Chapter 10 – Silas - Needle in the Vein #2
Warmer. Metallic. It smells like aggression trapped under cologne and ambition. The walls are concrete. The cage at the center is iron. The lighting is blood-red, pulsing above the ring like a heartbeat.
A crowd’s already gathered, tightly packed, well-dressed, lips stained with alcohol and anticipation. This is Drazen’s real playground. Not the posh booths upstairs.
Here, everything costs something you can’t buy back.
Renzo gives me a nod. Bishop just grins, a slick smile that never means anything good.
I strip off my jacket, then my shirt.
No gloves. No wraps.
Just hands.
Just punishment.
The gate creaks open, and I step into the ring.
No music.
No lights.
Just the clang of the cage behind me and the silence of men who want to watch someone bleed.
Then the crowd shifts.
Parting like water around something colder.
I see her.
Lydia.
Dragged in through the west corridor, flanked by two of Drazen’s men. They aren’t holding her, but the threat is implicit. She walks like someone who learned long ago that fear is a performance you should never audition for.
She’s not wearing red this time.
Black dress. A neckline that means business. Dark as ink.
She sees me.
No flinch. No startle.
But her expression tightens like she already knows this isn’t about the fight.
Drazen leans down, lips close to her ear, and says something. I can’t hear it.
But I feel it.
The way her spine stiffens. The way she doesn’t blink.
Her gaze drags back to me.
The first opponent steps into the ring.
Big. Loud. Tattooed like a billboard that ran out of space. He raises his fists like he wants applause.
I move before the bell finishes ringing.
Two steps in. Drive my elbow into his throat, then twist under his right hook and drop him with a knee to the gut that makes something inside him fold the wrong way.
He’s coughing blood before he hits the floor.
The crowd erupts.
I don’t care.
I turn my head, just slightly, back toward her.
Lydia’s still there.
Watching.
The second man enters. Leaner. Faster. He thinks footwork makes him dangerous.
I cut under his jab and drive my shoulder into his sternum. He staggers. I grab him by the collar and slam his face against the cage. Once. Twice. Third time he goes limp.
His body slides down like wet rope.
There’s blood on my hands now. My own, maybe. Doesn’t matter.
Because she’s still watching.
And something in her eyes has changed.
Not pity.
Not revulsion.
Just... understanding.
Recognition.
She’s not afraid of me.
And that terrifies me more than anything else here.
The last opponent is quiet. Smaller. Older.
Doesn’t talk.
Just circles.
I let him.
For a minute.
Then I close the space, catch his wrist mid-punch, and break it with one clean snap. He drops. Screams.
I grab him by the back of the neck and hold him there until he taps.
And even then, I don’t let go right away.
The crowd loses it.
Drazen walks up to the edge of the ring. His smile is all teeth.
He doesn’t speak for a while.
Then he says, loud enough for me, and only me, to hear: “She watched all of it.”
He claps.
Three times.
Turns. Leaves.
I look back.
But she’s gone.
I step out of the ring and move around.
The blood’s still on my knuckles when I find her.
She’s in the upper corridor near the back exit, halfway between the restricted staircase and the glass door that leads to the parking lot. The crowd downstairs is still roaring. But here — up here — it’s quieter.
Lydia doesn’t turn around when I step into the hallway.
She knows it’s me.
Her back is to me, but her reflection’s caught in the narrow window.
She speaks without moving.
“You fight like you don’t care what breaks.”
I stop two steps behind her. Close, but not close enough to touch.
“I don’t,” I say. “Not when I’m ordered to.”
She turns. No surprise in her expression. No fear either. Her hair’s pulled back now, exposing the hard line of her jaw. The black dress clings to her like something forged, not worn.
“I wasn’t told I’d be watching that.”
“Neither was I told you’d be there to watch.”
She crosses her arms. One of her knuckles is scraped, maybe from where she braced herself against the cage’s rail.
“Drazen said it was about loyalty.”
“Then he got the wrong lesson.”
Her gaze narrows. “Which is?”
“That loyalty doesn’t need to be proven in blood. Only control does.”
That lands. I see it shift something in her. Her arms fall to her sides.
“I’ve seen men kill for power,” she says. “But you didn’t fight like you wanted to win.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why?”
I look at her. Not at her mouth. Not at her collarbone. Just her eyes.
“Because you were there.”
That holds the moment like a knife.
She doesn’t back away.
She doesn’t blink.
But something in her exhales.
I step closer.
Close enough that the space between us becomes tension instead of distance.
“I didn’t ask for protection,” she says.
