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He wipes the blood from his lip. “I guess we’ll find out if you’re as tough as you think you are tonight.”

“Fuck you.”

With that, I turn, grab Luna’s hand, and walk out of the room.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Luna

I’ve never been more humiliated in my entire life.

And I don’t know if Elliott knocking that idiot on his ass made it better or worse.

He apologized profusely, and I’m not mad at him, but it still hurt. I’ve worked so hard on my self-esteem and all it takes is one jerk to say something unkind for it to send me spiraling.

We know who the heavyweight is in your house? Am I right?

Even now that we’re back at the hotel, heat floods my face every time I think about it. Or see the clip online. It’s gone viral. And of course, the media has now gone crazy trying to figure out who I am.

That is an unexpected result of the situation.

The general public won’t recognize me.

I was a hacker, not some sort of celebrity, and my identity was well hidden until the FBI got involved. Even then, the people who arrested me may not recognize me now with my pink or purple hair and the contact lenses that replaced my glasses.

“Honey, are you all right?” Rage is watching me intently as I scroll on my phone.

“The entire world now has my picture along with a video clip of Bronco calling me a heavyweight—so no, I’m not all right.”

“What can I do?”

“Just focus on getting ready for the fight. There’s nothing to be done.”

“Then why are you so stressed?”

I turn to look at him, squinting. Typically, he’s not one of those men who’s dense. In fact, he’s the opposite ninety-nine out of one hundred times. Unfortunately, he chose this time to be oblivious.

“You do understand that my face is everywhere, right?”

“Yeah.” He turns to me. “But this will pass. I mean, it’s the fighting world and after tonight, we’re not going to be a part of it.”

“No, but it’s not like my face is just going to disappear.”

“Okay.”

I throw up my hands in frustration. “Elliott. I’m in witness protection. I’m not supposed to be drawing media attention to myself!”

He frowns. “Yeah, but your situation is a little different. You weren’t some accountant for the mob, where people knew you personally and would recognize you. I mean, you worked mostly on the dark web.”

“Mostly, but not completely. And some of the people on that list were high-ranking officials in the government—they could know what I look like. And potentially where I am.”

“But what do they care? The FBI killed the list so at this point it’s moot.”

“To a degree. The thing is, they don’t know how much I know. The fact that I had a copy of the client list for the Assault Academy is the reason I had to go into witness protection. The people on that list wanted me dead. Possibly still do.”

“Still?” Rage asks in confusion. “As much as I don’t want to think about something like this, the FBI could have had you killed immediately. You wouldn’t have made it into witness protection. You mentioned some very powerful people. And back then, you were a lot more vulnerable than you are now. At this point, don’t you think they’ve moved on? After all this time, you think they’ll recognize you from some crappy pictures of you at the weigh-in with a jerk like Bronco calling you names?”

“I don’t know, but⁠—”