by Cari Quinn
There was no refusing it. I whispered “yes,” even as he nudged me over the next rise.
I was his, utterly. And he knew it.
For good. For life.
When he finally drew it away, I was a jittery mess. I curled on my side away from him and he rested his chin on my shoulder, holding me close.
Somehow his husky voice invaded the post-climax haze.
“Swans mate for life. When one dies, the other dies too.” His lips touched my neck. “There can be no other.”
I blinked. Replayed it over in my head a couple times. “What the hell are you talking about?”
His chuckle made me smile too, even if I didn’t know what we were smiling about. He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “Romance will forever be lost on you.”
The humor vanished. “Don’t give up on me.”
“Never.”
“I need to tell you something.” I rolled on my back and lifted a shaky hand to smooth the hair away from his brow. I was shaky for a whole new reason now. “Well, a couple somethings.”
“I thought you were cheating on me.” He averted his gaze. “For a while.”
“What?” I grabbed his cheek and drew his face back to mine. “Are you fucking stupid?”
“Sometimes. Over you, always.”
I lost my mad as fast as it had come. “Ditto. And don’t try to sweet talk your way out of this. How could you think I would cheat on you? There is no one…I could never…there would never be—”
He laid a finger over my lips. “I know that, now. We’ve come farther in the past weeks than we have in the past year.”
I shut my eyes. “I know I’ve been difficult to deal with.”
“Now and then, but hell, you can have five orgasms in a row, so it all works out.”
“Oh my God. It was not five. Like…four.” His laughter made me grin in spite of my embarrassment. “And a half.” I cleared my throat. “Why did you think I was cheating?”
“I saw all the phone calls from the unknown number. I wasn’t spying,” he added quickly. “I just picked up your number one day to grab Carly’s number, and they were all there. I didn’t know what to think.”
“They aren’t from a man. Or maybe they are. Hell if I know for sure. If they are from a man, they aren’t from one who wants to sleep with me.” I sat up and clamped my arms around my stomach. “More like he wants me dead.”
Tray sat up too. He brushed my hair off my shoulder and waited.
I told him everything I knew. About the calls years ago, the ones that had sent me running to the city and had caused me to change my name from Amelia to Mia. Then I went through the new calls, and the occasional texts, and mentioned that I’d wondered if the heavy bag was connected. If even that odd situation with the chick outside Vinnie’s that night in the alley might play in.
“The blonde,” he said, and I glanced at him, goose bumps popping out over my skin in spite of how warm the room was.
“What blonde?”
“I saw her in Vinnie’s one day. She was acting strange and just caught my attention for some reason. I couldn’t stop staring at her.” He pointed at me. “It was the same day you rushed in after my mom showed up.”
“That was the day the chick was in the alley. I thought she was blonde too. She had on a hoodie and shorts and sneakers. I couldn’t see her face.”
“If it was the same girl, she had pale skin, white-blonde hair. She looked like a runner.”
“Green eyes,” I said without thinking.
“I wasn’t that close to her, but maybe. How’d you see her eyes if you were in a dark alley?”
I swallowed hard. “Because she’s Darren’s daughter.”
“Darren’s…” He gripped my shoulder, tense fingers digging in. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
“They’re using her to get to me.” I rubbed my suddenly gritty eyes. It wasn’t all that late, but God, I was exhausted. The kind of tired sleep wouldn’t help. “Or else she wanted to get to me and they hooked up somehow.”
Before he could question me further, I told him about Lorenzo’s visit the other day. His hand on my shoulder got tighter and tighter, until I wondered how he remained seated at my side.
“Why didn’t you call me? I would’ve killed him for daring step through the goddamn door.”
“He wants us to make a move. He’d be happy if I did something else, so he could get me where he wants me.”
“Which is where, exactly?” he asked, his voice like a whip.
“They wanting to build some kind of chick fighting empire. I don’t get it. I don’t want to. But Evie’s a part of it. I don’t know if she’s in their pocket, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“In their pocket how?”