“I didn’t offer any.”
“So what is this, then?”
“You tell me.”
She studies me.
Then moves, fast and intentional, to the side door, pushes it open, steps into the stairwell. I follow without needing to think. We descend one flight. Then two.
When she stops, we’re in a part of the club I’ve never been in; a small, unfinished side hall with walls of exposed brick and a single overhead light flickering with the hum of bad wiring.
She turns again. Faces me now. Nothing between us but the choice of proximity.
“This is the part,” she says, “where one of us should walk away.”
“You want to?”
She shakes her head once. Then pauses.
“You scare me.”
“Good.”
Her head tilts.
“Why good?”
“Because fear is honest.”
I take one step closer.
Then another.
Until we’re toe to toe.
“You think this ends well?” she asks, voice tight.
“No,” I say.
“Then why are you here?”
I reach into my pocket, pull out a pen and a small writing pad, I write out my number fast, tear out the sheet, fold it once and I hand it to her.
She takes it without touching my fingers.
I watch her tuck it into her clutch.
She doesn’t ask if I want hers.
She already knows I’ll get it if and when I need it.
But before I can turn to leave, she stops me with just her voice.
“You’re not his,” she says.
I meet her eyes.
“Neither are you.”
We don’t touch.
We don’t kiss.
We just breathe in the same stale air for another second like it means something.
Then I walk away first.
Because if I don’t, I won’t.
I leave the club before she does.
Don’t wait for Dom. Don’t acknowledge Drazen’s nod of approval like it means anything. I take the long hallway out through the rear, bypassing the main floor, my fists still stinging, my body still humming with the fight.
No one stops me.
Not even Bishop, who watches from the end of the hall with his usual smirk, like he knows I’m a wire that’s just waiting for a match.
Back at my apartment, I don’t bother with food.
Just strip down in the shower and let hot water carve a straight line down my back. I scrub the blood off my knuckles until the skin flakes pink. The taste of the night — the smoke, the noise, her — lingers in places I can’t wash.
I dry off. Pull on a dark, nondescript gray shirt, nothing that stands out.
Then I step out.
I take the long route to the rooftop.
It’s a three-story residential building directly across from her loft — old, squat, coated in soot and pigeon shit. The stairs creak. The top level is flat, with just enough edge to crouch behind and keep out of view.
Her window is already glowing.
Warm gold spilling through white curtains.
She’s home.
And I’m back where I shouldn’t be.
I scan the street below. Empty. No guards. No shadows. Dom didn’t follow her. Drazen doesn’t need to. She’s already been warned what happens when you’re considered “useful.”
I raise the scope.
Just a peek.
Inside, Lydia’s moving through her apartment. Barefoot. Wearing something simple now — soft and dark. She picks up a glass from the table, rinses it in the sink, dries it with a towel.
She’s not pacing.
She’s not breaking down.
She’s functioning.
But every part of her is running on something close to fumes.
She steps away from the sink.
That’s when I notice it.
A flicker.
Not in the light.
In the monitor on her wall.
One of the small square feeds that loop her internal camera angles.
It skips. Freezes. Then flickers again.
One frame.
Two.
That’s not a glitch.
That’s remote access.
And it didn’t come from me.
I lower the scope.
Watch the monitor stabilize for a heartbeat.
Then stutter again.
The kind of stutter that says someone’s watching her through a cracked window she doesn’t know is open.
My hand tightens on the edge of the rooftop ledge.
I shouldn’t go over there.
She just saw me tonight. We just saw each other. Said things that held the very edge of more than we were supposed to mean.
But this isn’t about meaning.
This is about control.
About how she’s being watched, not just by me, maybe by Drazen, or by someone else who has access to a channel even I can’t trace from here.
I stand.
Cross the roof.
Climb back down.
My boots hit the pavement two stories below and echo once off the alley brick.
I take the long way around, past the rear fire escape, down the narrow hall that smells like rust and wet cardboard. Second floor. Her door. No lights in the corridor. No cameras.
My hand hovers over the wood.
I knock.
Not hard. But not soft either.
It’s the kind of knock that says: I already know you’re awake. And I’m not leaving.
I wait.
One second. Two. Then I hear her footsteps on the other side.
She doesn’t ask who it is.
She just opens the door halfway and stares at me like she’s already guessing what the next wrong thing I’m about to do is.
Her robe is back on, loosely tied this time. Her hair damp like she’s just washed the night off her skin.
Her mouth opens to speak, but I get there first. “Your monitor’s flickering.”
She blinks. “What?”