TWENTY-FIVE
It couldn’t be him.
At first, I didn’t recognise him. He seemed like just another broad-shouldered, dishevelled male caught in the primal-most state. But then he made a graceful, brutal move and something inside me lurched. That was Cain!
His fists were raised, sweat beading along his temples as if he’d done this his whole life. His frame moved with lethal purpose, but he didn’t seem like a stranger, yet as the man I’d sat across from and exchanged stories with. The one who haunted my thoughts.
My stomach fell through the floor.
Obsidian… This wasn’t a sanctioned scene. This was raw, illegal violence. And it didn’t come with waivers or safe words. This left people broken.
‘Is that—’ Gianna’s voice cracked beside me, startling me.
I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t blink.
The masked fighter towered across from him, a golden angel grin smiling mockingly, cruelly, almost divine in its malice. But there was nothing holy about him. Every movement screamed purpose. He wasn’t just trying to win – he was trying to dismantle.
What the fuck was Cain doing?
‘Damn,’ Gianna murmured as Cain threw a flurry of punches, matching the masked fighter. Blow for blow. ‘He is fucking hot.’
My fingers dug into the velvet-wrapped railing. What was left of my common sense recoiled at her words – but God, I couldn’t look away. This wasn’t the man who ordered salads, who wrote dark romance, who held himself as if nothing ever ruffled him. This was someone else. Someone bare, brutal.
And I hated that my body lit up like a fuse at that. Revulsion and desire warred inside me – terror in one breath, hunger in the next – until shame settled heavy in my gut.
The roar of the crowd around us jolted me out of the trance. My gaze stayed fixed on Cain’s back, the tension in his shoulders, the way his stance widened before each strike.
I didn’t know what shocked me more – the fact that my boss wasn’t as perfect and composed as he presented himself – or that he was this raw.
Or perhaps…
This was why he was so composed… the fact that he had a place to take out his inner demons.
His next punch landed with a wet smack. The masked man reeled for a breath, but then pivoted fast and swept Cain’s leg. He staggered, caught himself, and rose—
Just as the man slashed.
The crowd howled. But in that split second, I saw it – something small, fast, glinting under the lights. But it was gone before I could recognise what it really was.
Blood spotted Cain’s shirt, spreading.
Gianna swore.
‘What the fuck was that? That’s not allowed!’ she bellowed in Italian at the security guards, who didn’t seem in the slightest bit fazed.
‘He’s bleeding!’ I screamed at the nearest man, the word ‘SICUREZZA’ glaring in neon red over his black T-shirt.
‘This is a fighting ring, tesoro. People bleed in it.’ The guard sneered at us.
My eyes refocused on Cain, my heart beating frantically as I searched for a way to get him out of there.
But then I realised…
He didn’t cry out. Didn’t even stagger. Just glanced down, registered the slice, then returned to his stance with a face so grim it made me realise—
He accepted pain like it were an old friend. Or maybe…
Maybe he just enjoyed it.
Why did I want to be the one who made it go away?
His body was slowing, I could tell. Every movement took just a second longer. And the masked man?
He was thriving on it.
Something was wrong.
This didn’t feel like a fight any more. It felt like a hunt – predator and prey circling under the guise of sport.
And when the angel mask turned towards me, the slow motion made my heart stutter until it nearly stopped—
Travis?
No. It couldn’t be.
But the tilt of that chin. The tension in his stance – the confidence!
My throat closed.
‘No…’ I breathed, the word barely forming as I locked eyes with a ghost, hoping it hadn’t seen me back.
The next exchange erupted into violence that bordered on feral. Punches and kicks struck with bone-rattling force, neither man giving ground, the sound of impact like a sickening percussion beneath the howls of the crowd.
Cain was trying, I could see it. Trying to track the glint of the blade, his eyes darting, his stance shifting with every movement.
‘It’s in his right palm!’ I screamed.
‘He has a knife!’ Gianna echoed, sharper and louder this time.
We didn’t even realise how far we’d leaned in over the cold metal barrier, our bodies straining forward as if some feral instinct demanded we throw ourselves into the ring.
Cain’s head snapped towards the sound of my voice. His eyes widened, then narrowed into something far more dangerous.
‘Paula?’ he said – but the name was devoured by the bloodthirsty symphony of cheers and boos.
Then the masked man lunged. The blade flashed, and I screamed as the edge slashed a clean, vicious line across Cain’s chest, splitting fabric and skin alike.
The crowd erupted. It wasn’t joy – it was mania.
