Chapter 2
TWO
Doc
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
The Pit wasn’t a place. It was an infection, moving from ruin to ruin—never fixed in place long enough to pin down.
Basements. Warehouses. Once, a gutted church where the blood soaked into ash, it was a fight club, it was people tearing each other apart, and it was mobile as fuck.
Tonight, it was in an old meat-packing plant out beyond the tracks.
I was always early. Habit. Survival. First in meant first chance to assess the exits, the cages, the crowd, and set up my team on the outside. I walked the perimeter, cataloged the shadows, breathed the stale air of rot and bleach until I knew every corner.
The cage was the same as always—a chain-link enclosure, with stained canvas on the floor.
The crowd never cared about aesthetics. They came for blood.
Rules were a joke. No biting, no eye-gouging, no knives, but no one stopped you if it happened.
Men came here to hurt, and I was the one called when the hurting went too far, to mend or remove bodies.
It didn’t matter to me how it went, as long as I got paid.
I watched, and either way, the money was up-front and in my pocket.
Whether they lived or died never mattered to me—in truth, I almost preferred the clean removals over the messy patching.
Less noise. Less whining. More silence and more profit.
Viktor Kane, the man who ran the Pit, didn’t invite me out of the goodness of his heart. He paid me. Twenty thousand for a night’s work to be here, on call for the fighters when things went south, and more importantly, for the cleanup service I provided when blood ran too much. Up-front. Always.
As I’d worked, watched, and learned over the years, I’d become familiar with every character in this complex underground world.
Knowledge was power, and I knew far more than any of them ever realized—who placed bets, who owed Viktor, who fucked whom over on the street, who killed when the fight was done.
The Italians, the Russians, the MC clubs, the gangs, they were in corners of pain and hate, and I played them all.
They thought I was only here to patch the living or clear away the dead, but information flowed my way like blood through arteries, and I cataloged every drop.
“Who’s fighting?” I asked Viktor, part of our negotiation, me pretending to be ignorant, and him blustering about shit he thought I didn’t know. I already knew who was up tonight, but feigning ignorance gave me leverage, and leverage kept me alive.
“Red and Dragan,” Viktor said with what sounded like pride—one big guy in Mikhail Dragan, enforcer for the Russians.
One slightly smaller but wiry guy in Kyle Rourke, aka Red, a newbie to me, but I’d already learned he was a prospect for an MC.
Two men, one big fight, thousands laid down by the desperate, rich and poor alike.
I could watch the purse, the bets, who’d staked what, and who’d be paying with blood when it went wrong.
The Pit felt familiar in all the wrong ways—no different from the cage fights and casual torture from my childhood, where men fought to the death. Those early nights had carved something out of me, hollowed the boy, and left the watcher behind.
Gael never stood a chance in places like this.
Gael had died a long time ago.
Doc was the one who survived.
“Twenty thousand,” I added, naming my price—the same as every other fight.
Viktor snorted a laugh. “Jesus fuck, Doc. Ten.”
“Twenty-five,” I countered, my stare cold, my tone colder.
For a long beat, he held my gaze, then his mouth twitched into something too close to a snarl.
“One night I won’t need you, asshole,” his voice rasped, low and jagged.
He leaned in close enough for me to smell the rot of whiskey.
“Maybe I’ll let my men cut you open, take my refund out of your skin. What do you think about that?”
For one cold second, I let myself wonder what it would feel like to let his threat play out—curiosity edging past fear, detached as if I were already watching it from outside my own body.
His goons flanked him, Big and Bigger, shadows with fists.
One actually growled. I’d seen worse; hell, I’d dealt with worse than the fifty-cent gangster confronting me.
I was prepared, and the syringe tucked inside my sleeve was a quiet reminder I could fuck with anyone who came too close.
Not to mention, my cleaner, Novak, would be in here in an instant if I needed him to fuck people up.
He’d probably enjoy it.
“You could try,” I said, stepping forward and facing down Viktor and his meatheads. My hand stayed out, steady. He slapped the envelope into it—thick, heavy with cash—my usual twenty, I assumed. I didn’t know why he played this negotiating game every fucking time.
His lip curled. “Fuck you, Doc.”
