Chapter 15
The underground archives smell like dust and ghosts. I haven’t been down here since I was sixteen—when Vincent Blackwood still ruled this city’s shadows.
Axel’s silver-streaked hair catches the light from my phone’s flashlight as he crouches beside me, his movements eerily silent in the cramped space.
Even down here, surrounded by cobwebs and memories, he radiates that restless energy that makes him impossible to ignore, but tonight, there’s something different about his stillness, a tension that speaks of secrets about to surface.
“You know,” I say, pulling another dusty box from the metal shelving, “when Marcus said there were gaps in your background that needed investigating, I didn’t expect to be spelunking through my father’s old files at midnight.”
Axel’s laugh is hollow, lacking its usual wild edge. “Marcus thinks he knows everything about everyone, but some ghosts are buried deeper than his databases can reach.”
I pause in my search, studying his profile in the dim light. “Is that what you are, Axel? A ghost? Your nickname a little too on the nose?”
“We’re all ghosts down here, brujita.” He runs his fingers along the spine of a leather-bound ledger. “The question is which version of ourselves we’re haunting.”
Before I can respond, I find what I’ve been looking for, a box labeled “Underground Circuit Records 2018-2019.” The year before everything went to hell. The year before my father died and I disappeared into the shadows to plan my revenge.
Inside, I find what Marcus’s research suggested might exist: fight records, photographs, and registration forms from the underground circuits that operated before the Sterling Syndicate consolidated power.
My heart stops when I see a familiar name on one of the forms.
“Angel Rivera,” I read aloud, holding up a registration sheet with a photograph that makes my breath catch. It’s a younger Axel, his face unmarked by the small scars he carries now. The silver streak in his hair is already there, but everything else about him looks softer.
And less haunted.
Axel goes perfectly still beside me, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he seems truly caught off guard.
“That’s not possible,” he whispers, but his voice lacks conviction.
“Age nineteen. Registered under Angel Rivera instead of Axel.” I study the photograph more closely. “This was taken at my father’s gym, Axel, the one attached to our original compound. You fought in my father’s circuit.”
Angel—Axel—was part of my father’s world before I ever met him at the Obsidian. Before he appeared like a phantom and dominated every opponent. Before he became Ghost.
“How is this possible?” I ask again, my voice sharp now. “You would have been fighting when I was still living here. How did I never see you?”
Axel—Angel—runs both hands through his hair, destroying the carefully tousled style. When he looks at me, his brown-amber eyes are filled with something I’ve never seen from him before.
Fear.
“Because you weren’t supposed to see me.” His voice is rough, stripped of its usual playful cadence. “Vincent made sure of that.”
“My father knew you?”
“Your father saved me.” The admission comes out like a confession, like something torn from his chest. “I was nineteen, homeless, fighting in back-alley circuits just to eat. I’d been on the streets since I was fifteen, bouncing between foster homes and juvenile facilities.
Vincent found me after I’d been fighting illegally for three years. ”
I sink back on my heels. “He brought you into his organization?”
“He gave me a chance to be something other than a street rat with anger issues.” Axel’s fingers trace the edge of the photograph. “A place to train properly, decent opponents, enough money to get off the streets… but there was a condition.”
“Which was?”
“Stay away from you.” His laugh is bitter. “Vincent said his daughter didn’t need to be exposed to someone like me. Someone with my background, my… issues. He kept me on the outer circuits, the satellite gyms, and made sure our paths never crossed.”
The pieces are falling into place now, forming a picture that makes my chest tight with emotions I can’t name. “But you saw me anyway.”
“From a distance. Always from a distance.” His voice drops to almost a whisper.
“You’d come to the main gym sometimes with Vincent, usually after my training sessions were over, but I would linger, find excuses to stick around.
Watch you spar with your instructors, see you laugh with the other fighters.
I saw you enough to know that you had a crush on Dom even back then. ”
“Axel…”
“You were seventeen the last time I saw you before everything went to hell. Wearing that black tank top and those ridiculous pink boxing gloves that Vincent bought you because he said you needed something ‘feminine’ to balance out all the violence.” His smile is wistful, tinged with old pain.
