Grudge Match

by Jessica Gadziala

  Which, well, as much as I hated to admit it because it was weak and pathetic, made all my reservations fly out the window.

  I was given a drink, then was sweet-talked until his match.

  He was paired off with a giant blond named Igor.

  And I knew after a minute of them being in the ring that Kenny was going to lose.

  He had, of course.

  What I hadn't anticipated, though, was him storming past me directly after, going right for the door.

  And, well, without someone there, it felt wrong to hang around.

  "So I followed him out," I told Ross, looking to find him squatting before me, his hands on my knees. It was only right then that I realized he was stroking over them with his thumbs soothingly as I told him how the day unfolded.

  He said nothing.

  He was giving me the room to remember.

  And to purge it all.

  "Oh," I yelped as soon as I walked out the door, seeing Kenny materialize out of a shadow beside the door. "You scared me," I had admitted as I reached for my keys that I had tucked away to hold my drink earlier. My phone was still in my right hand.

  "You'll live," he growled, storming down a few feet.

  "Hey," I said, feeling like I needed to comfort him, a weird, innate trait I felt far too many women possessed - a need to protect the male ego. "I had a good time, Kenny," I half-lied as I fell into step beside him. "Thanks for inviting me. It was a good fight."

  "It was a shit fight."

  "No! That's not true. It was exciting. You had me on my toes. He's such a bigger guy. It's not surprising you lost to--"

  I lost the rest of that sentence, realizing too late that some anger could not be banked; it could only be fueled; it could only burn bright and brighter until it burned itself out.

  "I had no idea what was happening," I told Ross. "One second, I was trying to comfort him. The next, he spun so fast on his heel that my eyes couldn't keep up with the motion. And by the time they refocused, his arm was already cocked back."

  Why don't you shut the fuck up, you stupid cunt?

  Those were the last words I heard before the foreign, painful blow landed on my chin, making my head swing unnaturally fast.

  "Then it was just black," I concluded. "I woke up to you carrying me," I finished.

  I watched as something dark - or, darker - crossed over his eyes as his hands left my knees, and raked down his face as he moved to stand.

  "Fuck!" he nearly shouted, making me jump.

  New memories back, I suddenly found myself very, very wary of masculine anger.

  Could he be just another ticking time bomb, threatening to blow?

  I didn't even like thinking that, seeing as he had shown me nothing but kindness.

  But then again, so had Kenny.

  Until he didn't.

  Stupid, stupid girl, I scolded myself, angry that I hadn't acted on the nudge, that I was so damn desperate for male attention that I had put myself in harm's way when I knew something felt off.

  "God fucking damn it," he growled again, moving a few feet away, pacing toward the door, where he looked like maybe he was ready to hit it.

  He even raised his hand.

  But even as I braced myself for that, he exhaled hard, and placed his palm gently on the wood instead, taking another deep, calming breath before turning back to me.

  And he didn't look angry anymore.

  No, he looked wrecked.

  "This is my fault," he said, voice so low that it was barely audible.

  "Because you own Hex?" I asked, rolling my eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."

  He leaned back against the door. "I sent him there."

  "What?"

  "To Dr. Wilmer," he explained. "I sent him there for his shoulder. So it wouldn't flare-up during his fight. He's had a losing streak. I wanted to make sure he had a chance."

  "You can't feel responsible," I objected, the very idea completely asinine. "You couldn't have possibly known that this would happen."

  "It's my job to know my men, Addy. And I damn sure should have known that one of them was even capable of putting his hands on a woman. And over something as stupid as you trying to fucking comfort him?" he snapped, the anger clearly rekindling again.

  "I guess the camera thing makes sense now," I mused, realizing it hadn't been animals at all. No. Kenny must have known that this was not something Ross would take lightly, and had cut the feeds himself.

  "Fucking asshole must have snuck back in my office when I was making sure the place was empty to wipe the feeds," he concluded as well. "Before I locked the computer down for the night."

  "Ross," I called when, for a long moment, he seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, his body getting more and more rigid by the moment. I was most of the way across the room, and I would swear I could feel the vibrating anger radiating outward from him.

  And, sure, maybe everyone should vet their employees. Maybe more so when the job itself was violent. You wanted to make sure they could control it, harness it appropriately, not lose control and rage-out at any moment.

  All that being said, though, you couldn't predict everything. Some people were better than others at hiding their evil. How many men get up every single day, go to work, are Good Guy Gary, but when they go home, beat the hell out of their wives, or molest their children.

  Sometimes, there was no way to know.

  Until something awful happened.

  What happened to me sucked, sure, but it could have been so much worse. You had to try to see the silver linings in bad situations. Find the good.

  "What, babe?" he asked, watching me with eyes it bothered me that I couldn't read, wondering what put those guards there.

  "This wasn't your fault. Not that you sent him to the chiropractor. Not that I came here. Not that I got hurt. If anyone is to blame--"

  "Don't finish that sentence," he cut me off.

