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My heart was tearing in two. I was losing. Not just this fight, not just this training session, but I was losing the man who had been my mother, my father and friend. I looked up at him, and his eyes were black and empty. There was no love for me there—not as a father, or a coach. Not even as a friend.
“Get up.” He ordered, pacing back and forth in front of me like a lion in a cage.
On shaky legs, I stood.
“Get your fucking gloves up.” He emphasized every single word, low, menacing. It was venomous. “For fuck’s sake, defend yourself, or you’ll end up just like your father.”
His bare knuckles shot out again, and I barely saw it through my blurred tears. I just felt it connect to my temple, causing me to tilt and sway, losing my feet. He swept them from under me, and I fell to the ground with a thud.
“That’s enough.” Alastair’s flat baritone halted me in my tracks. “You’ve had her here since the crack of dawn, and you’ve done nothing but berate her for hours. It’s—“
“–Fuck off!” Brett interrupted him. “Don’t tell me how to work, my fighter.”
Alastair let out a feral growl and climbed between the ropes into the ring. “She’s your daughter, not your fighter.”
“Alastair, it’s fine…” I whispered.
Maybe Alastair didn’t understand what Brett was training me to become. What I was failing to live up to. He didn’t know that Brett wasn’t the one in the wrong here. I was. I was the problem.
“The fuck it is.” He snarled, stepping between me and Brett.
Alastair’s fists came up, his body poised to protect me as I lay on the ground. My heart leapt at my throat at his protectiveness.
“Is that how it is?” Brett’s gaze shot between me and Alastair, and I was sure he knew everything.
He knew what we did in the woods and in dark corners. That I had let myself be humiliated and begged for more. Was that the weakness he saw in me? Brett knew my shame, and now he was through with me? I had hoped he meant it when he asked me to call him ‘Dad.’ Now, he was going to take that from me.
The two of them stood toe to toe, Alastair with his hands at his sides, balled into fists and Brett with his bent, near his ribs.
I started to get up on shaking legs and neither of them acknowledged me, but I felt their awareness of it. They were enemies and they wouldn’t turn their back on each other.
“Get out of the ring, Jubilee.” Brett ordered. Then that cruel, sardonic smile overtook his lips. “Lover boy, and I have a score to settle.”
It was a smile I had only seen when he tortured someone. With desperation, I started to step to Alastair, to beg him to stop. He didn’t know Brett like I did. He doesn’t know what a deadly man he could be.
“Go, sweetheart,” Alastair said, his voice soft and soothing. His hands reached out, as if ready to catch me. “Drink some water, get some rest.”
Something significant was about to happen, and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter 32
Alastair
Brett,theasshole,hadthe decency to wait until she stepped out of the ring before coming toe-to-toe with me. He was so close, I could have sneezed and head-butted him. I almost expected to smell alcohol on his breath. What else would compel him to act this way? To beat up on the only person he seemed to care about?
Jesus, I couldn’t bear to look at her. Rose had a black eye. Her ribs were bruised, her knuckles were bleeding. She limped when she walked, holding her side. Not to mention whatever might be going on through her head.
He hadn’t even fought her toe-to-toe. My unhealthy obsession with the woman led me to watch her all day. He had made her run laps, push a sled, jog down a rocky beach with a weight dragging behind her, and forced her to do pull ups and lift weights until her body was shaking. And only then did he let her in the ring.
Her father had just beaten her within an inch of her life, and he needed to pay.
Rage was building up inside me.
“Let’s go, old man.” I growled, low, so that Rose couldn’t hear.
“A little bare knuckle boxing?” Brett challenged. “Or are you too much of a proper little pussy to do something like that?”
I pulled my shirt off over my head and threw it out of the ring. I was going to rearrange his face.
