Savage: A Bad Boy Fighter Romance (9 page)

“Valerie and I will be married! The invites are going out tonight and I hope to see many of you celebrating with us on our joyous occasion! Now, let’s hear a round of applause for our victor, and for my lovely bride!”

He makes a real show of kissing Valerie and I don’t think the woman even fucking notices what’s being done to her. She looks like she’s completely checked out.

Adrienne’s clutching her chest like her heart has just broken in it, shattered to pieces. I can feel her pain from here.

The crowd erupts in applause and I spit out a mouthful of coagulating blood. Ninety-eight and ninety-nine are even more fucking bitter than ninety-seven was.

C
obb has declared
an ultimate victory over my father’s legacy, by claiming my mother as his new bride.

I just watched the man I… have feelings for, kill, or at least seal the fate of two others with his bare hands. Another thing I might not ever recover from. Seeing him stand next to their bodies, his apologetic eyes finding mine in the crowd, might be a sight I won’t forget for the rest of my life.

I barely remember how I get back to my room that night. I think I’m escorted by Sage, who makes sure I’m alright – dazed, but alright – before leaving me locked up as usual.

Lying on my back on my bed, my heart and mind both pound with the news we just got. I remember the look of sheer terror in my mother’s eyes when Cobb declared he was marrying her. There was a kind of sad acceptance behind it, as if she’d known about this for a while now.

I hurt for my mother and the life we had with my father. Now, I know for sure those days are over once and for all.

That night, I don’t get any sleep. I toss and turn the entire night, my mind plagued with horrible nightmares with one main character always wearing the mask of a killer.

Wilson Cobb.

He even haunts me in my dreams.

* * *

T
he house seems
to be in a sort of haze after Cobb breaks the big news. As I stare at the maid that delivers my breakfast next morning, I wonder how the staff is taking the announcement. She avoids my gaze and makes sure to make no contact with me, be it verbal or physical. A longing to see Hannah again fills me up, and I wonder whether I’ll ever meet her again.

She’s done so much for me, and only got punished in the process. I make a promise to myself to give Hannah a better life one day. A future she deserves, and not one where she’s terrified for her own life every step of the way.

Once the maid disappears, I sit down for my solitary breakfast. My heart almost stops beating when I see an envelope on the tray in front of me. For a moment, I think it might be from Memphis, but in the next second, I recognize the handwriting on it as my mother’s.

Rushing to get it, I take a letter from the envelope with shaking fingers. My eyes skim over the contents, needing to know whether my mother is okay. I haven’t had any contact with her, apart from the dinner we had together with Cobb where he completely lost it, and seeing her last night at the fight. I can only imagine it’s worse than that most of the time she’s alone with him.

The letter is nothing but a compulsory note, nothing of the vibrant and sweet woman that has been my mother for my whole life in the words. Wilson has as if managed to suck all the life out of her, draining her until she’s nothing but a lifeless doll.

Mom wrote about the marriage, some nonsensical things about the dress I’ll have to wear. At the end of the note, she mentions meeting up with the designer, and how she’d like me to come as well. I allow a smile to appear on my face. Maybe we’ll get a chance to speak after all.

Our meeting will happen right after breakfast, so I hurry through my meal and get ready in a rush, desperate to talk to my mother before the wedding takes place. Like clockwork, there is a knock on my bedroom door thirty minutes later, but this time it’s not only to get my tray. I follow a guard down to the salon.

The place is overflown by fabric. A small, thin to the point of being gaunt, woman races around the room, measuring this and that. A few other people, I assume maids, loiter in the space quietly, making sure everything’s taken care of.

My heart surges when I see Hannah standing in the corner. Her eyes are averted, and she looks tired and worn out. Nothing like the shy, but vibrant in her own way young woman I’d come to love over the past few weeks. I think about approaching her when she turns slightly, and I get a better look at her.

She’s clutching a piece of fabric in her hands, one of which is covered in gauze. I stare at it for a long time, making out a small blood stain on it. Bile rises in my throat as I remember Memphis’ words.

He hurt her. He made me watch.

With disgust, I realize Cobb chopped off another of Hannah’s finger. Hannah looks at me for a second, and we stay like that, our gazes meeting across the room with so many things left unsaid.

I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.

I mouth the words, and she smiles softly. It’s nothing, but I don’t dare do anything else. Cobb has eyes everywhere in this place, and I don’t want to piss him off even more, for all our sakes.

“Adrienne!”

My little exchange with Hannah is interrupted by my mother’s voice calling out to me, and I turn around to face her. She’s standing in the middle of the room, attended to by several assistants and the designer herself.

I approach her with a smile, my stomach aflutter with butterflies at seeing her again.

“Mom,” I call back. “You look… beautiful.”

And in fact, she does. Even though she’s thin as hell, her tired eyes have a new sparkle to them as she twirls in her dress. It’s pretty, covered in intricate lace on the bodice and sweeping into a long veil in the back.

Mom steps down and approaches me, the assistants that were working on her dress scattering around the room. The designer herself passes around us, and I furrow my brows as I look at her. She looks vaguely familiar, and she gives me a knowing smile before disappearing to fiddle with some fabric.

