5. Inessa
FIVE
INESSA
The Pit on a Friday night is a revelation.
Forge doesn't want me here. He made that very clear, three separate times during our work session yesterday, he said the Pit was no place for Volkov's daughter, that it was a security risk, that the fighters and the crowd would be impossible to control.
I told him I needed to understand the operation I was helping him protect. That was partly true.
I also told him I'd never been to a fight. That was also partly true.
What I didn't tell him is that I need to see who he is here, in his element, in the underground, in the dark. Because the man who sits at my kitchen table and traces wire transfers is careful, controlled, and restrained. I need to know if there's someone else underneath.
Ghost drives me to the warehouse in his pickup, a truck so clean it looks like he details it daily, which he probably does.
He turns up on his bike some days and that’s equally as sparkling clean.
He's wearing his prospect cut and the quiet, focused expression of a man who takes his duties seriously even when those duties involve babysitting a bratva defector.
The front lot is packed, pickup trucks, motorcycles, a handful of expensive cars that look out of place against the rusted corrugated metal.
The air hits me before the sound does. Louisiana humidity mixed with cigarette smoke and the yeasty warmth of spilled beer.
Then the sound, bass thumping through the warehouse walls, crowd noise leaking from the basement like heat from an oven.
People stream through a side door, disappearing down a staircase into the basement.
Men in jeans and boots, women in shorts and tank tops, a few men in suits who keep their heads down like they don't want to be recognized.
The Pit draws everyone. The respectable and the dangerous, united by the oldest entertainment humans know, watching people fight.
This is the Pit.
Ghost leads me through the crowd. His hand on my elbow, light, guiding, the touch of a guy who understands that his job is to keep me close without making me feel corralled.
People notice me, or rather, they notice someone they don't recognize being escorted by a biker.
Eyes track us. Questions form on faces. A woman at the bar, the bartender glances at Ghost and then at me and files the information away without expression.
The basement is cavernous. Bigger than I expected, the warehouse is massive above ground and the basement extends beyond its footprint, carved from the Louisiana clay, the ceiling supported by concrete pillars painted black.
Low ceiling, concrete floor, fluorescent lights replaced by industrial work lamps that cast everything in harsh yellow and deep shadow.
The fighting ring is a circle of chain link in the center.
Just metal and concrete and the smell of old sweat ground into the floor over years of fight nights.
The crowd presses in around the ring, two hundred people, maybe more.
The air is thick with sweat and beer and something metallic that might be blood or might be adrenaline.
A Wild Savages brother stands near the ring, clipboard in hand, talking to a fighter who's wrapping his knuckles.
He moves like a man who's aware of every person in the room and has already decided what to do about each of them.
And Forge is there.
He's standing at the edge of the ring, arms crossed, watching two fighters circle each other.
He's changed, black jeans, boots, his cut over a plain white t-shirt.
The Wild Savages patch on his back. President flash on the front.
He looks like a different person. Not the careful strategist at my kitchen table.
Something older, harder, and more elemental.
He sees me across the room and I can see his jaw tighten.
I hold his gaze and I don't look away.
The biker with the clipboard appears at my elbow and introduces himself as Knox. "First time at a fight?" He smiles, easy, nothing like the careful way Forge communicates. "Forge is gonna kill me for letting you down here."
“I’m not your responsibility."
“But you're on his radar, sweetheart. That makes you everyone's responsibility."
The fight starts before I can respond. Two men collide in the ring with a sound that makes my stomach lurch, fist on flesh, grunts, the scuff of boots on concrete. One of them is huge, tattooed, built like a refrigerator. The other is leaner, faster, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
The lean fighter is good. Really good. He moves like water, in and out, jabbing, retreating, never staying in range long enough for the bigger man to connect.
The crowd roars. Money changes hands around me.
The woman who runs the betting book works a corner of the basement with a tablet, tracking bets in real time.
The lean fighter drops the big man in the third round. Clean shot to the temple. The big man goes down like someone cut his strings.
The crowd erupts. Knox raises the lean fighter's hand. Money moves and their system works.
And then I feel him behind me.
I don't have to turn around. I know it's Forge because the air changes, thicker, warmer, charged with something I can't name. He stands close enough that I can feel his body heat against my back but he doesn't touch me.
"I told you not to come," he says. Low. Only for me.
"And I told you I'm not your prisoner."
"This isn't about control. There are bratva-connected fighters in tonight's lineup."
"Nobody will recognize me. My father kept me out of this world. I was for business dinners and hotel rooms, not fight nights."
The words come out harder than I intended. I feel him freeze behind me.
"Inessa."
I turn around. He's close, too close. In the yellow light, his face is all angles and shadow. The set of his jaw. His eyes, dark and unreadable, locked on mine.
The crowd noise fades. It's still there, two hundred people shouting, music pounding, another fight being announced — but it recedes to background static. All I can hear is his breathing and mine.
"I need to see this," I say. "I need to see what I'm helping you protect."
"Why?"
"Because I've spent my entire life inside an organization that takes. I want to understand one that builds."
Something shifts in his expression. The hardness cracks, just for a second, and underneath I see the man from my kitchen table, the one who pulled his hand away because touching me would mean something he wasn't ready for.
"Stay with Ghost," he says finally. "Don't go anywhere without him. And if I tell you to leave, you leave. No arguments."
"One argument?”
"Inessa—"
"Fine. No arguments."
He nods. Turns to walk away but I catch his wrist.
We both feel it, the contact, his skin under my fingers, the pulse point I can feel jumping in his wrist. His whole body tenses. He looks down at my hand on his arm, then up at my face.
"Thank you," I say. "For letting me be here."
He doesn't say anything. His gaze finds me for a long moment with an expression that's somewhere between surrender and fury, and then he gently, so gently it makes my chest ache removes my hand from his wrist, holds it for a beat, and lets go.
He walks into the crowd without looking back.
I stand there with the ghost of his pulse still imprinted on my fingertips and realize I'm in such deep trouble. Not bratva trouble. Not even two-weeks-until-Dmitri trouble.
The kind of trouble where a man pulls your hand away because he's afraid of what happens if he doesn't.