy suits and acted as if he wiped his ass with money. I was sure Green wasn’t his last name, but a moniker he had adopted when he entered this life. This was only one of the handful of illegal cage fighting clubs he owned in Houston, and I had heard he had a few more in Dallas.
I didn’t smile back.
“Dear Arwen.” Mr. Green raised his glass at me. “Another win. Well done.”
“Thanks.” I extended my hand to him. “I want my money.”
His smile got a millimeter smaller. “Why the rush? You’re doing well. You should do another fight tonight.”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t the deal. I told you I would do one fight a week, that was it.”
And it was already too much. My body hurt all over and I needed rest ASAP.
Mr. Green tsked. “My offer still stands. Become my official fighter, come fight for me every night. You’ll make a lot of money.” His smile was gone now. “You need money, don’t you?”
I jerked my hand out some more. “That’s why you’ll pay me for the fight right now.”
“So impatient.” He pulled an envelope from inside his jacket and lifted it up. One of his goons grabbed it, walked over to me, and slapped it into my open hand. I glanced inside the envelope to make sure it was all accounted for. “I’m a man of my word, Arwen. It’s all in there.”
A man of my word, my foot.
When I first came to the fight club, he had wanted to hire me to waltz around the cage between fights, wearing a bikini that barely covered anything and shaking my ass as if I was looking for some.
I glanced at the glass and could see three young women doing exactly that. Word was he pushed himself on all of them.
I wanted to break his neck.
He left me alone, though, once I proved I could fight.
“I’ll see you in a week,” I muttered, unhappy about that prospect.
I walked to the only other door in the room, which led to a short hallway. Two doors were always locked, but the other led to the lockers and restrooms.
I slipped inside the locker room, grabbed my duffel bag, changed my dirty tank top for a thin sweater, my leggings for black jeans, my sneakers for my boots, put on my hooded black leather jacket, untied my long, silver-blond hair, and stuffed the money in the bag. After a quick stop by the restroom, where I cleaned my face and made sure I didn’t have any blood on my clothes, I continued down the hallway to the last door: the back alley.
As I was exiting, three men walked in—I had fought against two of them, and I knew I was going to fight against the third one next week. I had won all of the fights so far and didn’t expect to lose anytime soon.
That, though, didn’t buy me any friends. Not that I wanted any.
The three men glared at me. One of them, Jonas, even stood in my path for three seconds.
