Survival mode kicked in.
I liked fighting. I was good at it. But the best brawls were always the closest. The ones that nearly killed you. And this dude... he was fitter than his brothers. Sharper. And fresher than me. He came at me like a possessed beast and I took the blows, feeling him out, sensing his desperation to win.
His weak point.Folk had taught me to search them out, and that I wouldn’t always find them in a man’s punch. Doherty flew at me again, aiming a savage hit at my temple.
I ducked and nailed his thigh, spinning away as he staggered, and he charged again so fast that I knew I was right. This dude was good, but subtle panic laced his every move, growing starker as his killer blows struck out.
He has to win.
Cos he knew the consequences if he didn’t. Cos heknew. What his dad did.He fucking knows. A glance at Doherty Senior confirmed my theory. The old man looked nervous, despite the edge his boy had on me, cos he knew it would be the fucking end of him if I survived this fight and opened my big fat mouth.
Man, what a clusterfuck this shit had become. And apparently they hadn’t got theno murdermemo either.
Lucky me.
And the truth was, I felt fucking lucky—cos I wasn’t scared of living or dying. I was scared of feeling too much. Of letting it hurt, and nothing about this fight had anything to do with that.
Doherty’s fist caught my gut, knocking the breath from me a second time.
I doubled over, lungs burning, but not for long. I didn’t have that fucking luxury. As he came for me again, I found a burst of agility and pole-axed that fucker back to his corner.
Respite. Thank fuck. However brief, I needed it to fix the urgent lack of air moving through my chest. I took water from Folk. Spat it out, evading his probing hands, Locke’s concern, and a penetrating stare from Saint that I couldn’t weather as the attention on me began to fester. I didn’t mind putting on a show, but the sheer number of eyes on me made my skin burn. Like there was someone I couldn’t see staring right through me.
Don’t look. I couldn’t. Doherty was out of his corner and barrelling towards me. But my head swivelled of its own accord, searching the crowd surrounding the ring and beyond, to the bar steps where the king of all Kings stood.
Cam O’Brian. Good-looking bastard, imposing as fuck. But it wasn’t him who sent my pulse skyrocketing to the fucking moon. It was the tall man next to him. Brown hair, brown eyes, a beard that was all angles and no scruff. An all-seeingRussiangaze that threw me off balance enough that I was too slow to dodge Doherty’s well-aimed jam to my already throbbing ribs.
Motherfucker.
The pain pissed me off and I unleashed hell on him, but my brain kept spinning, spiralling into a vortex of bewilderment.
Jacob.
Jakov.
Jake.
Whatever the hell his name was, what the fuck was he doing here?
[ 6 ]
RANGER
Viktor’s dead.
The thought slammed into me harder than any punch ever could, common sense and logic fighting to catch up. No one knew how I felt about Viktor. That I fuckingcared. There was no rhyme or reason to the don of the Russian mob making a special trip to tell little old me that the best kiss I’d ever had was gonna be my last.
He’s not here to see you.
That made more sense, with or without Vik dying. But I ran out of time to curb the soap opera playing out in my head, cos Doherty the Third was on me again and he wasn’t letting go.
We fought like dogs and I stopped caring about anything except hitting him. I didn’t even care why I was doing it as I became the sum parts of the violence consuming us.
Doherty gained the upper hand. For a fuckingsecond, before I threw him off and stamped on his leg, sending him crawling back to his corner.
Was he done?
Maybe not, but neither was I. Not now I had something else to care about. Somewhere else tobe, before Jakov vanished asabruptly as he’d appeared, and no fucker around here would tell me what the hell he’d come to say.
