Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
The air smelled like honeysuckle and warm pavement.
It was an early evening in May, the kind that made you forget, just for a second, that the world could be cruel.
The sun hadn’t fully set yet, but it was slipping lower, painting the street in gold and shadow.
Zarek had parked halfway down the block instead of right out front, and when we’d started down the street he’d reached for my hand.
Our fingers slid together naturally, like they’d been waiting for permission.
We walked the rest of the way in silence, hands linked, our steps matching without thought. I could feel the warmth of him through his palm, steady and grounding. For the first time in days—maybe weeks—I wasn’t bracing for the next emotional hit.
Whatever Zarek was about to tell me, it wasn’t about him sneaking into Cappy’s gym or getting his ribs cracked in some backroom cage.
He was finally going to share with me. Everything.
He squeezed my hand once before stopping in front of the Onyx Security building. The brick facade was unassuming, the windows darkened, the discreet sign by the door easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
Zarek pressed the buzzer.
“Post,” he said into the speaker.
There was a pause. Then a click.
“Come on up.”
The door unlocked.
We climbed the stairs together, my heels clicking softly on the concrete steps. At the top, the door to the conference room was already open.
Five men I knew were seated there. One was my brother-in-law.
Simon sat at the head of the table, sleeves rolled up, jacket draped over the back of his chair.
Roan Thatcher leaned against the wall near the whiteboard, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
Jase Drakos lounged in his chair like he owned the place, one ankle hooked over his knee.
Nolan O’Rourke sat beside him, posture alert, jaw tight.
Code Drakos was at the far end, laptop open, fingers hovering over the keyboard like he’d paused mid-thought.
They all looked up at once.
And then their focus turned to me.
For a heartbeat, no one spoke.
Code was the first to break it. His gaze flicked from Zarek to me and back again. “You sure this is a good idea?”
Simon snorted softly. “Good luck keeping an Avery woman out of something dangerous,” he said. “I’ve been trying for years. Doesn’t take.”
Jase grinned. “It’s not just Avery women,” he added, nodding at Code. “You only think that’s not true because you spend half your life in L.A. with Kit. Come back to Tennessee long enough and she’ll be wanting to ride shotgun before you know it.”
Code shot him a look. “You’re hilarious.”
Zarek squeezed my hand again, firmer this time. “Enough,” he said. “We’re not here for comedy hour.”
The room sobered instantly.
Simon gestured to the empty chair beside him. “Sit, Chloe.”
I did, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this was happening—that Zarek had brought me here, into this room, into whatever storm he’d been standing in alone.
Simon folded his hands on the table. “How much have you told her?”
“Nothing,” Zarek said.
Every head turned to him.
He glanced at me, something soft and apologetic flickering across his face. “I wanted you to be a part of this, so I figured I’d tell you here.”
My stomach tightened, but I nodded. “Okay.”
Zarek took a breath, the kind that started low in his chest, like he was bracing himself.
“There’s a guy named Maurice,” he said. “That’s who found me. Approached me at the gym.”
I leaned forward without realizing it. “Found you how?”
“He runs… recruiting,” Zarek said carefully. “For underground fights. Not Cappy’s. Not gym smokers. Something else.”
Across the table, Simon shook his head once. “Maurice isn’t the real problem.”
I turned toward him, startled. “What do you mean?”
“He’s a recruiter,” Simon said. “A middleman. Loud, visible, expendable. He brings fighters in, handles logistics, keeps his hands clean. If he goes down, the organization replaces him within a week.”
Zarek let out a bitter huff. “Figures.”
My stomach tightened. “So… what did Zarek get pulled into?”
Zarek met my eyes then, really met them. “Feeder fights,” he said. “Smaller events. Illegal, but not the worst of it. They draw fighters in with money. Escalating purses. Bigger crowds. More secrecy.”
He paused, jaw tightening. “I fought at a distillery. An old one. Not like the livestock barn which was my first fight with them. This one had money behind it. Real money.”
Images I didn’t want formed anyway—dark buildings, strangers watching, Zarek bleeding for people who didn’t care if he lived.
“That night they brought in a kid named Tyler again. I’d fought him at the livestock barn. He had no business being at the first one, let alone the one at the distillery.”
“What about Tyler?” I prompted Zarek when he paused.
Zarek swallowed. “He was just out of the service, must have gone in at eighteen and out at twenty-two. He was from Alabama. Married. His wife Emily was pregnant.”
