by K. M. Scott
So I took Robert up on his offer to work as security for him, knowing full well that wouldn’t be what I’d be doing. Once you see how good life can be on the other side of the tracks, you don’t want to go back to where you used to be. Even doing his dirty work was better than returning to that life I’d had before.
Shaking my head, I answered Floyd’s question truthfully. “Not really. I just didn’t see any other way. He told me I wouldn’t have to fight anymore, and I believed him. And for a long time, he lived up to that deal. I guess that’s all changed now.”
“I hear rumors, you know? Rumors about a girl and things like that with you. Is that why you’re back here?” Floyd asked, worry hanging off each word.
He’d always warned us fighters not to let women ruin our lives. I’d assumed that was more sour grapes about his own life and not really career advice.
“She’s more than a girl,” I said as I sat up straight in my chair. “Her name’s Serena, and she’s everything to me. I’m back here for her.”
Floyd nodded, and I saw by the knowing look in his eyes he understood who Serena was. He didn’t say anything about her, but he knew.
When he finally spoke, he asked in a hesitant voice, “So she’s like her father with the fighting?”
I dismissed that with a wave of my hand. “No way. She’s nothing like him. She’s good and sweet, and there’s a gentleness to her I’ve never seen in anyone else in the world. She has no idea how hard this fight is going to be for me.”
His eyebrows raised, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “And you’re here for her? Sounds like suicide to me.”
“I didn’t have a choice. When the woman you love needs you to lay it all on the line for her, you do it without a second thought, no matter how bad things might get for you.”
Floyd rolled his eyes. “I always had a feeling there was more hero than villain in you, son. So you’re doing this for the love of a woman. Still sounds crazy to me, but if anyone can do this, I’m betting it’s you.”
I patted him on the shoulder for the vote of confidence. “Thanks, man. Now I guess we just have to hope he doesn’t bring in another goddamned behemoth to fight me and I might get out of this in one piece, more or less.”
“I don’t know who he has lined up for you. He hasn’t given me the card yet. He knows I’ve been working with you, so I’m not surprised he’s keeping it to himself. Maybe he’ll have you fight one of the guys I’ve run past you in the last three weeks,” Floyd said hopefully.
“Yeah, maybe. If that’s the case, I might be okay.”
Robert wouldn’t be putting me up against any of Floyd’s guys. Nope. He was going to bring in someone who could hurt me so the message he wanted to send would come through loud and clear.
This stray was good enough to call his son in front of his friends, and he was good enough to do his dirty work, but he wasn’t good enough for his daughter.
Chapter Sixteen
Serena
“What time is it? Why didn’t you wake me up?
I sat up in bed, still trying to shake the sleep from my head. How long had I been asleep?
Ryder opened the curtains and pointed to the darkness outside. “It’s around seven, Rip Van Winkle.”
“That’s Miss Van Winkle, thank you. Why does it look like you were going to leave without even saying goodbye?”
A sheepish look crossed his face, and then he smiled. “You looked so peaceful lying there, so I figured I’d just let you sleep and see you when I got back.”
My head clear of the nap I’d taken, I understood what he meant. I didn’t like it.
“I want to go with you tonight, Ryder.”
He shook his head and winced like he was in pain. “No way. I don’t want you anywhere near that place, Serena. That’s no place for someone like you. I’ll see you when I get back. We can have a late dinner and relax together.”
I swung my legs off the bed and walked over to hug him. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I pressed my cheek to his chest and heard his heart beating wildly. “I’ve seen seedy places before, honey. I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
Gently pushing me away, he held me at arm’s length and shook his head again. “It’s dank and nasty, but it’s not what it looks like that worries me. I don’t want you around the kind of people who go to these things. Just stay here and wait for me.”
“Why? What kind of people are we talking about? My father goes to these fights, right? I can’t imagine him in any place where I couldn’t fit in. I’ll be fine.”
Ryder frowned and knitted his brows in worry. Cradling my face with his rough hands, he sighed. “You have no idea what your father’s like, Serena. Trust me. This isn’t the kind of thing you should be around. The crowds get ugly. Between the drinking and the drugs and the fights, it’s no place for someone like you.”
I covered his hands with mine and leaned my cheek into his palm. “I’m not some China doll you have to worry will break easily. I can handle this. I promise.”
He stared down at me, doubt filling his green eyes. “Not this. Please just trust me. Not this.”
“You’re scaring me, Ryder. What’s this about? Why don’t you want me to be there for you?”
Backing away, he turned away from me and said in a low voice, “I don’t want you to see me like that, Serena. It’s not how I want you to think of me.”
I slid my arms around him and leaned against his back. So much larger than me, he made me feel small, but his strength made me feel brave.
“You don’t have to worry about how I’ll think of you because you’re fighting. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ll be the proudest person in that building watching you, win or lose. It won’t matter to me.”
Turning in my hold, he pulled me close and hugged me tightly to him. “Please, Serena. Don’t do this. Stay here and wait for me. I don’t want to fight about this with you.”
