Chapter 45 Lance
Lance
Cassandra lied.
I knew she would. I knew it from the moment I walked out of Leo’s brownstone, from the way Cassandra’s hand settled on my shoulder like she was guiding a dog back to its kennel. She said no more cages. She said I was done fighting. She said I’d sit at the table now, not beneath it.
But it’s five days later, and I’m in a warehouse in Southie with my hands taped and a cage erected in the center of a concrete floor.
“One more,” she said this morning. “A demonstration. To show my associates what they’re investing in.”
“You said I was done.”
“I said you were mine. There’s a difference.”
So here I am. Excalibur, back in the cage. The only question is whether Genevieve and Leo made it out, whether Cassandra kept that part of the deal, and the not knowing is worse than anything they could do to my body.
God, Genevieve. I close my eyes and see her face. The way she looked at me in that motel room. The way she said my name like it meant something. The way she chose me, even when choosing me meant losing everything else.
I left her.
I walked away like a coward, letting Cassandra cart me away, my humiliation ritual in full force.
She probably hates me for it, and I deserve it.
But I’d do it again to save her life.
I soothe myself by picturing her a year from now, head chef at Cameliard, her dream, free and happy and smiling. Some guy will inevitably come along and see what I see, that she’s fucking perfect, and sweep her off her feet.
Jealousy rips through my chest, and I let it swallow me whole because it’s better than the alternative—that Cassandra didn’t keep her end of the deal.
The warehouse is industrial. High ceilings, exposed ductwork, the kind of place that gets rented for a night and scrubbed clean by morning.
The cage is smaller than the Lye’s. Chain-link bolted to a steel frame, no padding on the floor, just concrete with a drain in the center that tells me everything I need to know about what’s happened here before.
It reminds me of when I first started fighting for them, before Freddy had the Lye infrastructure built and convinced Art to come on board.
There’s a crowd, maybe forty people. Expensive clothes, expensive watches. The same breed of spectator that filled the Lye’s amphitheater, except these faces are unfamiliar. Cassandra’s people, not Brutus’s. A different city, a different network, but the same sickness.
I stretch my shoulders and roll my neck and try not to think about the fact that I don’t know who I’m fighting or what happens after.
Then Art walks in.
He comes through a service entrance at the far end of the warehouse, and my chest seizes. He’s in a dark coat, hands in his pockets, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. Behind him, being guided by two of Cassandra’s men, is Percy.
Everything in me goes cold.
Percy’s eyes are still swollen from his last fight, and his face is pale, and he’s scanning the room the way I taught him to scan rooms, looking for exits, counting threats. When his gaze lands on me through the chain-link, he stops walking.
“No,” he says. “No, no, no. That’s—you can’t—”
One of the men shoves him forward.
“Lance!” Percy’s voice cracks. “What the fuck is this?”
I grip the chain-link with both hands and look at Art.
He won’t meet my eyes.
“Art.”
Nothing.
“Art, look at me.”
He lifts his head, and what I see there guts me. It’s not the bitterness from the Calloway estate. It’s not the cold fury of a man who ordered me to lose. It’s grief. Raw and open and the kind that tells me he knows exactly what he’s done by bringing Percy here.
“I didn’t know,” he says. “They told me it was a standard bout. They didn’t tell me it was you.”
“And now that you know?”
His jaw works. His eyes drop.
I scoff, the little bit of my heart left cracking down the center. “That’s what I thought.”
“You were my brother,” he says. “And you took her from me, anyway.”
“Fuck. You. You were my brother, and I was your property.”
He breaks eye contact, his cheeks flushing.
“Maybe. But at least I’m not the one in the cage.”
He moves away, and takes up a spot at the back of the room, alternating between glaring at me, and staring at his phone like he can’t decide which one to focus on.
This is what they do. This is what they’ve always done. They take everything good and twist it until it breaks.
I turn away and think about Genevieve.
Her smile. Her laugh. The way she counts to seven when she’s trying to hold onto a moment. The way she felt under my hands and in my heart.
She was the best thing I ever had, even if I only got to have her for a moment.
Percy is brought to the cage. They open a gap in the chain-link and push him through, and he stumbles onto the concrete, catching himself with one hand. When he straightens, I spot the knife.
It’s tucked into the waistband of his shorts, handle visible. They didn’t even try to hide it.
Percy notices me looking at it, and his face crumbles. “I’m so sorry, Lance. I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too, kid.”
The crowd roars, but all I can see is Percy. All I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears.