“Lorenzo demanded I throw the fight tomorrow. Evie’s going to go far, and they want to back her. They’re putting big money on her winning, and if I lose, it’ll push her up the ladder faster, I guess. It’s all about green to them. Nothing else matters.”
Certainly not me or my sister.
A tool, Mia. That’s what you are to me.
He pushed a hand through his hair, then left his forehead pressed into the heel of his palm. “Do I have to ask what you said?”
“I told him to go to hell. Then I threw a shoe at his head.”
Tray’s head came up, his expression incredulous. “What happened to not doing anything to him so he can’t get you where he wants you?”
I shrugged. “The door had already closed behind him.”
“Jesus, Mia.”
“That’s not all,” I said quietly.
“Of course it isn’t. Because death threats and stalkers and fuck all knows what else couldn’t possibly be enough.”
“He threatened to harm you if I didn’t throw the fight.”
“Shocker. Typical scare tactic of a pussy in Italian leather.”
“Gorgeous Italian leather,” I corrected, then shook myself. “Anyway. I had something on my screen. Your screen. I was using your laptop.”
“You know that never ends well.”
“I do. It didn’t end well here either. There are so many missing kids. I never realized.”
The stories poured out of me. The grainy pictures, the snippets I’d read. Lainey Peterson. “It hit me hard, imagining her wandering around Chicago, scared and alone. Far from her home. Sometimes when kids escape, they don’t know where to go. Or if their attacker lets them go, it’s often in a city nowhere near where they live. Having to find someone to tell what happened to you…it’s almost as bad as the original attack.”
Saying nothing, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his chest.
“Lorenzo saw the screen. He told me he knew that was my greatest fear, someone I love turning up missing.” I almost couldn’t get the words out. They would make the potential horror I’d lived with for days for real. “Tray, he touched Carly’s picture. He could hurt her.”
“He won’t get near her.”
“You can’t guarantee that. No one can. Even if I threw that fight tomorrow night, even if I did everything they asked, who’s to say they won’t change it up on me? Next time they’ll want more. If it meant I could ensure Carly would be safe, I’d let Evie kick my ass—”
“You listen to me.” He gripped my chin and stared hard into my eyes until his features blurred under the wash of my tears. “You fight that fight exactly like we planned. Slater and I will be right there behind you. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.” I grabbed his wrist. “It’s you. It’s Carly.”
“Slater will have my back. As will you. We’ll make sure Carly is somewhere safe.”
“How? If you and Slater are with me, who can stay with her? And don’t tell me your mom, because she’s no match for Lorenzo’s goons.”
“Giovanni,” he said after a moment, and I went stiff.
“You can’t be serious.” I pulled away from him and shoved
at the sleeping bag constricting my legs. “We don’t even know for sure he’s on our side. He got us into this mess.”
“From what you said, you were on their radar all along. We both were. They were cherry picking fighters to get in their pocket.”
“So why is he hanging out with people like that?” I kicked out and the vibrator went rolling across the hardwood floor. I didn’t care. “What do you think that says about him?”
“It says there’s something going on with him, and it’s not because he likes rubbing elbows with mob types.”
“How do you know he’s not one of them?”
“I don’t know anything, Mia, except my gut is telling me he’s on our side. If he’s not—” When I started to object, he stilled me with a hand on my hip. “If he’s not, I’ll kill him myself.”
I shoved my fingers through my hair. “Don’t ask me to put her in his care.”
“What choice do we have? I can’t be in two places. Neither can Slater. You can try locking her in the bathroom with a mop, but I don’t think that’ll get her too far.”
“You can be in my corner,” I said, turning back to him. “Slater can stay with Carly—”
“No. You get both of us. I wish I had a goddamned army, but you’ll have to settle for an army of two.”
“What about Liam?” I asked, leaping on Slater’s brother like he was bottled oxygen. “He’s a former SEAL and he’s training at the gym. He’d be perfect.”