It was getting hard to breathe when I realized Zarek was talking about him in the past tense.
“The night at the distillery they paired him with a guy who’d been doing this for a while,” Zarek continued. “Tyler shouldn’t have been back in the ring so soon. He took a bad knockout. Real bad.”
I saw it then—the way Zarek’s hands curled slightly, like he was holding onto something invisible.
“They dragged him out,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me check him. Wouldn’t call for help.”
My chest started to ache. “Zarek…”
“The next night,” he went on, voice rough now, “Fletcher and I got called out on a wreck. Single vehicle. Off Highway 441. Old truck. Alabama plates.”
I sucked in a breath. “No.”
“They brought him up under a sheet, but I peeled it back.” Zarek got lost in his memories for a moment, then he continued. “Nobody would ever know that his injuries were received any other way but the crash unless they were really looking for it. And who would be looking?”
For a moment, no one spoke.
I stared at Zarek, my mind scrambling, trying to make the timeline make sense. “But… they said it was an accident. A wreck.”
“They staged it,” Simon said quietly. “That’s one way for them to dispose of a body. Especially if it would raise questions if the man just went missing.”
My heart started to pound.
“They cleaned him up,” Zarek said. “Changed his clothes. Took his bag. Took his money. Put him somewhere he had no reason to be and let gravity do the rest.”
I shook my head, horror blooming too fast to contain. I turned to look at Zarek. “You said if they took him to a hospital, he would have been all right.”
“Probably.”
“So, what, they just waited for him to die, then staged the accident?”
“Or, they might have sent him over the cliff while he was still alive,” Roan said softly.
“But that’s murder.”
“Yes,” Simon said. “It is.”
The word settled over the table like dust after an explosion.
I looked back at Zarek. At the man who had been walking into cages to understand this thing from the inside.
“And this is just the entry level?” I whispered.
Zarek nodded. “Tyler wasn’t even close to the top.”
My hands curled into fists in my lap.
Somewhere, a woman named Emily was waking up to a phone call that would change her life forever.
And Zarek had been standing close enough to feel the ground shift when it happened.
“Why didn’t you go straight to the sheriff?” I asked quietly.
Zarek opened his mouth, but Code answered first.
“Because of me,” he said.
I looked at him.
“I can find things Nash can’t,” Code continued. “Things that aren’t admissible in court. Things that don’t exist on paper.”
“And those things matter,” Simon added, “when you’re dealing with people who’ve built entire systems around making sure nothing ever sticks.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay. So, what have you found?”
Code turned his laptop toward us, tapping a few keys. A web of lines and names filled the screen.
“There are four major underground MMA circuits in the country,” he said. “Old ones. Established. Mostly regional. But about two years ago, a fifth one started cutting in.”
“Mid-country,” Roan added. “Tennessee, Kentucky, parts of Arkansas, Missouri.”
“It’s worse than the others,” Code said. “Cleaner. Smaller crowds. Richer ones.”
My skin prickled. “What do you mean, worse?”
Simon leaned back in his chair. “The others want a show,” he said. “Bare-knuckled mixed-martial art fighting where men end up beat to shit.”
“Like what Zarek was doing?”
Simon nodded.
“This one is different,” Code spoke up. “They occasionally give shows to a hand-selected audience. They call it an Intimate Night at the Colosseum.”
“No one would sign up to watch men fight to the death,” I said automatically. The words sounded naive even to my own ears.
Code looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t have names, but I have a headcount and how much the organization earns on one of these nights. The last one was over three million dollars. That was just the total from the entry fees. I haven’t found out their cuts on the bets.”
Nolan leaned forward to look at Code’s computer screen. “But men can’t actually sign up for this shit.”
“The fighters don’t know what they’re signing up for,” Zarek said quietly.
The table went still.
Code nodded. “Fighters move up through the ranks. Bigger purses. More secrecy. More exclusivity. By the time they’re invited to the private events, they think it is for the championship round.”
“No,” Zarek was shaking his head. “They’ve chosen two poor assholes that they’ve got leverage on and send them into the ring.”
I was confused. “What do you mean, leverage?”
“My guess is it's their family. They’ve convinced the fighter that the only way to save their family is to kill his opponent. The thing is, they whisper the same thing in each guy’s ear. That’s how they give the audience what they want.”
Silence followed Zarek’s explanation. Thick. Heavy. No one rushed to fill it.