And Art…
For just a second, our eyes meet, and something flickers across his face.
The bell rings.
Percy moves first.
He’s faster than I expect. His fist connects with my ribs before I can block, and I stagger back.
I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t want to die, either. So, I throw a punch, but keep it soft. He comes back with a hook that catches my jaw and I taste blood.
The crowd is screaming. Chanting. They want carnage. They want one of us to break.
Percy hits me again.
And again, I let him.
Because maybe this is how it ends. Maybe this is what I deserve for all the people I’ve hurt and killed in the ring. All the damage I’ve done.
Maybe it’s time for Excalibur to break.
“Fight back,” Percy begs. “Goddammit, Lance, fight back.”
“No.”
“They said if I kill you, I go free. They said my debt gets wiped, and so does my dad’s.”
I swallow. He lands a kick to my thigh.
“Your form’s still trash,” I say, my eyes burning. “Fix it before the next guy, yeah?”
His jaw tenses, and a tear tracks down his cheek.
I grab him, putting him in a bear hug. “Percy, listen to me.”
“You taught me everything. You’re the only person who ever gave a shit about me down there. I’m not going to—”
“Whatever happens, keep your hands up. Yeah?”
His eyes fill. “But you’re Excalibur. It can’t…it can’t end like this.”
“Hands up. That’s an order.”
He nods, and I let him break the hold. He wipes his face, and raises his fists in front of him the way I taught him.
The crowd noise swells. Brutus stands from a back table and raises a glass. Cassandra’s not here, of course. A ghost, like she always has been.
“Fight me, Lance,” Percy says. “Don’t make me do this.”
Something shifts in the crowd. The murmurs get louder. I can feel Art’s gaze on me.
“Do what you’ve gotta do. I’m not fighting you, kid.”
Percy pulls the knife.
His hand is shaking so badly the blade catches the light in uneven flashes, and he holds it out in front of him like he doesn’t know which end to point at me.
“I don’t want to do this,” he says.
“I know.”
He’s sobbing now. The knife trembles in his fist.
“I don’t want to be this,” he says.
“Sometimes you have to choose. And it’s okay, Percy. If anyone’s about to take me out, I’m glad that it’s you.”
He breathes in deep.
“Now do what I taught you, and never let them see you break.”
“Hey! Hey!”
Both of us turn toward the noise.
There’s commotion. Shouting. The crowd shifts, bodies turning toward the entrance.
And then the world explodes.
The doors blow inward with a force that shakes the walls, and then there are bodies pouring in wearing tactical gear with FBI in white letters across their chests, and there are voices screaming commands, and there are weapons raised, and the crowd scatters like roaches when the lights come on.
Percy drops the knife. It clatters on the concrete, and he drops to his knees, and he’s heaving up these guttural sobs.
I’m over him in a second, my body between him and whatever’s coming, because that’s the only thing I know how to do.
Protect the kid. Protect the people who can’t protect themselves.
“Hands up! On the ground!”
“He’s a kid!” I shout, my arms around Percy, shielding him. “He’s eighteen years old, he’s a victim, don’t you fucking touch him.”
Someone grabs my arm and I almost swing before I clock the FBI vest and the badge. “Lance Calloway?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re safe, sir. It’s over.”
The words don’t register. They bounce off me like stones skipping on water, because nothing is over, because Cassandra is somewhere and she needs to be in cuffs, and Brutus was toasting me, and Percy is shaking against my chest, and Art is…
My hands won’t stop moving.
That’s the thing nobody tells you about the moment the fight ends.
Your body doesn’t know. Six years of training, of reading a room for exits and weapons and the flicker of lights that tells you when to go down—it doesn’t just switch off because someone in a vest says you’re safe.
My fingers are still curled into fists around Percy’s jacket.
My shoulders are still braced for the next hit.
My jaw aches from clenching, and I can hear my own heartbeat louder than the shouting, louder than the boots on concrete, louder than anything.
Percy’s face is pressed against my chest, and he’s saying something, but I can’t make it out over the ringing in my ears.
I hold him tighter and try to breathe, slowly—in with four beats and out with six—except the only number my brain can land on is seven and that makes me think of Genevieve, and thinking of Genevieve makes my ribs crack open wider than Percy’s punches ever could.
Is she alive? Did Cassandra keep her word?
I don’t know. And the not knowing is a wound no one can stitch.
An agent crouches in front of us, hands visible, palms up, like he’s approaching something feral. “Sir, we need to move you to a secure area. Can you stand?”