by Eva Ashwood
Fight Dirty
Black Rose Kisses #1
Eva Ashwood
Copyright © 2020 by Eva Ashwood
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Thank you for reading!
Books by Eva Ashwood
1
I fucking love fight nights.
The warehouse is packed as we make our way in, weaving through little knots of people all jammed in together like sardines. The tension in the air is high, and the excitement is thick enough that it feels palpable, everyone ready for another thrilling night of fights.
It’s the perfect place to house a bareknuckle boxing ring. The warehouse is nondescript and out of the way enough that only the die-hard fans and participants find their way out in the middle of the night to see the matches.
Scarlett’s at my side like she always is. Like she always has been. We grew up together, living in rough neighborhoods and making the best of sometimes shitty situations. Nothing in our lives has ever come easy, but we’ve always had each other. And we’ve come out of it all tougher, with a bond that’s unbreakable.
When someone knocks into her as we pass, she shoves him back and then gives a look that dares him to say anything about it. Her sweet face is deceptive as hell, but whatever the guy sees in her eyes makes him hold up his hands and back off.
She shoots me a satisfied smile, and we keep moving.
“I’ll find us a spot to watch from if you want to go on back,” Scarlett says once we’ve pushed through the worst of the crowd.
She knows the routine well since she’s usually with me whenever I come out on fight night. If she were anyone else, I might worry about leaving her alone with the kind of people who come to watch the brutal spectacle these events usually are, but Scarlett can more than handle herself. So I give her a grin and slip off to the back to find my dad.
Ever since my mom died when I was seven years old, it’s just been me and Dad. He’s all the family I really know, and every time he has a fight, I find him in the locker room beforehand to wish him luck.
He’s stretching when I walk in, and I grin, waiting for him to notice me. He punches at the air a few times, warming up, then turns to smile at me, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“There she is,” he says warmly. “My good luck charm.”
He’s called me that for as long as I can remember, asking me to pick lotto numbers for him or blow on his dice before a game. Maybe it’s dumb, but it gives me the same sense of pride at twenty as it did when I was a little kid.
“How’re you feeling about tonight?” I ask him, perching on the bench in front of rows of identical lockers painted an ugly shade of green.
Dad shrugs a shoulder and then rolls it. “About the same as always. You never know how it’s going to go until you get in the ring. Overconfidence is a killer.”
“You always say that.” I smirk, rolling my eyes. “And yet you always win.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me. He’s got the same dark hair I do, and I know I got it from him, just like my green eyes. My mom had dark blonde hair and blue eyes. “That’s because I keep my head together and don’t go in thinking the fight’s won before it’s even started.”
“Just make sure you keep your head out of the way of their fists,” I counter with a smirk. “Keep ’em on their toes. Heel of the hand so you break their bones, not yours.”
Dad gives me a look that’s a cross between exasperated and proud. “Who do you think you’re talking to, Mercy?” He chuckles, running a hand over the light stubble on his jaw. “I’m the one who taught you all that.”
“I know.” I affix an innocent expression to my face. “I’m just making sure you haven’t forgotten in your old age.”
He snaps a towel at me, and I jump up from the bench to avoid it, laughing with him. At thirty-eight, my dad is one of the older fighters still competing. Sometimes I worry about him a little when he goes up against one of the younger, up-and-coming guys. But he’s still one of the best fighters out there, not just because of his strength and skills, but because he fights smart.
“Come here, you little brat.” Dropping his towel on the bench, he catches me in a one-armed hug that I return with a smile. “Thanks for the pep talk. I’ll take your advice to heart. Now get out of here before someone comes in.”
I take his advice and slip back out the way I came, sidestepping a burly looking man as I make my way back to the main part of the warehouse and the clusters of people packed around the ring.
I have to stand on my toes to see where Scarlett is standing, firmly guarding the little pocket of space that she’s picked out for us. Before I can get all the way over there, a group of three guys pushing their way through the throngs of people catch my eye.
They’re the typical type I’d expect to see at something like this. Tall, well-built, oozing confidence, and sexy as fuck. All three of them look like they could be models if they wanted to, although I’m sure none of them actually do. They walk through the crowd like they own the whole damn place.
It’s not until they get a little bit closer that I realize I know one of them. Rich brown eyes, dark hair, cheekbones for days, and a jaw that looks like it was handcrafted to break hearts and fists. I have to stop myself from staring.
Oh, shit.
A hand wraps around my wrist, yanking me out of my momentary daze, and Scarlett tugs me over to her, reclaiming the spot she vacated before anyone else can snag it. She shoots me a curious look, obviously reading the expression on my face, then turns her head to follow my line of sight.
