“You’re sure?” Xavier presses.
Not at all. “Relatively.”
“For both our sakes, ‘relatively’ better be good enough,” Tobias releases me with a sigh. “Would hate to shoot him by accident on our next mission.”
“Where’s Gabriel and Reuben?” I ask hesitantly.
“No fucking idea,” Xavier mumbles. “I’ve been calling them both but no success.”
Good news, I suppose. If ‘Christian’ dies here, at least they will have missed it.
Just imagining the embarrassment, I wouldn’t be able to look even Christianin the face in the mirror anymore.
“Whenever you’re done being buttered up, buttercup,” Olsen calls from the ring, smiling easily.
I step towards him, breaking away from Tobias and Xavier, “I want a raise in my stakes.”
His brow rises.
“Doesn’t seem to me like you’re risking much of anything, Mr. Veteran,” I tilt my head from the outside of the ring. “But I risk losing much if you take my place.”
A shadow passes across his face. I know he’s heard about me, even if he hasn’t tried to. The survivor of the Adler Squad. Losing my place in the family will be the same as killing me… as killing ‘Christian’.
“What do you want me to stake?” he asks slowly.
“Your life.”
“I refuse.” He folds his arms. “I’m not staking my life on this shit.”
“Then I’m not getting in the ring with you,” I say simply.
His eyes narrow.
In the end, that’s what you need, isn’t it, Olsen?
“You’re saying I can kill you if you lose?” His gaze is sharp and calculating.
“I’m saying you might as well kill me if you beat me.”
He watches me as though he’s seeing me for the first time.
My next words are deliberately slow, “If you can’t take this seriously, then it just sounds like you want to throw your title around. Humiliating me without actually losing anything or putting anything on the line.”
I mimic his easy smile, “Can’t say it’s a good look for you.”
I know I’ve pressed his buttons.
Because they’re the same buttons that made him hit me.
“Fine,” he spits the words as though I’ve pointed my gun at his head and forced him to say them. Yet even though I’ve staked Christian’s life on this match… I feel nothing.
Even when I stand in the ring, facing down a giant, all the emotions I’ve learned, feel far away.
Olsen jumps up onto his toes, as if stretching them out and the air changes. It’s a single moment, where he appears frozen, looking every bit like a wild bear that’s about to strike. He breaks out of stillness with a powerful pounce, closing in on me within a heartbeat and swinging his fist towards my head.
It’s slow.
Still, I evade only by a shadow’s edge, and the force of the punch whips by with a powerful wind.