‘Fuck this shit,’ Gianna snarled and yanked aside the zip of her bag.
I turned half a heartbeat too late.
‘What are you—’
A small, matte-black gun was already in her hand, gleaming wickedly beneath the lights. She lifted it without hesitation and fired three sharp cracks into the air. Ducking instinctively, I pressed my hands to my ears. Smoke curled, the scent of gunpowder biting at the back of my throat.
The world exploded.
Chaos tore through the room like wildfire. People screamed, shoved, clawed their way towards the exits in a stampede of panic and flailing limbs.
I rose slowly, nearly frozen, my mouth forming a horrified ‘O’, unable to process what had just happened – how she managed to sneak that weapon in after we’d been thoroughly checked at the entrance.
‘What?’ Gianna asked, not even blinking, as if this had been her backup plan all along. ‘They know who I am.’
‘Cazzo!’ the guard swore, taking a rapid step towards us. ‘Put that away, Bellini! Your old man will skin me!’
He knew her last name?
He... knew her?
Did I? Did I really?
Before I could even start processing that, bodies slammed into me as they surged past, and for a moment I thought I’d be swept away with them. But I planted my feet, pressing myself against the side of the ring, refusing to move until my eyes locked on Cain.
Gianna was rushed away by the crowd, shouting something about meeting me outside. As if they were really going to let her off the leash that easily after this.
They know who I am, she’d said and the words rolled around my head even as I witnessed Cain clutching his chest, his breath shallow, eyes scanning the chaos. The line of his jaw tightened.
My gaze followed his around the ring. That was when I realised what he was looking for. The masked man was gone.
Then his eyes locked onto mine and he jumped down, closing the space between us in three heavy strides, his arm curving around me protectively.
My hand trembled as I reached for the blood blooming across his shirt.
‘What the fuck are you doing here, Paula?’ he snarled, steering me towards the exit as the crowd dissolved into a sea of bodies and noise.
‘Same to you, D’Angelo! You’re bleeding!’ I shot back, glaring at the spreading crimson stains, each heartbeat pushing more of it out into the open.
‘Surface wounds,’ he muttered, jaw set like iron – as though this were a mere nuisance. A fucking routine. ‘I’ll be fine.’
I snorted a brittle kind of sound, but it cut off just as his arm dropped lower and wound around my waist.
The sheer size of him – hot and solid from the fight – wrapped me in a cocoon of muscle and heat. His skin burned through my clothes, and the scent of sweat and blood curled into my lungs until I couldn’t see the path ahead, let alone care where we were going.
Outside, the cold night air slapped my face, but my head was still trapped in Obsidian – trapped in the echo of fists against flesh, the scent of iron, the violent glint of his eyes under neon lights.
And only then did I realise how much this version of him unnerved me.
How much I wanted to touch him anyway.
‘My car’s three blocks away,’ he growled, more to himself than me, his gaze slicing across the empty streets as the wail of sirens looped in the background like a countdown. Urgency clung to us both as we looked left and right.
‘You’re not driving in this state. I’m taking you to a hosp—’
A dark chuckle broke my sentence in half. I looked up and met his feral, too-amused smile, completely unaffected by the fact that he was bleeding.
And still, he held me tucked beneath his arm – but I wasn’t stepping away.
He looked down at me, lashes clumped and damp with sweat, his hair messy. Strands curled across his brow, no longer combed back with polish but falling wild over a face that refused to relent.
His gaze lingered. Longer than it should have. Long enough that my lungs forgot what to do.
And somehow, the weight of Ghost’s leaving wasn’t there any more. It had been replaced. Not healed or erased, just crowded out by someone far more dangerous – because Cain was real.
Shame curled through me.
I looked away, searching for my cousin until I clocked her mid-argument with security. She spotted me, glanced at Cain, and shot me a smirk before winking and jerking her head for us to go on.
Fucking madwoman!
‘I’m not going to a hospital, DeLuca,’ Cain rumbled, his voice rough and coated in that musky scent that made me sway closer. I had to clear my throat just to make space for air as I refocused on him.
‘I’m taking you to my place,’ I said. ‘I have bandages, needles, stuff to stitch you up with. Creams for the bruises…’ I trailed off, trying to remember what was even in my cabinet.
That sobered him. His smirk faded, and something else slid into place behind his eyes. But he didn’t step away. He didn't exactly need my body for support – so why was he still so close?
‘Are you in pain?’ I asked quietly as we rushed towards my car.
I looked at him again – only to find those topaz eyes already on me, already digging. He was holding something in.
Even without words, I felt the His questions pressing in.