Her eyebrows raise when she catches a glimpse of the guys, who are farther away in the crowd now. “Oh, hey, isn’t that the dude you hooked up with?”
“Yeah,” I murmur, my gaze still locked on him. “Levi.”
About a year ago, Levi Hendrix and I hooked up once. It was hot and intense in the best way; his hands all over me, pinning me down to the wall, the bed, the floor. Even thinking about it now has me flushing with heat, and I rip my focus away from him and his friends, not wanting to catch their eyes.
Levi is a member of the Black Roses gang, and I can only assume his two buddies are as well. I knew it was probably stupid to hook up with him, but when I met him at a house party last year, he caught my eye immediately. We eye-fucked and flirted for about half an hour before we ended up in a bedroom upstairs, tearing at each other’s clothes. We stayed in that room until dawn, and it was hands down one of the best nights of my life.
“God, they’re hot as hell,” Scarlett says, still eyeing them up as they move a bit further away. “The things I’d do to go a few rounds with them in the ring, if you know what I mean.” She grins
at me, elbowing me in the side.
“Yeah, I think everyone in a four foot radius knows what you mean, Scar; you’re practically drooling all over yourself. Stop staring.”
I have to reach up and physically turn her head around to face the ring to get her to stop looking in the direction the three of them walked in.
“You can’t blame a girl for having eyes,” she shoots back, still grinning. Luckily the lights lower, indicating that the fight is about to start, so I don’t have to answer her.
My focus is immediately on the ring. Whenever my dad fights, I can’t look at anything else. I watch his movements, the way he carries himself and flows from punches to blocks to ducks, almost like I’m right there in the ring with him.
The announcer riles the crowd up, whipping them into a frenzy. He calls out Dad’s name—Oscar DeLeon—drawing out each syllable. My dad walks out, looking calm and collected as always, and I grin. When I was younger, I used to wave, even though he couldn’t really see me in the crowd. It’s enough that he knows I’m here rooting for him though.
His opponent comes out from the other side, a big dude with tattoos and wild eyes, and I size him up. If I’m being honest, he looks a bit like the Hulk. Thickly muscled and kind of stocky, even with the three or four inches he has on Dad. Pound for pound, he looks like he could take Dad, but weight and size aren’t everything.
Still, when the fight starts, it starts with a bang. The guy is aggressive right out of the gate, aiming a punch that Dad barely blocks. When Dad strikes back out, going for the dude’s nose, it’s blocked, and he’s pushed back.
The intensity is immediate and so captivating I can’t look away. Usually it’s pretty easy to tell who’s going to have the upper hand once a couple minutes have passed, but it’s not that easy here. It’s close from the get-go, the two of them trading blows with savage intensity.
Whenever Dad lashes out, his opponent is right there, ready to block, and the hits each of them do manage to land ring out through the warehouse, the sound of fists on faces, the crunch and crack of calluses and bones.
Neither of them are fragile, but by the five minute mark, they’re both banged up. Blood drips from the guy’s nose—Milo Guzman, the announcer said his name was—and my dad is already sporting a bruise around his eye that’s going to turn into a hell of a shiner. The crowd around us shouts and jeers, calling out encouragement to both of them, depending on who they’re pulling for.
“Kick his ass!” I practically scream, joining in the chaos. I like to imagine my dad can hear me, my voice cutting through the din of a thousand other screaming fight fans, but I know that’s mostly just wishful thinking.
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall!” Scarlett yells, stomping her feet, and I grin at her for a second before turning my attention right back to the ring.
Maybe it’s the energy of the crowd, or maybe a few solid punches to the face have made the big guy wake up, but he starts circling Dad, eyes narrowed. He inhales with a wet sound and then spits a glob of blood and phlegm off to the side, ruining someone’s night for sure.
Dad doesn’t back down, cracking his knuckles and dropping into a defensive stance right when the Hulk wannabe launches at him, raining blow after blow down on him.
My chest goes tight as I watch him take those hits. Each one sends him staggering back, and I reach down to grip Scarlett’s hand. It’s almost like I can feel each punch landing, shock and anger jolting through me.
“Come on,” I hiss through my teeth, tightening my grip on Scarlett. “Come on. Get him the fuck off you.”
Dad goes down to one knee for a second, and it’s like time stops. The rip-off Hulk grins, teeth bloody and red, and stalks forward confidently. He looks like he’s going to go in for the KO.
But before Milo can raise his fist for the final blow, Dad surges up to his feet, getting his bearings back.
He gives back every hit he took twice over, aiming for the most sensitive spots on the guy’s body, making him double over in pain. With one last right hook, he lays the guy out at the last second.
