Hector’s opponent was new—someone named Anton Krupin.
He squinted, staring down at the guy. Had he fought him, it would have been a good match. He could tell by the way the guy moved and held himself that he was an accomplished fighter. For the first time in years, he might have actually stood the risk of losing.
But why would X want him to throw the fight? Most likely it was some sort of sick power play. X had always been good for mind games. It was all about control for him.
The first fight was about to start, so he grabbed Natalie’s hand and squeezed to let her know it was time to move. As soon as the lights in the arena dimmed, they made their way across the catwalk.
Their movement cast shadows on the ceiling, but there was nothing they could do about that except hope that no one looked up.
They made it to the other side without incident and waited. Since Knox was always on the floor during fights, he wasn’t sure when the drop happened, so their plan was to give it thirty minutes before making their way down.
Instead of watching the first fight, he watched Natalie—watched her wince when X’s fighter threw his opponent against the chain-link. Watched her gulp as blood covered the floor of the mat from the guy’s broken nose. Watched her turn her head as the downed fighter was carried out of the cage, unconscious.
He shouldn’t have brought her. It was one thing to tell her about this life, but another for her to witness it firsthand. And this wasn’t the half of it.
It was time, so Knox got Natalie’s attention and climbed down first. The hallway was clear, so he gave a low whistle and Natalie appeared moments later. He gripped her waist to help her jump down the last few feet. She turned and looked up at him with a tight adrenaline-filled smile.
He ushered her into the empty locker room, allowing himself a small sigh of relief when he saw the locker that X normally used was occupied. It was locked with a combination lock.
Natalie took it in her hands and turned the dial slowly, watching it intently. When it got past number fourteen, she stopped and pulled a piece of paper and a pen out of her pocket. Then she started doing math on it.
“What are you doing?” Knox asked.
She held her hand up to silence him and kept going, writing down different numbers until she was left with two columns of numbers and one final number. Then she started spinning the lock. Knox had faith in her, but after seven wrong tries, he started to worry. If they couldn’t get that locker open, then this was all for nothing. He surveyed the room, looking for something he could use to bash the locker open, and his gaze settled on the fire extinguisher.
He took one step toward it when he heard the soft click. He turned to see Natalie taking the lock off the locker with a smug smile on her face.
He never should have doubted her.
Knox quickly opened the locker and pulled out the gray gym bag he’d seen X carry.
He closed his eyes briefly and blew out a breath. Then he slowly unzipped the bag.
“Holy fuck.”
Chapter 19
Natalie peeked inside the bag. She’d never seen so much coke in her life.
Well, to be fair, she’d never seen any coke before. Was this a lot for a dealer? Given Knox’s expression, it certainly was.
“Jackpot,” he said, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
But at the door, Knox froze, putting his hand up to halt Natalie. She strained to hear what had made him stop.
Voices. In the hall. Right outside the door.
Her stomach jumped up to her throat.
“Bathroom stall,” Knox hissed. “Go, go, go.”
Natalie turned on her heel and scurried around the corner from the locker area to three bathroom stalls, going into the farthest one. She hopped onto the toilet seat, flattening her hands against the stall walls to steady herself. She had to duck down to keep her head below the wall.
Knox slid the lock on the stall and joined her on the toilet seat, but there was barely enough room. If they weren’t careful, one of them was going to end up with their foot in the water. That would be disgusting enough, but worse—it would attract the attention of whoever was out there.
The locker room door clanged open, and it sounded like two men entered. They were speaking another language that Natalie guessed was Russian.
Natalie closed her eyes and buried her face in Knox’s T-shirt, concentrating on his scent and hoping the men wouldn’t hear the hammering of her heart that seemed deafening.
Getting caught here was just about the worst thing that could happen to them. Natalie wasn’t worried for herself as much as she was worried for Knox. She’d simply be handed over to her father, but Knox . . . she didn’t even want to think about what fate would await him.
With every slam of the locker, Natalie’s heart lurched. The men kept up a steady stream of conversation that was punctuated with laughter. Finally, the door swooshed closed behind them and their voices drifted away.
Knox quickly jumped down and helped Natalie down as well.
“We’ve got to move.” Knox strode out of the stall and toward the door the men had just exited through. “The fights must be almost over. It must be a short night. Damn it.”
Knox peered out into the hall, and though voices could be heard, he motioned her forward. She scurried to the ladder and took the boost that Knox offered, climbing twice as fast as she had descended. Knox had barely made it through the hole in the ceiling when there were more voices directly below them.
Natalie took it slower, trying to keep her tennis shoes from squeaking on the metal ladder. She wiped her slick palms on her jeans every few rungs. When she made it to the top, she crawled a few feet before collapsing, closing her eyes, and taking several deep breaths. Her hands were shaking as fast as her heart was beating.
Knox cupped her chin in his hand, and she opened her eyes to stare into the dark intensity of his. A few more deep breaths, and her hands stopped shaking. Her heart slowed, but it was still pulsing with adrenaline.