Next thing I know, I’m scooped up into my mother’s arms, and I let the familiar feeling overtake me for a second. Despite everything we’ve been through in the past few weeks, she’s still my mother, and I love her dearly. I just wish we could be free of the monster she’s now set to marry.

“Are you alright, Adrienne?” she asks me, the worry plainly visible on her face.

I know I need to lie for her sake. She’s already worried sick, and even if I tell her I’m fine, I’m sure she knows there’s something more going on.

“I’m fine, mom,” I tell her with a genuine smile. “I’m so happy to see you. Can we talk?”

My mother turns around and asks the rest of the women in the room to give us a moment in her charming way. I’m shocked to see all of them filing out of the room. I expected them to be on strict orders to supervise, but it seems as if we’ll get a moment alone, after all.

Once we’re alone, mom turns to face me, her fingers traveling down my cheek. I lean into her touch, so happy to be reunited with her, even though the circumstances are less than ideal.

“Why did you accept his proposal, mom?” I whisper.

I know I shouldn’t question her actions. But I also know, deep down, she certainly doesn’t want to marry Wilson Cobb. My father was the love of her life, and I know she would decline the marriage proposal, even in the state she’s in now.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she tells me with a small smile. “Even if I declined, he would’ve found a way for me to comply. And he would’ve hurt us both as punishment.”

Her words ring true, and I know she’s right. I nod slowly as she walks me over to a sitting area in the salon, delicately taking a seat next to me on a velvet loveseat.

“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about your father,” she tells me. “Not at all, darling.”

“I know,” I mutter. “It just hurts, everything that he’s making us do.”

“I know, baby.” She smooths down my hair lovingly. “I know it hurts, but there’s nothing we can do right now. But soon, there might be.”

I give her a curious look.

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t my designer just wonderful?” Mom smiles broadly, and I follow up with a confused quirk of the brow. “I used to know her in my college days, you know. She’s an old friend of mine.”

“Okay.” I give her a long look, trying to see what she’s getting at.

Mom sighs and swings her feet. I glance down to see the corner of the rug that’s placed on the floor slightly crooked. My eyes focus on a latch in the floor, and my mouth falls slightly open.

Her own gaze is filled with mischief as she kicks the carpet to the side a bit more, revealing a trap door in the floor.

“On the day of the wedding,” my mother continues, “There will be a small window of opportunity for you, darling. I want you to remember this.”

Her foot taps on the trap door and I grin at her. She’s trying to tell me something, and not sound too suspicious in case someone’s eavesdropping on us. She just showed me an exit from the house. A way to escape. I don’t know what she’s planning on doing, but I know she’s plotting a way out of here.

She winks at me before making sure the carpet’s back in place. Then, she gets up from the loveseat and claps her hands.

“Now, why don’t we have you try on your dress?” she asks me with enthusiasm in her voice. “I chose a forget-me-not color, darling. It will look beautiful with your coloring.”

I grin at her as I get up myself, smoothing down my shirt.

“That sounds great, mom.”

And before I can stop myself, I move in for a hug. She clutches me closely to her chest and I relish the moment before the rest of the women fill the room with their chatter and commotion.

In that short moment, we are just mother and daughter… and we have a devious plan.

I
grit
my teeth as I walk down the hallway, flexing and unflexing my fingers. I’m dressed in a black V-neck tee and worn blue jeans. I have a pair of black shoes on I haven’t worn since I stepped into Wilson Cobb’s office years ago. There’s this odd sense of déjà vu lingering around me and I don’t particularly enjoy it.

Things have been fucking weird in this house lately. I’m not sure what’s real and what’s a conspiracy theory at this point, so I’m mindfully careful of everything and everyone at the moment. Since Wilson’s wedding announcement, everyone seems to have gone crazy.

The weirdest thing, and the most disconcerting, is what I first heard and then saw with my own damn eyes from Adrienne. After the fight, or two days after it, anyway, she was finally brought to me. I was fucked up to all hell, with both my eyes almost swollen shut and my wound still bleeding. Sex was a no-go, we both knew that, but we sat and talked and I’m still not sure what to make of it.

She smuggled a small green notebook into my room under her shirt and showed it to me. There, in clean black ink, I saw my father’s name written several times, dates and scribbled notes along with it. It was Adrienne’s dad’s notebook and the last mentions of my father were from a week before he and my mother were murdered.

It had to be him, not just a namesake, because I recognized the names of some of the locations. As far as I knew, my dad ran errands for people. In my juvenile mind, I had figured he was some sort of a glorified messenger, but now I know that’s not true. Somehow, Adrienne’s father and mine are connected.

And that means Wilson Cobb is involved in all of it.

Adrienne promised to keep searching through the materials she got from her mother, but I don’t need any more proof. Scouring through my memories, I already know too much. Wilson’s underground fighting ring business was only getting its feet off the ground when my parents died, but in a short while, it had grown to be a massive, scary thing, with large sums of money rolling around in it. By the time I got into it, it was booming.

I remember that Wilson stopped me mid-sentence when I came to see him the first time. He already knew who I was.

Now I know why that is.