Milo Guzman’s head whips to the side, his eyes already rolling back in their sockets as his body goes down like a sack of bricks. He hits the heavy mats inside the ring with a thud, and a roar goes up from the crowd.
The announcer slips into the ring, raising my dad’s hand in the air. “Winner! Oscar DeLeon!”
Finally, I feel like I can breathe again.
Dad lifts his other hand in the air as the crowd screams its approval or its disappointment, and discount Hulk just lies there in a heap.
There’s definitely going to need to be some clean up when Dad finally makes it back to the locker room, but he looks proud of himself, and I can feel that same pride swelling in my own chest.
This is the man who taught me basically everything I know, and he’s still got it. Not even towering muscle bags can knock him out. I cheer at the top of my lungs, clapping and hooting, stomping my feet along with the rest of the crowd.
People at these fights are always looking for a good show, but they seem particularly bloodthirsty tonight, reveling in the brutality of the fight. If they wanted bloodshed, then they got it, and when the refs come to haul Hulk dude up and out of the ring, his face looks kind of like ground beef. That seems to set the crowd off more, people screaming in joy and fury, but I’m just glad my dad won.
I glance over to the spot where I last saw Levi and his cronies, mostly to see if they look happy or disappointed with the outcome and if they’re as hungry for violence as the rest of the crowd seems to be, but they’re gone, other people already surging in to take their spots.
With the show over, the rest of the crowd starts to trickle out, heading out into the comparative coolness of the night air, still giving each other blow-by-blows and discussing other things they could get into with the rest of their night.
Scarlett and I follow, letting the stream of people carry us out.
A breeze ruffles my hair as we step into the cool night air. It never gets all that cold in Fairview Heights, not even during the dead of winter. We’ve had a mild January so far, and the crisp breeze feels good. It cools the sweat on my neck as I push my dark hair out of my face.
“You heading out?” I ask Scarlett. She’s fanning herself again, but from the temperature this time and not some hot guys.
“Yeah.” She shoots me a look. “You’ll be good here?”
I nod. I’m always good. “Of course. I’ll wait for Dad and then head out.”
She hugs me like she always does, even though we see each other or talk on the phone almost every day, and I watch her head off to where she parked.
Usually, it only takes Dad a few minutes to clean up and patch up any injuries and head out, but as the flood of people leaving the warehouse slows to a trickle, I get antsy. He took some pretty bad hits before his comeback at the end. Maybe he needs help taking care of whatever injuries he sustained. None of them looked like anything worse than he’s had before, but it was hard to tell from where I was standing in the crowd.
I could hang out here and wait, or I could go in and see what’s up—and I’ve never been the waiting around type. So I head back inside the now-empty building and make my way back to the locker room. I expect to find him with ice on his eye or something, going over the fight in his head, dissecting what he could’ve done differently.
When I walk into the locker room, he’s there, all right.
But he’s not alone.
He’s in the center of a group of guys, getting the absolute shit beat out of him.
2
My heart lurches.
Without even thinking, I run into the room. I don’t care about my own safety or the fact that even with my help, we’ll both be outnumbered. All I know is I have to stop these fuckers from hurting my dad.
I lunge in, grabbing one of them by the shoulder and spinning him around to face me. He looks surprised, and I take advantage of that, punching him right in the no
se and then aiming my knee for his crotch. He manages to deflect that last hit somehow, even still reeling from the solid hit to his face, but I don’t let up.
Taking advantage of an opponent’s distraction is a great way to deal with someone like this, so much taller and thicker than me. I’ve been fighting guys bigger than me since I was a kid, and I know how to hold my own.
He lashes out, aiming to grab at my hair, and I duck down under his arm and elbow him hard in the gut, relishing the grunt of pain and the way he wheezes when he hunches over.
There’s still too many of them though, and taking out one guy isn’t enough. They’re all piling in on Dad, hitting him like they want to kill him, and I can feel that fear biting at me, urging me to do something.
So I abandon my fight with the first guy and shove my way through the men gathered around my dad. I throw myself in front of him, putting my body between him and his attackers.
“Stop! Leave him the fuck alone!” My voice is harsh, and I shift into a stance that makes it perfectly clear I’m ready to keep fighting to protect him.
But before I can do anything else, strong hands latch onto my arms, dragging me out of the cluster and away from my dad. Someone forces my arms behind my back, and I recognize Levi and one of the guys he was with before during the fight. They’re standing in front of me, and I’m guessing Levi’s other friend is the one who’s got ahold of me.
“What the fuck? Let me go!” I yell, kicking and thrashing, trying to get away from them and back to protecting my father. But I don’t have the element of surprise anymore, and Levi’s friend hauls me up and into his grip, locking his arms around me tight enough that I can’t get free.
