few of the servers gathering drinks, my teeth grinding as I climbed a private set of stairs to make my way to the viewing box.
Lisbeth walked up to me immediately, her body pressing against mine as I wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“He’ll be fine,” she said against my chest. “He’s as mean as you.”
I laughed at the comment. I wasn’t mean. Stubborn as a fucking mule, yes. But mean? Not to her.
Not unless she deserved it.
“I just told him Haley is no longer under contract. If that doesn’t give him a reason to snap the other guy’s neck, I don’t know what will.”
Craning her neck to look up at me, Lisbeth smiled, but her eyes told a far different story.
There was genuine fear there. I wanted to wipe it away, but there were no guarantees in these fights, no promise that things would go our way.
It didn’t help that a voice behind me slithered across my senses, an oily presence that I would find a way to expel from the planet just as soon as I knew it wouldn’t bring Lisbeth and me down with him.
“Isn’t this sweet?”
Tucking Lisbeth next to me, I turned to lock eyes with a dead man walking, the announcer’s voice calling five minutes over the loudspeakers as my jaw ticked with the very real threat that I would kill Moritze right here and now.
The asshole straightened his spine, his lips pulling into a smirk that told me he was too stupid to realize when death itself stared him in the face.
His god-awful jewelry flashed beneath the light, his oily presence so slick I felt slime against my tongue.
“Were you going to let me in, or will we be standing here eye-fucking each other all night?”
I considered option three: breaking his neck and pretending like it was a nasty spill down the stairs that killed him.
A hand landed on my shoulder as if intuiting my thoughts, and I turned to see Franklin and Benny at my back, a look of warning in both of their expressions.
Standing down took effort, but with an audience just outside the box who could easily see what went on, I didn’t have the luxury of ripping his fucking heart from his chest and feeding it to him.
By the time I backed off, keeping hold of Lisbeth to drag her as far away from Moritze as possible, the gates into the ring were sliding open, both Jacob and his opponent slipping out from the shadows to stand before the guard who read one of them their last rites.
“Do you both understand that this fight is to the death? One winner. One loser. Once you step inside and the gates close, there is no turning back.”
Lisbeth was a quiet presence beside me as the two men agreed to the terms, her body going still when the guard stepped aside to let them into the ring.
I watched Jacob with laser focus, the audience falling silent as the fighters turned to each other to begin a dance that would end in blood.
When the first punch was thrown by Jacob’s opponent, Jacob dodged with such fluid movement that I released the breath I’d been holding, choosing instead to have faith in the only person I knew could match me in the ring.
To say this particular fight was brutal was an understatement, the minutes passing with a molasses crawl as Jacob dodged one blow after another, his shoulder and arm moving with such vicious strength that you could feel the crunch of bone each time he connected.
Already, blood had sprayed to the dirt beneath them, his opponent not yet staggering despite the hits he’d taken to his chest and face.
The crowd roared around us, the chorus of shouts and jeers like white noise against the pounding beat of my heart.
The fighters circled again, sweat dripping off them, their bodies moving with such speed that it was difficult to keep up.
When Jacob took a hit to the abdomen, my body tensed, teeth grinding, my eyes narrowing on the way he limped back on an ankle he swore had healed.
The asshole fighting him didn’t miss the weakness.
Franklin and I turned to look at each other. Benny swore under his breath. My gaze returned to the ring to watch Jacob lunge forward in a move Mortize’s man didn’t expect.
He didn’t go down, though. Their height and weight damn near equal.
Breaking apart, they circled again, and when Jacob struck out with a punch that would have broken the other man’s