I tucked the envelope into my coat. That was our ritual. He hated paying me; I didn’t give a shit, and money kept us playing our parts. With the money put away, I picked a corner behind a rusted locker and let the chaos of fight night creep in slowly.
My cell buzzed. I checked the cracked screen of my latest burner, thumbed the answer key, and stepped outside into the cold. One of only three people on the planet I cared about was on the line—Molly, my fourteen-year-old niece.
“Uncle Alli,” she whispered, voice pitched low, “you said to call if anything happened. Brad’s left the house again.”
I rolled my eyes—why wasn’t Molly’s twin as sensible as she was? Brad was a little asshole who was pushing every fucking button I had right now. “I’m on it, Mols.”
“I have photos,” she said, and my phone pinged.
A picture of my stupid nephew climbing out of the window appeared on screen.
I flicked to the tracker app—his signal was strong and live at Timmy’s Pizzeria.
I’d fix that too. Brad knew better than to leave the house after dark, whatever the reason. “Did I do okay?” she asked.
Molly was my little spy, a tool, keeping an eye on her family like a hawk—a little version of me without the fucked-up backstory.
Useful, sharp, already learning how to see what others missed.
I cared about her childhood, but only in practical terms—life was fucked, and the sooner she learned that, the longer she’d live.
As I told my sister when she complained, usefulness and experience outweighed innocence.
Still, I knew Molly needed to hear my praise, and I really did mean what I said next.
“You did great, Mols.”
“Doc? Starting!” Big said in a gruff tone, arms crossed over his chest.
I turned my back on him. “I gotta go work now, yeah?”
“Bye, Uncle Alli!”
I turned to face Big and stalked over to him—he had ten inches on me, fifty pounds in weight, and scars and tattoos everywhere. I stood silently in front of him, my gaze flat, until he finally muttered, “Creepy fucker.”
I let the words hang in the air. “And?”
His throat worked as he swallowed, and Bigger shifted uneasily behind him.
I didn’t smile. I didn’t blink. I let the silence stretch until it burned.
Playing into the psychotic phantom they all believed me to be was easy when I had so much experience to call on.
I might not be the medical definition of psychopath or, hell, sociopath, but my life has made me what I am.
A mix of everything no one wanted to know about.
Finally, Big stepped to one side, let me through, and I strolled back into the main room.
They thought I didn’t know their secrets, but I did.
Big with his gambling debt and sideline in drugs, Bigger with the girlfriend he beat when he drank too much—it all flowed to me eventually.
They feared how I never backed down, but if they knew what I had on them and that I could turn their whole worlds to ash, they’d piss themselves.
Knowledge is power.
I know everything.
The noise of the crowd built like a storm, and I walked the perimeter, fed off its rhythm until it sharpened me to the edge I needed.
Calm. Detached. Novak and the rest of my cleanup team were on standby one block away, and I was in control.
That was my strength. Anger clouded the mind, and fear crippled instinct. I couldn’t afford either.
Red was here already, a nervous ball of energy, bouncing on his toes, wearing his freaking Prospect cut for a fight—who the fuck did that?—pupils blown, high on something, daring the world to take him on, cursing that Dragan wasn’t even here to face him.
Mikhail Dragan arrived late, brutal efficiency in human form—dense musculature, no wasted movement.
I watched the way Red tracked him, every glance assessing.
They weren’t exactly predators cut from the same cloth—Red was fifty pounds lighter than Mikhail, and he carried his cockiness as if that was enough of a weapon against the big Russian.
Opposites. This fight would break Red, but he was too high on the potential cash payout to care.
There were rumblings of discontent—more money changing hands—everyone knew this was Dragan’s fight to lose.
I’d seen the big Russian fight enough to know his rhythm, and tonight was no different. He entered stripped bare—taped ribs, bruises. He fought for release, not glory. I knew it because I recognized it. The same fire that had burned me hollow years ago.
He was an undefeated God in the Pit.
That was the thing about this fucked up moveable fighting ring.
It made men think they were gods, and I took satisfaction in watching them fall—I hungered for it, wished it happened more often, because nothing tasted colder or cleaner than when bones cracked and power drained out of a man who thought he was untouchable.
I know I’m fucked.