“Yeah.”
“You staying another night?”
I drag a hand down my face, jaw tight. “Probably. Why?”
“I got wind of something. Figured it might interest you. Shake some of that haunted house energy off.”
I lean my elbows on the railing, let the heat of the metal ground me. “Keep talking.”
“There’s a fight. Underground circuit. Tonight.”
That gets my attention. “Yeah?”
“Not your usual backyard meathead match. This is organized. Clean. High-stakes. Invite-only. Word is, it’s been running silent in Savannah for a while. You want in?”
I exhale through my nose, slow. “You know I don’t throw hands just to bleed anymore.”
“Yeah,” he says, and there’s no judgment in it. Just familiarity. “But I also know when your silence gets too loud, you start chewing on it with a jaw full of gunpowder. Sometimes it helps to hit something that won’t cry afterward.”
My knuckles twitch. He’s not wrong. The burn under my skin has teeth tonight. The kind sharpened by grief and adrenaline.
“But that’s not the part that made me call you,” he adds. “It’s the guy who runs it.” I go still. “Heard of him a few times,” Coach Tompkins continues. “No name. No face. Keeps to the shadows. But get this, he’s got women working the event. Not just as eye candy. They run shit. Security. Coordination. All of it.”
My heart gives one slow, heavy thud.
Coach Tompkins doesn’t stop. “Some of ’em came outta bad scenes. Stuff no one wants to admit happens. But word is, he pulled ’em in. Gave ’em a place. Power.”
Something shifts in my chest. A door creaking open in the dark. Or a ghost brushing too close.
“You think he’s tied to the kind of people we’re after?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not pretending to know what you’re walking into down there. But guys this twisted? Who build kingdoms under the floorboards and keep the lights low? They don’t do it for fun. They do it because there’s something they’re protecting. Or hiding.”
I stare down at the street below, where a couple is dancing barefoot in a puddle, spinning the way fools in love tend to do. The world feels tilted around them. They move untouched by the rot beneath the surface. I wonder what that feels like.
“Will he be there?” I ask.
“Every time,” Coach Tompkins says. “Doesn’t fight. Just watches. Always waiting.”
My pulse kicks up. Something in me says go. Go and bleed. Go and see. Go and listen for the echoes of the people I’ve lost.
I close my eyes for a second, letting the weight of the city press into my skin. Candace is inside, probably pretending to be asleep, probably just as hollowed out as I am. We came here for answers. Maybe this is the closest thing we’ll get.
“Text me the address,” I murmur.
“You sure?”
I stare out at the city. The ghosts. All the wreckage. The way her voice said please last night like she didn’t think she was worth saving.
“I got a few things left to bleed out.”
Theairhitswiththe force of a gut punch the second I step inside. Warm, wet, metallic. It’s blood, smoke, and breath held too long. The kind of heat that sticks to my ribs and sinks into my pores. It isn’t just the scent, it’s the vibration of the place. Bass thrums low through the concrete floor, the crowd packed in shoulder to shoulder, pulse jumping in time with every scream and slam against the cage.
This isn’t chaos, it’s a ritual. Violence with rhythm. Hunger sharpened by boundaries. A system disguised as savagery, every scream and strike following its own dark logic.
Coach Tompkins meets us at the back entrance, arms crossed over his barrel chest, eyes scanning the shadows that threaten to bite.
“Drove down just for this,” he mutters, then looks me over the way a man studies a storm. “Heard the guy running thisplace doesn’t talk. Doesn’t need to. Girls work for him. Ring’s clean. Payout’s fat. But there’s a weight to it. This shit means something.”