I looked up and saw real concern written all over his face and his frown deepening. I didn’t know what was worrying him, the fight or something else, but I hated seeing him like that.
“Okay, I’ll stay here. I don’t have to go. I’m feeling a little sleepy anyway, so I’ll just wait here until you get back.”
He smiled and nodded, but the worry never left his eyes. “Good. I won’t be gone long, and when I get back we can watch some TV in bed, okay?”
“Okay.” I kissed him lightly on the lips. “Do you want me to have anything for you when you get back?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Just you here waiting for me is all I need.”
I knew he hadn’t told me the whole truth about what would happen in the fight that night. The day before I heard my father discussing it as I passed his office on my way to the kitchen in the main house and the way he was talking about it, Ryder would need a whole lot more than just me after this fight.
For the past three weeks, Ryder had known it too, but he’d done his best to hide the truth from me. He wanted me to think this wasn’t going to be much more than two men dancing around a ring for a few minutes while they threw jabs at one another, but I’d done a little research and knew underground fighting wasn’t like that at all.
I loved him for trying to shelter me from the awful truth of what he would endure that night, but I knew better than to think just seeing my smiling face when he returned would be enough. I just hoped and prayed he wouldn’t need much more than a hot bath to soak his sore body in and an ice pack or two.
Ryder slipped a black t-shirt over his head and turned to face me. With a forced smile, he said, “Wish me luck.”
“You won’t need it. You’re going to do great tonight.”
He kissed me, his lips lingering on mine like he didn’t want to leave. Holding my hand, he backed away until he had to let go of me and walked out of the apartment.
As the door clicked shut, I whispered, “God, please let him be okay tonight. Don’t let my father win.”
I didn’
t care if Ryder beat the hell out of the guy he went up against. I didn’t care at all about this stupid fight. I just wanted my father to finally understand that no matter what he did and no matter how many obstacles he threw in front of us, Ryder would do whatever he must to make sure we were together.
As the minutes ticked by to the time I knew Ryder would be fighting, my stomach twisted into knots from my fear that he wouldn’t come out of this okay. What if my father had found someone bigger and stronger to ensure he lost? Would Ryder be able to defeat someone like that?
I didn’t know. All I knew about this kind of fighting was what I’d read online. Everything about it sounded barbaric and horrible. I couldn’t imagine seeing two men savagely attack one another like animals just to entertain a crowd.
A knock at the front door tore me from my thoughts about what he’d have to endure, and I answered it to find my father standing alone outside. He looked down his very straight nose at me, inhaling a deep breath before he let it out slowly.
“I was surprised to see you didn’t go with Ryder when he left for his fight,” he said in that way that told me surprise wasn’t at all what he’d felt. I suspected disappointment was closer to the truth.
But why?
“He didn’t want me to go. From what he says, it’s no place for someone like me. Or you, for that matter, Dad.”
My father narrowed his dark eyes until they were barely slits. “I think it would be good for you to see where your boyfriend came from.”
“You mean the man you refer to as your adopted son? You think I should see where he came from? Why do you act like you’re any better than he is? He fought and you ran the fights. Doesn’t that mean that he was an employee all along? Is that what your problem is with us together? You’d rather me be with someone like Oliver who had money?”
“Get your coat, Serena. It’s time to go.”
His command left little room for more argument, and to be honest, I didn’t want to hear his answers anyway. I also had a burning curiosity about seeing Ryder fight. My father thought it would make me turn away from the man I loved, but I knew better. It didn’t matter what Ryder did before he came into my life.
All that mattered to me was who he’d always been to me once he got there, and nothing I’d see from his fighting would change that.
I did as my father ordered and followed him down to the limousine waiting for us outside the garage. We said nothing to one another the entire way there. I stared out the window as the car rolled into a section of Baltimore that seemed to be an endless line of old warehouses near the docks. I’d never spent time in this part of the city, only once making a wrong turn and ending up here on my way to meet some people in Inner Harbor. It wasn’t the type of place a young woman in a sports car should be alone at night.
The car came to a stop, and I looked out the window to see busted windows and graffiti covering the brick exterior of the building in front of us. A light flickered on and off inside a room on the main floor giving the place an eerie feeling I hadn’t expected.
I turned to look at my father and asked, “What is this?”
Matter-of-factly, he answered, “A building I own, but people like Ryder call it The Pit. It’s where fights are held.”
“And this is legal?”
His mouth turned up into a smirk, and he shook his head. “Legal or illegal. Doesn’t matter here. Watch where you step when you get out. There’s glass and other things you don’t want to cut yourself on all over the ground.”
He leaned forward to tell the driver to wait for us there and then got out of the car without another word to me. I opened the door and saw garbage and glass like he’d warned me about, and as I walked toward the building, I saw syringes strewn about, evidence that his claim of legal or illegal, neither mattered here was right.
I swallowed hard thinking about Ryder spending his days and nights here before he came to the estate. This was no place for anyone to live.
