Page 25 of Property of Scar

Around him, the crowd surges against the chain-link hard enough to rattle it, screaming for blood like starving animals. Every asshole in this place wants to see somebody lose tonight. They want broken bones and torn flesh so they can walk out feeling bigger than the poor bastard bleeding in the cage.

“Thirty,” Bennett says finally, like he’s already working out how he’s going to make this sit right with his conscience. “On the werewolf.”

“See?” I can hear the grin in Rhett’s voice from twenty feet away. “Even angels love money.”

“This is strictly research…” He pauses, and it says more than anything he could have added. “I’m studying mortal vices.”

“Sure, altar boy.”

Below, the werewolf finds something in himself. Rage, probably. They usually do, when they have been on their back foot long enough. It’s not strategy but survival instinct overriding the pain, the damaged ribs, the blood loss, and the demon didn’t account for it, which is the kind of mistake that costs you everything when it matters.

The shift is immediate.

The crowd feels it first, the sound changing pitch, rising, sharpening, bodies pressing harder into the cage as momentum turns. The demon hesitates, just a fraction, and that’s all it takes.

The werewolf doesn’t give him space to recover. He drives forward, brutal and relentless, forcing the fight into something close and ugly where strength matters more than precision, and this time, it’s the demon on the back foot, reacting instead of dictating.

It doesn’t last long after that.

It never does once the turn happens.

The end comes fast and final, the kind that pulls a roar out of the crowd that feels almost physical in the air as the demon hits the ground and doesn’t get back up.

The cage rattles with it.

Money changes hands.

Rhett makes a noise that could generously be described as satisfaction. Bennett exhales like he’s just lost an argument with himself.

That’s when I move, and come up behind them before either of them registers footsteps, which isn’t difficult because I’ve had five centuries to practice moving without announcing myself, and position myself at Rhett’s left shoulder. He has the kind of cheerful recklessness that has always struck me as deeply inconvenient in a prospect.

“Both of you…” I say, keeping my voice level, “… just got paid in my house.”

I watch both of them go still, as if they have just realized who’s standing behind them.

“Hand it over.”

Rhett turns first. His expression does several things in rapid succession, landing eventually on something that he’s clearly decided counts as outrage. “That’s theft.”

I look at him long enough for the word to collapse under its own weight. “That’s hierarchy.” The noise of the arena presses in around us, the aftermath still rippling through the crowd. “You’re playing in my house, you win in my house, that makes it mine…” I pause, a slow smirk crossing my lips. “Pay up or clean the cages. Choose.”

Rhett grumbles the whole time, and beside him, Bennett says absolutely nothing. Just stands there with the faintest hint of satisfaction tugging at his mouth like losing the bet is exactly what Rhett deserves for gambling in the first place. Rhett shoves the cash at me like he’s already planning revenge for losing it, which is adorable considering he’s absolutely not getting it back.

I pocket the money without a word, turn my attention back to the pit, watch the cleanup start below, and feel nothing.

Five centuries have calibrated my relationship with violence into something purely functional. It happens. It serves a purpose, or it doesn’t. The business is what matters. The cut, the ledger, the territory, the empire that runs beneath this city like a second circulatory system that most of what lives here depends on, whether they know it or not. And messing with some prospects along the way is always entertaining.

I go to walk off when my phone buzzes, so I pull it from my cut pocket without urgency, expecting Coil, expecting Maul, expecting the thousand small operational queries that route through me. Because I am the VP of an MC that runs considerably more than motorcycles through this territory, and the machinery does not slow down for anything.

Unknown number.

I open the text.

Unknown Number: We need to talk. Same bar. Midnight.

- Cali

And then, below it, one word that lands with the weight of something much heavier than four letters should be able to carry.