16. Ingrid
Chapter sixteen
Ingrid
The gym was alive with the sound of boxing gloves striking bodies the next day. The buzzing mirrored the knot tightening in my stomach. I shouldn’t have been here, not after what I’d heard.
“We need to look into her father… figure out what the hell is actually going on. A lawyer and an accountant can’t be moving up in this city this quickly.”
Tristian’s voice had been echoing in my head since I’d overheard his call.
He was looking into my father. Part of me was terrified he’d find the truth—the bruises, the control, the rot—while the other part of me was terrified of what my father would do if he found out.
But I was Tristian’s assistant… his handler, his shadow.
And despite the fear, there was a magnetic pull to him that I couldn’t resist.
The rhythmic thwack of leather hitting flesh drew my eyes to the ring.
Tristian was a blur of controlled violence, sparring with his coworker James.
Sweat glistened off his tensed muscles, his movements so precise they were almost beautiful.
He fought like he could orchestrate the space around him, forcing his opponent to bend to his will.
James landed a glancing blow, and for a second, Tristian’s eyes flashed—dark, hungry, and dangerous.
I shivered at thought of being on the other side of those fists.
When they finished, Tristian hopped over the ropes, his breathing barely labored.
He walked toward me, and instinctively, I reached out without even thinking.
He caught my hand, his palm rough and hot against mine, and led me toward his corner.
“You okay, doll? Look like you’re a thousand miles away,” he muttered.
“I was… watching you,” I whispered.
“Yeah? Was I any good?”
I’m sure he already knew the answer to that question.
“You were… really good,” I whispered, my face going warm as I didn’t mention the flare of heat that had surged through me alongside the awe and fear.
He took his bag from where he’d stowed it under the bench and began pulling out his gear. He withdrew something from near the bottom and handed it to me. A sketchbook.
“Well, soon enough you’re going to get bored,” he said. “This might keep you busy. It’s an old book… but I could use new ideas for color schemes. If you want to fill them in.”
I took the book, touched by the gesture.
It was a piece of him, his art, his mind he was letting me into again.
I sat on the bench and opened it, losing myself in the intricate lines of his designs while he moved to the heavy punching bag.
I watched him between admiring the strokes of the colored pencils, mesmerized by the power and precision he had all at once.
“Well, aren’t you pretty?”
The voice was oily, slick with a confidence that made my skin crawl. I looked up to find a man leaning over me, his smile not reaching his eyes that were dragging over my body.
I was fully dressed in my white off the shoulder knit sweater and jeans but under his gaze I felt exposed.
Crack.
The sound of Tristian’s gloves hitting the floor was like a gunshot. I flinched as he stepped into my space, his presence an oncoming storm.
“Get away from her, Brandon,” Tristian said, his voice dangerously quiet.
So this was the man who Tristian had gotten into a fight with when he landed himself in a prison cell. Only then did I notice the faded bruises covering his face. My breath caught, a wave of panic rushing over me.
But Brandon didn’t back off. He sat right next to me, his hand reaching out to push my hair over my shoulder. I froze as his fingertips brushed my neck.
“Got yourself little girlfriend, huh? How cute. I wonder if Darragh will like her.”
“Ingrid.” Tristian’s voice was a low growl. “Go with James. Now.”
“R-right now?” I stammered.
“Yes, doll. Get your things.” He pulled me up, his grip firm on my elbow but not hurting me. “I’ll meet you in the locker room.”
Part of me wanted to stay—but what good would that do?
If Tristian got into a fight, I could hardly protect him.
Besides, he didn’t need protecting; he’d proven easily that he could handle himself, in the ring and outside of it.
Brandon’s bruises were evidence enough of that.
So I hurried away, casting only a brief backward look to see both Tristian’s shoulders already squaring up, Brandon’s expression lifted in a cruel smirk, Tristian’s hard steel.
James led me to the locker room before stepping back out, and I sat on the wooden bench, clutching the sketchbook to my chest.
A loud, metallic crash echoed from the gym, followed by the sound of something shattering. The noises were only amplified when the doors swung open and James strode back in, expression tense. I didn’t utter a word.
When Tristian finally walked in, he pressed a blood-soaked rag to his nose. I was on my feet in an instant, my fear forgotten in the face of his injury.
“Tristian…” James sighed.
“That fucker doesn’t know when to shut up,” Tristian muttered, sitting heavily on the bench. “Don’t worry, he looks worse than I do.”