Knox took the lead and she followed, squeezing tightly against the guardrail as they crossed over the arena. Hand over hand. One foot in front of the other. Don’t look down.
She gasped, seeing the bag catch on a jagged edge of the rail, ripping a hole in the side. She lurched forward to catch the contents as they fell. All of the baggies except one landed in her hands. She went down hard on her knee with a loud clang, but kept her eyes open to watch the baggie full of coke plummet down into the arena.
It fell into the middle of the crowd. No one noticed yet.
“Shit,” she whispered. Knox picked her up and shoved the baggies from her hands back into the gym bag, holding the gaping hole closed with his hand.
“Let’s go.” Knox’s voice was quiet, but urgent.
She looked down one last time, partly expecting half the audience to have guns pointed in their direction.
What she didn’t expect to see was her father sitting next to X.
Her eyes bulged and she stumbled, knocking into Knox. He turned, and she pointed, still gaping. Why was her father here?
He looked perfectly comfortable and at ease, like he was surrounded by the socialites at a charity dinner rather than rubbing elbows with the local mob at an illegal, underground fighting ring.
“We’ve got to go.” Knox grabbed her hand.
She and Knox hurried along the catwalk, their footsteps making a hollow dinging sound that matched the racing of her heart. He went down the ladder first, and she didn’t wait for him to get very far before she started her descent.
Once back on the ground, Knox removed the chair from under the doorknob and listened for a moment. He slowly opened the door, checking the hallway before motioning her forward. Twenty feet and they’d be out.
Knox took the time to lock the outer door behind them, and they escaped into the shadows of the city.
Knox and Natalie stopped at a twenty-four-hour diner and locked themselves in the unisex bathroom stal
l. As Knox watched the coke swirl around in the toilet on its way down to the sewer, he couldn’t help but think: what a waste. Hundreds of thousands—maybe even millions—of dollars just gone.
He’d never been tempted to join the drug trade, but for the first time he was beginning to understand the appeal of it. And who knows? If X had been dealing back when Knox first joined him, Knox might have ended up involved in it, too. His dumb adolescent self had thought that X walked on water, the result of X being the first fatherlike figure to pay him a decent amount of attention.
Knox dumped the last of the coke into the toilet. As soon as the water in the bowl stilled and he could tell it had all been washed away, he opened the door for Natalie and they quickly exited the restaurant.
But not before the smell of greasy bacon and maple syrup filled his nostrils. His stomach growled in protest, and he caught Natalie looking wistfully at the spread on a patron’s table as they passed.
He wished they were a normal couple, maybe visiting the diner for a snack after a late movie. Then as quickly as the thought entered his mind, he dismissed it.
He and Natalie would never be a normal couple. If things were normal for them, they would never have met. They would never be together.
And he wanted that for her. It was bad enough he’d had to take her to the fight. He didn’t want her involved in or knowing about the seedier parts of life.
But for him? He couldn’t imagine life without her.
He tossed the ripped and empty gym bag into a Dumpster and then took her hand in the darkness. He told himself it was to keep her close, for her safety, but he was a damn liar.
He just wanted her close. Period.
He guided her down the familiar streets, stepping over a pothole in the sidewalk that he’d dodged without even thinking nearly every day on his morning run. This route would lead them past the back door of the gym, but that didn’t matter. No one would be there.
Still, his body tensed as they approached and he pulled Natalie closer.
Two men appeared from a side street just several yards in front of them. They were dressed casually, in jeans and T-shirts, but something about them put Knox on edge.
They stopped at the back door to the gym.
“Shit.” Knox pulled Natalie to a crouching position behind a parked car. She peered around the bumper and he tugged her back into hiding.
“Do you recognize them?” she asked.
Knox shook his head. There was no reason for anyone to be at the gym at this time of night. Anyone with any allegiance to X was required to attend the fight in a show of solidarity.
It was one of the things Knox had liked back in the beginning of his time with X. They were like one big fucking family.
The taller of the two men lit a cigarette, the flame piercing the darkness, while he eyed the streets. The second man crouched at the drainpipe next to the gym door, sticking his hand up in it.
What the fuck?
The man stood, a crumpled envelope in his hand. He reached into it and removed a stack of bills, then handed them to his friend.
“That’s it?” the tall man asked, his voice laced with disgust.
“X is getting stingy on us.”
“Fuck. He’d better give us something soon. The captain is riding my ass.”
As the men walked toward the car Knox and Natalie were hiding behind, they crept around the car to stay out of sight. Right before they rounded the back bumper, Natalie gasped loudly.
The men stopped and Knox pulled Natalie close to him, coming up with a plan for the best way to take the men out.
The tall man dropped his cigarette on the ground, not bothering to stamp out the still-lit ashes. He scanned the area.
“It was nothing,” the second man said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
They turned and continued down the road and in the distance, a car engine started. Knox didn’t relax until he could no longer hear it.
He pulled them into a standing position and they doubled their speed as they traversed the remainder of the south side.
