The driver’s downstairs, ready to take me to MSG, where twenty thousand people are excited to watch me fight for the heavyweight championship of the world.
This is what I’ve wanted since I was seventeen and scrubbing floors at Malone’s Gym. The moment I’ve been chasing my entire career.
But none of it matters. Not without her.
Lochlan’s words keep rattling around in my skull, refusing to let me rest.
She was so desperate to save her sister that she lost sight of the whole picture.
The girl was probably trying to survive the only way she knew how.
Maybe second chances are in order.
Jhene wasn’t trying to destroy us. She was trying to save Eva. The only family she has left, the little sister she’s been protecting since they were kids.
Fedorov had her backed into a corner with no way out, and she did what she had to do to survive.
The same way I did what I had to do when I beat my father into a vegetable to protect Ma and Maeve.
We’re not so different in that regard.
Both of us have gone to extreme lengths to keep the ones we love safe.
My phone buzzes again. Another text from Dez comes through, more frantic this time.
Kill tell me you’re otw!
The driver says you’re not coming out?
Fight starts in two hours!!
I start typing up a message telling him to shut the fuck up and know his place or I’ll show it to him, but a call comes through and interrupts me.
This time it’s not from Dez. It’s from the same number I’ve been calling for days without any answer.
Aleksei’s finallygetting back to me.
I answer before the first ring’s even over. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for?—”
“I have heard what you are looking for,” Aleksei interrupts in his low Russian accent. “Fedorov’s private residence. The place he keeps his pets.”
“You know where it is? The exact address?”
Aleksei allows for a second to pass, the silence heavy with implication.
“Possibly,” he answers. “I can take you there. Tonight.”
I make up my mind on the spot, regardless of how insane it would seem to everybody else. The thousands—even millions—across the world waiting on this heavily promoted championship match. This is one of the major sporting events of the whole damn year.
“Tell me where to meet you,” I say, already halfway to the door.
TWENTY-FOUR
Jhene
Everything I wasafraid of has come true, and I have no one to blame but myself.
The irony is, I thought I was saving Eva. Instead, I lost the few good things I did have.
