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“You about ready?”
The crowd was antsy. Chants and cheers sounded from the room outside. “Hawthorne! Hawthorne!” This was my crowd. I hadn’t bought them or paid for them or bribed them through the doors. I’d won them like every other fight I’d fought in this building.
I nodded. I was ready, except she wasn’t here. “Give it a couple more minutes, then start the music.”
Oh, yeah. This was a whole production. Ivarrson would be introduced to a rousing round of “Boos,” then there would be the sound of an explosion and my music—music Asher decided I needed—would vibrate through the speakers.
We waited, and I checked the door twice more like an old woman checking her bingo card, then I nodded to Ash, walked out behind him to AC/DC, waited for him to climb the stairs to the ring, then open the door to the cage. I leapt onto the apron behind him and vaulted over the ropes inside.
To get Ivarrson to sign, Ash had promised him a purse the size of a weekend’s income. Tonight, he was going to earn his money. He stared at me, hard with eyes darkened by fury. I’d seen such anger before. Spewed it, too. But this was different. Seemed personal, which made Ivarrson dangerous, whether I was reading something into it that wasn’t there or not. The threat, real or imagined, would change the way I fought. As would Riley’s absence.
I couldn’t worry about Riley now. I had to get my head in the game, but her empty seat was like a beacon and for a second, I couldn’t stop looking. For a second, scenarios that had no place here ran through my head. Riley gone. Riley lying in a ditch. Riley with another man. I put Ivarrson’s face on that man and came out swinging.
Ivarrson sidestepped a couple quick blows, and one barely grazed his shoulder. He smiled around his mouthpiece, spit it onto the mat, then pushed me into the ropes with one of his ape arms.
I took a couple hard blows to the face, enough to see a star or two, then came out swinging. I kicked him into the ropes, pounded my fists into him, smashed his knee, took a couple body shots, but nothing put this son of a bitch down.
We went punch for punch then. A good old-fashioned street brawl in the middle of a cage before he caught me in the jaw, solid, hard, and my head whipped around. The momentum forced me to the mat. I couldn’t move. He dragged me up by the hair so I was on my knees, then he used his to take out my windpipe, and another to my nose.
My face exploded in pain, and I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do more than fall face-first onto the mat. The bell rang and Ivarrson leaned down and rolled me over by the shoulder. “This is the beginning. The reign of Roman Hawthorne is over.”
Not that I had a fucking idea what he meant, but the threat wasn’t implied. It was a full-on statement of what he perceived as fact. And not a fucking thing I could do about it right now but watch Asher come into the ring over Ivarrson’s shoulder. His words took a second to register as he yanked Ivarrson away from me. “Get the fuck out of here.”
For his trouble, Asher took a hit and landed on the mat beside me.
Bjorn laughed and stepped out of the ring. As I sat up, I watched him head down the hallway and straight out the back, to the steps that would take him to the parking lot behind the club.
It would’ve been nice to stay on the mat, sleep until the pain wore away, but my people were watching. The fans and worshippers, the hangers on. They were all here and how I stood, how I got to my feet mattered. I’d lost, but that didn’t mean I was a loser. Staying down wasn’t an option.
Plus, Riley still hadn’t shown. And that didn’t make sense to me. She loved fight night. Didn’t ever miss. And that meant something.
I pulled Asher up. He was bleary but awake, staggered but walked beside me to the locker room. We ignored the crowd, the bookies, the groupies and pushed past. “Go.” I shoved him inside and slammed the door to lock us safely inside.
“Where the fuck is she?” It was the only question I needed answered, the only one I cared about.
Asher, not quite himself yet, shrugged. He didn’t give a fuck and that had to change. I hauled him up by the front of his shirt, noticed the haze in his eyes and let go. Hecouldn’tgive a fuck right now. Wasn’t physically capable.
I didn’t bother with a shower because I didn’t have time and dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt with a rough-edged cross painted over the left pec. It wasn’t my style, but I didn’t care about much more than finding Riley then. She wasn’t someone who couldn’t handle herself, but there were plenty of those out there. Plenty who could handle themselves better. It would come for her with time, but right now, time wasn’t on our side.
She didn’t answer a text. I called her number. Got her voicemail. Hung up. Voicemail meant shit.
I drove for an hour. Checked her place. Checked mine. Checked everywhere I could think until it occurred to me. Riley disappearing was a message to me, to the Society. I turned my car toward the university.
By the time I pulled in front of the Scorpio building, my body was a live wire, energy burning through every cell, the pain from the fight forgotten.
Light shone through the basement window. Riley. I could feel her. She wasn’t the kind of girl who would act on her own. Not yet, anyway. She wasn’t sure enough of herself, of the Society. She wasn’t sure of anything more than her skill and what she could and was willing to do.
The danger was real, and I opened the glovebox to push the button that raised the panel in the floorboard on the passenger side. Inside sat the gun and magazine beside it in a box lined with titanium that to anyone would look like a part of the undercarriage.
I slid the gun out, shoved in the magazine and yanked back the slide so the shell pushed into the chamber. Only when the gun was locked and loaded, the safety no longer safe, did I open the door and climb out.
The shadows provided cover as I walked to the back door of the building. Before I could reach out, pain lanced through my skull and my knees buckled. Darkness came for me, and I was powerless to deny her.
Riley
Not for the first time, I was strapped to the floor of the Scorpio building. Or maybe it was the first time, and I took the wrong vial, the last weeks nothing more than a dream. I would’ve believed it had it not been for Detective Katt Hall crouched beside me, smacked me in the face, twisting my chin toward her when it snapped to the side.
I looked up at her—literally straight up her nostril. “What do you want from me?”