James left to grab a first-aid kit, leaving us in a heavy silence. I sat beside Tristian, gently taking his bruised, bloodied hand in mine.
“I don’t like it when you’re hurt,” I whispered.
“You might have to get used to it, doll,” he said softly.
When James returned with the kit and left again, I took over, cleaning the cuts on the bridge of his nose and cheek. He didn’t move as he watched me with dark intensity.
“Who helped you before me?” I asked, trying to distract myself from the feeling of his hands beginning to graze my thighs.
“Nature,” he grunted. “If it healed, it healed. Otherwise, Kane or James would eventually drag me to a doctor.”
“That’s irresponsible,” I murmured, focusing on a cut near his lip.
“I know.”
He leaned in, his breath warm against my skin. “Thank you, doll.”
He kissed me then—a soft, tentative pressure that tasted like copper and heat. I melted against him, my hands finding his shoulders. But when I squeezed, he hissed in pain.
“Your shoulder,” I realized, pulling back. “Take off your shirt.”
He smirked, that dark, playful glint returning to his eyes. “I’ll be fine. I want to be with you.”
“We can be together while I ice your shoulder.”
He relented, pulling the longsleeve over his head. I tried not to stare at the landscape of his muscles and ink as I applied the ice pack. He never showed his tattoos much apart from his forearms but that wasn’t my main focus. Later? Maybe…
He leaned into my shoulder, a sudden, jarring vulnerability in his posture.
“You’re the only person I’d let boss me around,” he whispered. “You… and my mother.”
The air in the locker room suddenly felt thin as his guard began to crumble. I was still focused on his bruised shoulder, the ice pack a stark contrast to the heat radiating from his skin, but I could feel the shift in him. His muscles, usually like coiled steel, went strangely calm.
“Your mother?” I asked him softly, the question barely a breath.
He looked away from me, his gaze fixing on a shadowed corner of the room. I watched his profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat moved as he swallowed hard. The silence that followed was heavy with years of unspoken grief.
“She’s paralyzed, in the hospital. Sometimes, I visit her, wanting advice or… or a hug… and she just lays there… motionless. As if she doesn’t even know her own son…”
My heart ached. I looked at this man—the man who fought with such brutal precision, who commanded fear in everyone he met—and all I could see was the boy standing by a hospital bed, begging for a recognition that never came.
I stayed silent, my hand trembling slightly against his skin, terrified that even a single word might make him retreat back into his shell.
He took a jagged breath, his voice dropping into a hollow register that made my eyes prick with tears.
“And Noah—that bastard is not a father or a husband. Whenever I couldn’t handle him, I’d go to the hospital room and just let her have it. All of my frustrations, anger, and resentment… but she doesn’t deserve it. She and I both know that…”
For a second, the mask was entirely gone.
I saw the guilt eating him alive—the burden of a son who used his mother’s silence as an outlet for his rage because he had nowhere else to put it.
It was a dark kind of honesty that broke me.
I wanted to pull him into me, to shield him from the memory of that sterile room and the father who had failed them both.
“She’d adore you,” he said, looking into my eyes.
But before I could respond, his phone buzzed. His face closed off instantly as he checked it. And just like that, the walls were back up.
After our time in the gym, we made our way to the tattoo parlor. The hum of tattoo machines provided a light rhythm to the room. Kane looked up, a bright, knowing grin spreading across his face as he caught my eye.
“Ingrid, good to see you.”
“Hi,” I whispered, giving him a small, hesitant wave.
I followed Tristian to his station and sat in the chair beside his workbench, pulling his sketchbook from my bag as he began the methodical process of cleaning his tools.
I tried to focus on the lines of his drawings, but my eavesdropping got the better of me as Kane moved toward us, his voice dropping into an urgent whisper.
“Tell me you didn’t fuck with Brandon again?”
Tristian didn’t look up, let out a slow sigh. “I did… but in my defense, he opened his mouth to Ingrid.” Side-eyeing me, he twisted toward Kane, and added in a very low undertone I suspect I wasn’t supposed to hear, “And he mentioned Darragh again.”
Kane’s shoulders slumped as he let out a frustrated breath.
“Jesus, man, I told you already. The fucker wants you to swing. Don’t take the bait. You need to be careful with him—”
“I know,” Tristian said, his voice clipped.
“And Darragh—”