  "I'm not victim-blaming myself here," I said with a small smile. "I'm just saying, I felt uncomfortable when I got out of my car. I knew something felt wrong. I ignored that. Was it my fault that I got punched, and knocked unconscious? No. But I had been way too excited and way too trusting that night." And way too willing to stroke a man's bruised ego.

  At that, Ross pushed off the door, and moved across the floor toward me. "I like that you aren't too jaded to trust people, Addy. I don't think you know how rare that is around here. I don't want you to lose that. Especially not over some shithead like Kenny."

  "I'm not going to walk around expecting every man I cross paths with to haul off and hit me, if that is what you're worried about."

  "Tell me this," he said, tone serious. "When I was pissed a second ago, were you more worried about the repercussions than you would have been just a week ago?"

  Alright, well, he had me there.

  While I think every woman is raised with an innate fear of overt acts of masculine anger in our society, thanks to the statistics not really being in our favor, I certainly never saw too much of a threat in it before. I had had heated arguments with male friends and boyfriends in the past with absolutely no concerns about them hurting me.

  Could I say the same now?

  Not exactly.

  But, at the same time, that was what life did.

  Every experience, both good and bad, left an impact, changed you in some small - or huge - way.

  You couldn't go around being pissed at every person whose presence impacted your life in some way. You wouldn't be able to function.

  "Maybe it made me more uncomfortable than it normally would," I conceded, and saw a certain sadness pull at his lips. "But I had just remembered what happened, Ross. And I don't know you that well. I am in an illegal, underground fight club. There are factors here that are not factors in my daily life. Only time will tell if there is a lasting impact from this. So it is useless to fly off the handle and be resentful about it."

  "So, your solution here," he said, lips twitching a little, "is to pull a Buddh
a and just move past it?"

  "Well, I mean, I wish there was a way to prosecute him. People need to have repercussions for things like that--"

  "Men need to have their balls chopped off for shit like that," he cut me off, correcting me with his preferred course of action.

  I rolled my eyes at that. "But, unfortunately, he was smart to wipe the cameras. It is my word against his, and I'm pretty sure the testimony from an amnesiac isn't going to be enough to convict him. So, yes, I am going to choose to do the higher road thing, and move on. What else is there to do?"

  There was a deep sigh coming from somewhere deep inside him, his air actually making my hair rustle slightly as he opened his mouth to say something.

  But then something on one of the dozens of screens behind him seemed to catch his attention, his entire body going stiff once again, the anger rekindling. And, let me tell you, that vibration I had felt from across the room? Yeah, up close, it practically made the air between us pulse.

  "Ross, what..." I started to ask, turning my head over my shoulder.

  And then I saw it too.

  Kenny chatting up a girl who looked a hell of a lot like me.

  And, sure, maybe he won his game tonight, but what about the next time something didn't go as he planned in life?

  "Oh, fuck no," he growled, pulling away from me, going to the door, then yelling outside of it.

  A second later, the man who had let me in earlier, the guy in the leather jacket without the sleeves - Laz, Ross had called him - came in. "What's up?"

  "I need you to take Miss Hollis out the back door, and across the street to her car. Then make sure she gets in and leaves," he demanded, voice steel.

  "Ross..." I tried to start, but Laz was already speaking.

  "Ward, what is going--"

  "Now, Laz," he demanded, clearly barely holding it together.

  "Hey, sweetheart," Laz said, seeming to read something more into Ross' anger than I did, and it making him jump to follow orders. "Come on, let's get going. The next fight is Pagan and, well, trust me, you don't want to see that shit."

  With Ross unwilling even to look at me, I really had no other choice but to grab my purse, and follow Laz out of the office.

  As I drove away, well aware of Laz's eyes watching me until I disappeared, I couldn't help but wonder what monster Ross Ward was trying to protect me from.

  Kenny.

  Or himself.

  SEVEN

  Ward

  It was easier to accept it when I thought it was just a patron, just another of the lowlife scum that darkened the door at Hex on any given fight night.

  Some I knew.

  Some were strangers.

  The ones I knew, I was convinced, weren't the type to raise their hands to a defenseless woman. In fact, more times than not, the local syndicates like The Henchmen and Hailstorm and even Luca and his family had been known to step up to defend women in bad situations, not pile-on, not create more women with scars they had to carry around, that they had to stroke in quiet moments, marveling at how the skin had managed to fit itself back together when whatever it had been holding inside was now gone.

  So it being some out-of-towner who got word about Hex, and decided to visit? Yeah, I could have lived with that. I would have still been pissed, but I could move on.

  But the fact that it wasn't a patron at all, but a man in my employ?

  Yeah, that shit was not going to stand.

  I waited until Laz shuffled Adalind into her car, watching on the camera, seeing the confusion, the hurt, but knowing there was time to deal with that later.

  Because on a camera screen right below that one, Kenny was running a finger down the jaw, then cupping the chin of a girl who was blissfully unaware how just a couple days before, he had put a nasty bruise on a woman in just that location.

  Anger, for me, was a strange thing.

  I didn't, as a rule, feel it often.

  Anymore.

  It had, at one time, been my only true constant companion, my only friend in the world. But once I got free of all that shit I had been through, I had learned to let it roll off, to deal with it, then move onto the next.