“You dropped one of the gloves after practice, and I picked it up. Held it for maybe thirty seconds before one of Vincent’s men saw me and reminded me of the rules. ”
My jaw drops. I remember those pink gloves, remember losing one and finding it later in my gym bag. I never questioned how it got there.
“That was you.”
“That was me. Ghost before I became Ghost.”
I stare at the photograph in my hands, trying to reconcile the young man in the image with the dangerous, unpredictable fighter I’ve come to admire. “What happened after my father died?”
“I disappeared. The Sterling takeover scattered Vincent’s people in every direction, and I was nobody important enough to hunt down or recruit.
I went back to street fighting, back to being nothing.
” His jaw tightens. “Until I had enough. I had to start to build my own way, and I was a good enough fighter.”
“Undefeated for two years.”
He shakes his head. “I pegged you immediately. The little girl with the pink boxing gloves had grown up to be as fierce as her father. I… I hoped she’d inherited his ability to see potential in broken things.
” He meets my gaze directly. “Turns out she inherited something better—the ability to make broken things feel whole.”
My heart skips a beat, and the sorrow I feel for him…
This is why Axel has always seemed to understand me on some instinctive level, why his loyalty felt so immediate and complete.
He’s been watching over me longer than I knew, carrying feelings that started when we were both just kids in my father’s world.
He’s maybe two years older than I am, but he’s strong in ways other than the physical.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
“Because I was afraid you’d see it as manipulation, another person with hidden agendas trying to use your feelings against you.
” He shifts closer, close enough that I can smell his familiar scent—leather and motor oil.
No cologne on him. “And because part of me was terrified that you’d remember the scared nineteen-year-old street fighter and realize that’s still who I am underneath all the attitude and reputation. ”
“Axel, look at me.” I reach out, cupping his face in my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes. “That scared nineteen-year-old became the man who’s never lost a fight at the Obsidian.”
“You—”
“That fight doesn’t count,” I murmur. “You became the man who walks into danger without hesitation if it means protecting the people he cares about. Who sees through every mask I wear and loves me anyway.”
“Brujita …”
“You think I care that you started as Vincent Blackwood’s charity case? That you fought your way up from nothing?” I lean in until our foreheads press together, breath mingling, hearts pounding in sync. “Axel, that makes me love you more, not less.”
The words slip out before I can stop them. His sharp inhale against my mouth is audible.
“You love me?” His voice cracks, stripped bare. Vulnerable in a way that shreds me open.
Shit.
“I love all of you. The scared kid who picked up my boxing glove. The street fighter who clawed his way to respectability. The Ghost who’s haunted my steps, always there when I needed you most. I love the man who’s been protecting me before I even knew I was in danger.”
I run my thumb along his cheekbone. His hands tremble as they rise to cover mine. That tremor ignites something primal in me.
Then he snaps.
His mouth crashes against mine with explosive hunger. No teasing. No holding back. It’s years of tension detonating between us, a kiss that bruises and brands. His tongue fucks into my mouth with claiming intensity, like he’s making sure I never forget who he is.
“I’ve wanted to do that since you were seventeen,” he groans against my lips.
“I’m not seventeen anymore.” I bite his bottom lip, hard enough to make him grunt. “Show me what you dreamed about when we were older.”
He lets out a savage growl and sweeps dusty papers off a nearby crate with one arm. I’m hauled onto it with the other, my thighs spreading instinctively to let him slot between them.
His fingers curl around my jaw as he drinks me in. “You’re sure? Because once I start, I’m not stopping. Not until I’ve tasted every inch of you. Not until you’re screaming my name so loud it echoes through these fucking archives.”
“Then don’t stop.” I yank him down and devour him, pouring every ounce of need into the kiss. “Wreck me, Axel.”
That’s all the permission he needs.
He tears my shirt over my head, his eyes devouring every new inch of skin like a man starved. His shirt vanishes next. Skin to skin, the heat between us surges until it’s molten.
“God, look at you,” he rasps, dragging his tongue over the swell of my breast. “You’re mine. You always fucking were.”
His mouth descends with purpose, biting, sucking, claiming. He latches onto my nipple, tongue flicking mercilessly until I cry out. Then he moves lower, kissing down my stomach with reverent aggression, leaving bruises and heat and a trail of fire.