My father led the way around to the side of the building, and we entered through an old metal door that slid open with a terrible scraping sound to reveal a dark hallway with a single dim light at the end of it. It reminded me of a horror film I’d seen a few years ago set in an abandoned factory where a killer tortured teenagers he found before dismembering them and hanging the body parts on meat hooks like fleshy trophies for him to admire. Every victim walked down a hallway just like the one we were in before they met the man who eventually killed them.
I only watched that movie once, but I still had nightmares about it.
“Nice place, isn’t it?” my father asked in a teasing voice.
“Well, you own it. Maybe some lights would be nice,” I snapped back as my shoe crushed a piece of glass I suspected had once been part of a lightbulb.
“Lights draw attention to things. Better to keep things in the dark,” he answered curtly before stopping at a second sliding metal door.
He turned to face me, and I barely made out the contours of his face it was so dark. “If I were you, I’d stay close, Serena.”
His cryptic warning only served to make me more terrified of what I’d see when that door opened, but I didn’t want him to know how frightened all this made me. Working to sound casual, I said, “I didn’t want to be here in the first place, so I have no intention of wandering off.”
“Good. Ready?”
I was anything but ready for what lay beyond that sliding metal door. All I could think about was how much this place felt like a real-life horror story and that the man I loved had actually lived here at one point and now was forced to return to fight because my own father wanted to punish him.
Why I still had no real idea. It could have been one of a hundred reasons. With Robert Erickson, you never knew exactly why he wanted to see you suffer. Sort of like that monster in that horror movie.
The door lurched open and on the other side sat a huge empty room. Dimly lit, it looked far less ominous than the hallway we just left. Chunks of concrete and metal lay scattered around the floor so I had to navigate a path behind my father, who seemed to know exactly where to walk. People milled about along the walls talking like they were in a bar or a restaurant and not some abandoned warehouse with the remnants of what the building used to be scattered around them.
In the distance, I heard the sound of a crowd yelling and cheering. My heart skipped a beat, and I suddenly found it hard to breathe. I knew this would be difficult for me after reading about what Ryder and fighters like him did in their matches, but being there and hearing those people screaming while two men beat up on one another felt too real and I stopped, unable to go on.
My father realized I’d fallen behind after a few steps and turned around to glare at me. “I told you to stay close. Come on. If you don’t hurry, you’re going to miss it.”
I struggled to get my feet to move, but I caught up to him, even though I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to see Ryder fight anymore. When it was some abstract idea I could read about and be horrified by, I thought I might be able to handle it, but now that I’d actually see him hurt another person, or even worse, be hurt, I didn’t know if I could do it.
The lights in front of us flickered again as we left that big empty room and walked into a cavernous area of the warehouse. We passed a tiny walled-off area, and as I walked by, I saw some men waiting around for their fights and others bloodied and bruised who had obviously finished their matches.
But I didn’t see Ryder anywhere.
The crowd grew quiet for a moment, and we drew closer to where it looked like over a hundred people stood watching. I couldn’t see what they were looking at because I wasn’t tall enough, though. Then I heard a man’s voice announce the names of the fighters up next.
“Ryder Rhodes and Jake Turner. You’re up!”
As I anxiously waited to see what this Jake person looked like, silently pleading with God to not let him be too big, the pounding of a drum beat and some song I’d never heard before boomed in
the air around me to introduce him before it changed to a different song and a male singer’s voice screamed, “I’m back!” and the crowd went wild again.
“You know the rules, so get out there and first one to give the signal loses!” the man shouted.
My heart slammed against my chest as I remembered reading these fights had no real rules like boxing or even MMA fights. I stood on my toes to see, but it was no use. The men around me were too tall.
As if my father had anticipated this, he waved someone over and instantly a man set a wooden bench down beside me and held his hand out to help me up onto it. The crowd began to holler and cheer as I tried to thank him, and when I looked out over the sea of people at the empty space in front of us, my breath caught in my chest.
Facing one another were Ryder and a man with a shaved head no less than six inches taller than him both dressed only in shorts and barefoot. Hulking and vicious looking with tribal tattoos all around his neck and up the back of his head, the guy looked like the kind of monster who belonged in a place like this.
Ryder stood looking at his opponent, sizing him up as the man walked around like he was stalking him. My heart clenched at the mere thought that in seconds I’d helplessly watch the man I loved be attacked by this beast. I wanted to scream out for him to get away and come home with me before he got hurt by the animal in front of him.
Afraid of what would happen next, I turned to see my father grinning like all of this pleased him to no end. He practically licked his chops at the possibility that Ryder would be injured right there in front of his eyes.
A greasy-looking man yelled something and the fight began. The giant who looked like a Skinhead charged at Ryder aggressively, like he wanted to end the fight in one swift attack. Ryder barely got out of the way of the man’s fist, but after it missed his face it landed on his left shoulder with a loud thud of his knuckles against Ryder’s muscle.
I knew it hurt by the look of pain that instantly covered his face, but I was thankful that he hadn’t gotten hit in the other shoulder I knew had been injured before. The crowd around me booed loudly and screamed for the two of them to hit each other. The heartlessness in their voices chilled me to the bone. They didn’t care who got hurt or how bad. They simply wanted their lust for pain to be sated.