  But there were times every now and again when it surged, when something happened that reminded me of the beast that did still exist within, an animal kept on a chain since I was seventeen, when I learned to harness it in a different way than I had been raised to.

  This, well, this was one of those times where it wasn't just rattling its chain; it fucking broke it in half.

  I threw open the door to my office, walking out into the crowd, anxiously anticipating the final fight of the night, a fight that would be the bloodiest of any those who were new had ever seen. The bets were probably double the ones for the other fights of the night.

  "Kenny!" I roared as soon as my gaze landed on him, making not only him and the girl he was chatting up jump and stiffen up, but everyone who had heard me.

  Which was, well, everyone.

  "Boss? What's up with you?"

  "Did you seriously fucking think you were going to get away with that shit?" I asked, voice no less strong even as I closed in on him, everyone seeming to sense the need to step away, clearing a path for me.

  "What are you talking about?" Kenny asked as his girl - smartly - took several feet away, rejoining a group of her friends who were watching like this was the show for the night, even as Pagan moved over to the side of the cage, leaning his forearms against it, clearly not worried that his fight was getting delayed, likely excited to see his boss lose his shit.

  "What? You lose your last fight, and you think you can take that shit out on a woman?" I asked, and I could swear I heard Pagan mutter Oh, shit.

  To his credit, for which he had very little, Kenny had the sense to look worried. He even went back a step.

  "You thought cutting the cameras and wiping the backup would erase the fact that you raised your arm, cocked a fist, and knocked out a woman?" My hands slammed into his chest, sending him back several feet.

  He took the hit with a grunt, but the impact seemed to make it happen, make his own animal break its chain and come out to snarl back.

  And I saw it.

  What I had missed when I vetted him, what I missed every time I interacted with him since then.

  I wasn't sure there was even a name for the look in his eyes, but the closest I could come up with was wild. He was base, a savage, nothing left of a normal, civilized human being.

  While I generally prized my fighters who could use that side of themselves in the ring, I never would allow one into my establishment who didn't have nearly one-hundred percent control of it otherwise.

  If all it took was a shove to the chest - or a few comforting words - to set him off, yeah, he had no business in society as a fucking whole.

  "Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can and can not do, huh?" he asked, charging toward me.

  "I'm the man who pays your goddamn bills, that's who I am. Who keeps your skill-less ass off the motherfucking streets. The man who owns the building you led that woman to, the parking lot where you knocked her unconscious, and the goddamn dumpster where you left her unconscious body. That's who I am!"

  "Ward," Laz said behind me, knowing better than to try to reach out, but trying to make it clear that he thought things were getting out of control.

  "You don't own me, asshole," Kenny shot back, moving a step closer, almost nose-to-nose with me. "And what the fuck do you care about some stupid bitch?"

  Oh, that was just not a good place to take this.

  "That stupid bitch," I said, hand flying out, grabbing his throat, fingers curling in, and lifting upward, making him go up on his toes, "now belongs to me," I roared in his face. "That's what the fuck I care, you stupid, ungrateful, cowardly shit!"

  "Yo," a different voice said, not hanging back like Laz. If there was a man who didn't hold back, it was Pagan. "You're giving them all a free show," he said, clamping a hand down on my elbow. "Se
ttle this another time," he added, making my vision clear of the red it seemed clouded with, allowing me to realize Kenny's lips were turning blue.

  My hand lessened then left him completely.

  "You too pussy to face me in a match?" I asked, knowing it was a bad idea, knowing it would fuck with my head, knowing I had spent years trying to keep the urge to hit things down.

  "Here?" he rasped, and I knew his throat was feeling a fuckuva lot like he swallowed glass right about now. "Like I would trust you to keep it fair."

  "Grudge matches aren't for Hex anyway, stupid shit," Pagan supplied. "You don't mix business with pleasure," he added, smiling, always being a sick fuck who enjoyed tense situations, loved poking sleeping bears.

  "Where then?"

  "If you know dick about fighting," I said, having to bite the inside of my cheek to stay grounded, "you know exactly where. Now get the fuck out of my building. You're never welcome here again."

  With that, trusting Pagan and the rest of my men to see to my instructions, I went back to my office, having to focus so I didn't slam my door, pretty sure I would split it if I did.

  I paced my office, trying to shake it off, trying to get the beast back on a chain.

  It was a long couple of minutes before I heard the door open.

  I didn't have to turn to know who it was.

  Lazarus was the closest thing in the world I had to a friend, though we generally didn't get involved with each other's shit.

  "That was interesting," he said, and I turned to find him leaning back against the door. "So she is a friend of yours."

  "Didn't plan on it," I admitted. "I brought her to the hospital. I planned to leave her there."

  "And..."

  "And then she came back to Hex the next morning trying to find her purse, keys, phone, and get her car unlocked."

  "So you helped."

  "She got attacked on my property."

  "Yeah," he said, lips tipping up. "I'm sure that was all it was. It had nothing at all to do with how gorgeous she is. And the fact that she doesn't seem to mind your icy ass."