I don’t know why and I don’t know for what reason, but of this I am sure – Wilson Cobb was behind the murder of my parents. There are just too many things coming together and if I know anything, then it’s that a rat like Wilson is exactly the kind of man to solve his problems by murdering the people who get in his way.

A muscle in my cheek twitches and I run my hand over the long scar on my hand as Sage shows me through the mansion. I’ve been summoned. That never happens.

“Behave yourself,” he tells me, as we stop in front of Wilson’s office door.

It’s practically gilded. Ridiculous.

I release my fists as Sage glances down at them and give him a winning smile. He doesn’t buy it for a second, I can tell.

“Sure thing, rosebud.”

He pushes the door open for me with a glare that could melt through ice, and I slip inside, steeling myself against what’s going to come next.

“Angel! My favorite! Come in, come in! Have a seat,” Wilson greets me, pointing at a chair opposite from him.

Wordlessly, I take the seat offered to me, right across from the big mahogany table he’s seated behind. He’s leaning back in a high-backed leather chair, watching me closely with those beady blue eyes of his. There’s a Glock on the table, the metal glinting from a recent cleaning. I’m not sure whether it’s there to impress or intimidate me, but I take it as the sign that it is – that he’d be more than happy to shoot me if I gave him a reason to.

“How are you? Healing well?” he asks, pretending to care.

We both know he doesn’t. Not past what I can make him.

“Yup,” I answer shortly, studying him with newfound hatred.

I didn’t think I could despise this guy more but with what Adrienne has told me, I can barely contain myself around him. It’s like I’m one seething container of repressed anger at the moment, just waiting to lash out at him.

“Good, good,” he says absently, almost a bit disappointed. “I took a look at our records and it seems that you’re up to ninety-nine victories now. That’s very impressive, Angel. I’m proud,” Wilson says.

“Thanks,” I counter.

He can take his pride and wipe his ass with it for all I care.

“Your contract says that after you’ve won one-hundred fights, you can be set free. I thought we should have a small chat about that beforehand, seeing as the next fight will be the last one in the tournament. If Lady Luck is on your side, it might just be your last!”

The way he grins at me tells me that it will be, one way or another. I’m more than certain that he’d be equally as happy to see me die in a pool of blood and guts at this point. Looking back, shit starts to make a lot more sense now. I always thought Wilson took a special interest in me, even when I hadn’t fought my way to the top of the dog pile yet.

I guess he wanted to keep an eye on the one man who had a reason to be so close to him but didn’t even know it yet.

All the times I could have killed him over the years play back in my mind and I regret every missed opportunity. I came here voluntarily, having nowhere else to go, but the reason that was is sitting right in front of me, dressed in a three-thousand dollar suit and smirking like the big bad wolf.

“I don’t want my freedom,” I say, and finally I see surprise on his expression.

He wasn’t ready for that.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “It’s in your contract! Your freedom and a million dollars. Earned fair and square.”

I’d almost forgotten about the money. Funny how things that used to look like incentives stop mattering when your life turns into a series of scenes designated to kill you or have you kill someone else.

I shrug.

“My contract says that I can have my freedom, or the equivalent of it. I want someone else’s freedom.”

Wilson frowns, but realization dawns on his expression soon enough. He swings back with the chair a little, touching his fingers together as he considers me with curiosity. I’ve surprised him again. Aren’t I just full of curve balls today.

“And that someone is…?”

“Adrienne. I want you to let Adrienne go. I’ll renew my contract, fight another hundred battles. You can keep the money, just let her go. That’s all I want.”

My scar throbs as I stare into his face. He purses his lips, the corners downturned. A tense silence fills the room and I don’t say a fucking word. It takes too damn much to keep from hurling myself across the table and choking the life out of him. If I had to keep talking with him, I might not be able to contain myself.

And Sage would be so disappointed in me. I smirk a little at the thought.

“Fine,” he finally says, and I doubt he means it. “Win the next fight, and Adrienne gets her freedom in return for yours. But I will not let her leave until after the wedding ceremony. You wouldn’t want her to miss her own mother’s happy day, now would you?”

Fair enough.

“How can I trust that you’ll honor the deal?” I ask.

“I’m a man of my word!” Wilson gasps, clutching his chest theatrically. “You should know me well enough, Angel.”

Yeah, I fucking know him. I know that he’s the first rat to get off a sinking ship, and that he’s a vile creature who has been allowed to cause pain to too many people for too fucking long.

But I guess I’ve brought in too much money. I’ve been too good at this. Losing me would not be in his best interest, or so I have to believe.

Begrudgingly, I nod.

“It’s settled, then,” he announces, back to grinning easily. “I will have the papers drawn and you can sign them later tonight. Pleasure doing business with you, Angel.”

We both stand up and he reaches his hand to me across the table. I look at it. All those years ago, I took that fucking hand and I signed my life over to him. If I touch him this time, I might just rip it from its socket.

So I turn around and walk out, Sage meeting me in the hallway.

“Let’s go,” I tell him. “I have a fight to get ready for.”

Number one-hundred is going to earn me a freedom. The only one that matters. Adrienne’s.