“Liam doesn’t agree with illegal fighting. He was supposed to start working as a trainer but he backed off because it just didn’t sit right with him. If he found out Slater was in your corner, there’d be issues. This is better. Cleaner.”
“Are you trying to push her toward Giovanni? Is that some part of the bro code? We’re pals now, here, free pass, fuck my girl’s sister?”
He tipped up my chin and smudged his thumb over my lips until they stopped flapping. “Repeat after me. I am not the keeper of Carly’s vagina. On three.”
I shook him off. “You think you’re funny. He’s the worst possible influence for her—” Hearing myself, I groaned, replaying the conversation with Tray’s mother earlier that evening. “Jesus.” I dropped my head into my hands. “I hate when you’re right.”
“It doesn’t happen all that often. Let me bask in this moment.” He tugged my hair until I lifted my head and met his gaze. “You worry about winning that fight. Let me take care of the rest.”
“It’s one night. They have a million others they could hurt her.”
“One day at a time. It’s all we can do.”
I sucked in a breath and forced myself to turn into him when he opened his arms.
“You need to get some sleep.” He stroked my cheek. “For me, if not yourself.”
“Not yet,” I mumbled, curling in tighter. Fatigue smothered me, heavy and oppressive. Even my anger and fear wasn’t an adequate match for it.
“I’ve got you, baby. Both of you.”
His words followed me into sleep.
18
Tray
“How are you doing? Need some water? Here, have some water.”
Mia glared at me and kept jumping rope.
“Okay. No water. How about one of these stupid fucking tapes?” I caught Slater’s motivational cassettes between my fingers and waved them. “They’ll get you pumped up.”
“Try the third one. Really good stuff,” Slater affirmed, sipping from another bottle of herbal crap. “It’ll get you centered.”
“I’m centered enough.”
“Your wraps okay? Slater, check her—”
“Don’t touch.” She turned and slashed her jump rope through the air, making Slater jump back. “I’m fine. Well-hydrated, motivated, ready to go. Now leave me the hell alone.”
“What did I tell you?” Kizzy asked from a nearby bench. “Told you didn’t need a pair of men in your corner. How many fights did we win, just you and me?”
“Thirty-eight,” Mia replied, without breaking stride in her jumps.
I blinked. “Thirty-eight? Seriously?”
“Just because you have a pair of soft and wrinklies does mean you have winning cornered, Foxy.” She shifted toward Mia, her wild hair frizzing over her shoulders as she leaned forward. “And how many fights did you lose?”
“Two. One draw. One disqualification, due to excessive bleeding.”
“Yours?” I asked, more than a little stunned. We’d never spent a lot of time talking about our fight records, but she’d won more times than I had, for fuck’s sake. Not many more times, but more.
Mia continued jumping in methodic reps, her gaze focused straight ahead. “Hers.”
Slater’s eyes went wide. “Badass.”
“How many times did I win before I started training you?” Kizzy asked, as if this was the usual way they got ready for a bout. The almost robotic recitation seemed to keep her in the zone way more than our hovering.
“Forty-nine,” Mia said.
“What? Forty-nine?” I looked at Kizzy. “You’re a baby.”
She popped to her feet and went toe-to-toe with me in her lavender sneakers. “Who you calling a baby, Foxy?” She poked a finger in my chest. “We can go right here.”
“Enough,” Slater said equably. “He’s just feeling insecure because his last fight was a loss.”
“I am not.” Not that much.
“You shouldn’t have been fighting that night anyway. You weren’t in the zone.”
Mia glanced at me, not saying anything as she continued to jump. We both knew why I hadn’t been in the zone that night. I’d had a busted hand from a glass I’d broken during an argument with Mia, and a sore jaw from her fist after I’d gone down on her the first time.
The trajectory of our relationship was far from usual.
“That’s not important now.” Kizzy waved me off like a gnat before moving toward Mia. “You’re prepared. Aren’t you?”