“Sorry,” Natalie said. “But I recognized those guys. I met them at the last gala I attended.”
Knox frowned down at her. “Who are they?”
“Cops.”
Chapter 20
As soon as they got back to the house, Knox turned to Natalie.
“Cops? Are you sure?”
Natalie nodded. “Positive. They were with the chief of police at the Kids Literacy Network gala the night I left home. He introduced them to me. They’d just been promoted.”
“Do you know their names?”
“I can’t remember offhand, but if you give me your phone I’m sure I can find their names.”
Knox handed over the phone and paced while her fingers flew over the tiny screen.
“Schafer and Vasquez. They’re both lieutenants.”
Knox put his hands on his hips and stared at her, letting his thoughts play out in his mind.
Once upon a time, X had shared almost everything with Knox. Even today, Knox knew more about X’s business than he’d ever wanted to know. But the one thing X had never shared was the identity of the cops on his payroll. X simply referred to them as “my cops.”
And now Knox had that information. It might not be enough to bring X down, but it sure as hell was enough to fuck up his empire.
Natalie clutched at Knox’s hand as they traipsed through the graveyard. Though her mother was buried here, she hadn’t visited in years. Visiting loved ones’ graves might bring comfort to some, but Natalie knew her mother’s essence was not lingering six feet beneath the ground.
She wasn’t particularly religious, but she liked to think her mother watched over her, wherever she was.
Even still, she gripped a bouquet of partially withered flowers, the best they could find at the local convenience store.
“It’s right over there,” she said, gesturing toward an area near a collection of dogwood trees.
Luckily for them, her mother’s grave was within sight of Eleanor Simmons’s late husband’s.
She felt like a creeper, coming to encroach on a widow’s time at a grave, but they’d run out of options.
Natalie leaned the flowers up against her mother’s headstone while Knox stood a few feet away. She ran her fingers over the smooth marble that spelled out her mother’s name and the date showing that she’d been taken too soon from this world.
She’d told herself she wouldn’t cry, but she was powerless to stem the tears that filled her eyes. She felt Knox’s hand on her shoulder and she put her hand on top of his.
She might have been alone before, but she definitely wasn’t alone now.
She rose and they settled on a bench nearby to wait.
It was only when she blinked her tears away that she wondered if Knox’s parents were buried here.
He shook his head when she asked. “They were both cremated.”
A black car pulled to a stop on the road that meandered through the cemetery. Natalie sat up straight, watching intently. Minutes went by. Five, ten. Finally after fifteen minutes, the driver opened his door, then circled around to the rear door to help the passenger out of the car.
It was Eleanor Simmons in the flesh.
The fact that she’d arrived so soon gave Natalie a glimmer of hope. She’d been prepared to stake out the cemetery all day. But she was taking this to be a good omen.
The driver held onto Eleanor’s elbow as she climbed the slight hill to the grave. Natalie was struck by how elderly she was. Had her grandparents been alive, they would be roughly the same age. She’d pictured Eleanor as being younger—probably because that’s how she pictured her grandparents since they’d died years ago.
Though she had had difficulty walking, Eleanor stood straight at the grave while her driver retreated to the car to give her privacy. She pulled out a rosary and closed her eyes, her fingers running over the beads.
“We can’t interrupt her now,” Natali
e murmured.
Knox shifted next to her. He’d been tense since they’d arrived, no doubt because they were out in the open. Without crouching behind a gravestone, there was nowhere for them to conceal themselves.
But despite the urgency of needing to talk to her, Natalie would not disturb her like this. She’d give the widow time to finish her prayer.
A rustle behind them and off to the left caught her attention. She was just glancing over her shoulder when Knox said, “Oh, shit.”
Oh, shit was right. A black SUV had halted on the drive on the other side of the cemetery and two men dressed in the black uniforms her father preferred were running across the grounds toward them.
But the men’s gazes weren’t focused on them. No, they were looking at Eleanor, who still had her eyes closed while her mouth moved in silent prayer.
“They’re going for her, not us,” Natalie said frantically. “We’ve got to help her.”
Knox’s mouth was pressed into a grim line. “You get Eleanor. I’ll take care of them.”
Natalie shot off the bench at a run. The commotion caused Eleanor to open her eyes and they widened at the sight of Natalie charging at her.
“Mrs. Simmons,” Natalie said, out of breath. “There’s no time to explain, but we’ve got to get you out of here.”
Natalie looked over her shoulder to where Eleanor’s eyes were trained. Knox had one of the men pressed up against a headstone. The other was on the ground, but not for long. He was climbing to his feet.
Oh, God. Keep him safe.
She trusted that Knox was able to handle himself—he’d proven that to her time and time again—but her heart still lurched in her chest.
Natalie put her hand under the woman’s elbow to guide her down the hill to her car. Eleanor could not move quickly and shuffled along in a way that indicated she probably should use a walker or a cane.
Her driver emerged from the car and took the woman’s arm, shoving Natalie aside. “Mrs. Simmons, what’s going on?”
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