Mia stopped jumping and nodded. “I’m ready.”
Kizzy slapped Mia’s cheeks, making me take a step forward until Slater shook his head. Who was I to interrupt their pre-fight routine? “You’re going to kick ass, aren’t you, Spyder?”
Her dark gaze never flickered. “Yes.”
I swallowed, caught between abject pride, shock and a deep sense of unease. I’d never been in the room with her before a fight, and she wasn’t my girl right now. She was someone else. Completely focused, quietly lethal.
It left me in awe, even more than I’d been when we’d walked into the makeshift locker room in the abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn where the fight was being held. As impressed as I was with Mia’s dedication and overall conditioning, the mental space she dropped into so effortlessly before she walked into the ring amazed me even more.
She was the born fighter I’d never been.
That conviction remained even as she stepped into the octagon with the music playing. They’d gone with a newer hip-hop song, something that shook the rafters and got the crowd pumping their fists. Evie was in the other corner, her back turned to us. Her corner man was Timmins and a small Asian woman I recognized from The Cage as one of the newer trainers. But she wasn’t conferring with them or stretching or even gloating as most fighters did before the match.
Nope, she was having a heated argument with a dark-haired man in a gray suit, who appeared on the verge of reaching up into the ring and dragging her out. The anger contorting his features didn’t exactly fit with the slick, polished vibe he had going.
But it wasn’t until Kizzy let out a low whistle that I realized why he looked so familiar. “Holy shit. Sutton Pierce, here in the flesh.”
I glanced at Kizzy, who was bouncing hard enough to make her hair hit maximum heights. “Sutton from Mark’s Gym? The dude who took it over?”
“As in my asshat boss, who makes my life a living hell. He hates everything MMA. Wonder what the hell he’s…” She trailed off. “Pierce. Fucking Pierce.”
“Evie’s brother?”
Shit. Now that I was looking more closely, I could even see the resemblance. Dark hair, blue eyes, permanent sneer.
Well, that explained why she’d come to New York after fighting in Europe. She had family here. Enraged family, but family just the same.
All at once I remembered I was supposed to be focused on Mia, not gossip-mongering with Kathleen Cavanaugh. I turned around and saw Slater crouched in front of Mia, talking softly to her while she nodded, listening.
I smiled. She was in good hands. The same hands I’d been in for years, ones that had never led me wrong. Slater was good people, and an excellent trainer, no matter how much he inherently hated blood and guts and disliked the violence of MMA.
Mia rose and came over to me, her expression intent. “Carly?”
“She’s fine. I checked in with Gio about an hour ago. They’re in Queens.”
“Queens?” Mia’s brow furrowed. “What’s there?”
I shrugged. “They’re in a safe spot with his backup, he said. No, I don’t know what that means, but I’m trusting the guy.” At this point, I didn’t have much choice.
Kizzy snagged Mia’s elbow and led her away from another quick talk while Mia went through a quick stretching routine. She grabbed her ankle behind her back, then touched the mat and rose to her toes to reach for the sky. Then her gaze drifted back to me, for one last lingering look.
We didn’t need words. She was ready, and I was behind her every step of the way.
A moment later, she tapped gloves with Evie in the center of the ring as the fans roared. Evie had a confident smile in place, but she wasn’t the same cocksure woman I’d met at The Cage. Something had her rattled, whether it was her brother’s interference or the presence of the men in black suits who were lurking around the fringes of the crowd. There was no missing them—or the way they touched the guns at their waists as a not-so-subtle reminder of who and what they were.
How had I never noticed them around the fights before? I’d obviously had tunnel vision on my opponent. On winning, the only thing that mattered.
I looked back toward Mia. Until now.
The opening bell rang and I sucked in a breath. I’d never been in this position before, watching on the sidelines. I’d never had to fist my hands and plant my feet to keep myself from harming anyone who dared to touch my girl.
