Chapter 17 Bishop
SEVENTEEN
BISHOP
The ring is one of the only places left where I don’t have to think.
Everything else drops away. The canvas is slick under my boots, blood and sweat worked into the grain of it, and the chain-link shudders every time someone gets driven into it hard enough to rattle the whole structure.
The air is thick—heat and copper and the particular smell of a crowd that came here to watch something get hurt.
None of it touches me. Inside the cage, the noise doesn’t blur. It sharpens. Distance becomes a number. Timing becomes reflex. Force becomes something you own or something that owns you.
And nothing owns me inside the cage.
There’s no room for hesitation here. No room for distraction.
The guy across from me is already breathing too hard.
He’s built thick through the shoulders—the kind of fighter who’s won enough on weight and momentum alone that he stopped learning anything else.
It shows in everything. The way he plants his feet before he commits.
The way his eyes drop half a second before his hands move.
His right hand arcs wide and I’m already inside it before it finishes.
I feel the air shift past my cheek and put a tight shot into his ribs—not hard enough to end it, hard enough to fold him, break the rhythm, remind him that size is only useful if you can land it. I pivot out before he can answer.
The crowd reacts, loud and hungry, but it stays where it belongs—outside the cage.
He recovers fast, frustration bleeding into the set of his shoulders, and comes at me with less control than before.
Good. I let him come. A quick finish defeats the whole point of being here.
Then—beneath all of it—I hear it.
A fucking laugh.
It cuts through the noise the way nothing in this room should be able to, and for a half-second my body registers it before my mind does—as something older than sound, something that has no business being inside the cage with me.
My focus shifts before I decide to let it. And that’s all it takes.
Front edge of the crowd, close enough to the cage that she might as well have stepped inside it, her face tilted toward the ring, eyes already on me.
His fist catches me clean across the side of my face.
The impact snaps my head sideways, white and immediate, and the crowd surges like they’ve been waiting for it. My footing skids. I lock it back down before it costs me anything else, jaw clenched, the pain already compressing itself into something I can use.
Sloppy.
Blood wells at my brow and starts its slow track down the side of my face.
I blink it back, reset my stance, roll my neck until the ringing in my ears settles into something manageable.
This asshole in front of me thinks he did something.
I can see it happening in real time—shoulders lifting, spine straightening, the particular stupidity of a man who got lucky and is already calling it skill.
Focus.
Taking a hit isn’t that bad. Good for the spectator, good for the house, good for my standing here. It’s not about the money—it’s about the freedom of it all.
What the fuck is she doing here?
The thought hits hard and immediate, followed just as fast by another one, meaner around the edges.
Which one of my dumbass brothers followed me tonight?
My gaze cuts to the space beside her before I decided to let it. Already expecting one of them—Gage, maybe, Rafe if he’s trying to fuck with me, or Cruz if he decided to fuck with Gage.
Instead I find some random asshole leaning close enough to her ear that I can’t tell if he’s talking to her or tasting her. Looking too comfortable, like he’s earned the right to occupy her space.
And she doesn’t pull away. Like she’s used to this asshole touching her.
The irritation hits like a second fist—faster than the first and meaner. It just sits there, hot and demanding, looking for somewhere to go.
What, my brothers aren’t enough for her? She needed another fucking boyfriend?
My opponent steps into the opening I just handed him.
His fist catches my mouth—splits my lip clean against my teeth, drives a flash of pain across my tongue in a wave so sharp it whites out everything else for a full second. I spit blood onto the canvas. Stare at the smear. The crowd erupts like they’ve been starving for it.
I don’t give a shit about the crowd.
This motherfucker is already playing to them, shoulders back, chest puffed out, working the room like he earned it. I let him have the half-second because there’s nothing I can do with it anyway.
I blink the blood out of my eye and reset, letting the cage snap back into place around me. My focus drags sideways anyway, like something with weight pulling it, like it was never really mine to begin with.
Back to her.
Goddamnit.
That asshole is still touching her. And she’s still looking at me. Like she’s waiting to see what I do with it.
For months now it’s been like this. I can’t go a single fucking day without one of my brothers talking about her, tracking her across the city, pulling her into something that used to be theirs.
She’s fucking everywhere.
She ruins every silence, every thought. She’s in every conversation he didn’t ask to have, in every room I didn’t invite her into.
And now she’s in this one.
But this is mine.
My opponent comes in again, swinging wide with the same sloppy aggression he’s been relying on since the start, but I don’t give him the same half-second this time.
I block hard, drive forward, force him back a step, then another, cutting off the angle he’s been trying to use.
He’s breathing heavier now, slower, more predictable.
My gaze cuts to her anyway. The corner of her mouth shifts—something between a smirk and a dare, her teeth catching her lower lip for a fraction of a second.
Like she knows exactly what she’s doing to me.
I’m done.
The decision drops through everything—the noise, the heat, the blood still tracking down the side of my face, the laugh that ruined everything—clean and final and absolute.
The fight snaps back into place.
He throws again, trying to capitalize on what he thinks is still there. I’m already inside his reach before it finishes leaving his shoulder, already past the line of his swing. My shoulder clips his chest—not hard, just enough—and I feel his footing go before he does.
There.
I feint high. His guard flies up, too fast, too desperate, and I’m already somewhere else. The strike lands exactly where I put it, driving through the opening like it was made for me. His body doesn’t fall so much as stop—momentum just ceasing, legs buckling a half-beat behind the rest of him.
He hits the canvas and the room comes apart.
I don’t watch him land. I’m already stepping back, rolling my shoulders, turning for the edge of the cage. The announcer is screaming something into a microphone. The crowd is on its feet. None of it touches me.
I don’t look at her either.
The hallway behind the main floor is cooler and darker, the noise dropping off fast once I’m through the door. It’s muffled, like something heard underwater. Sweat and antiseptic and something chemical underneath it all.
I find the room at the end of the row and push inside. Kick the door shut. Put my wrapped hands on the edge of the sink and lean over it, staring down at the drain while my blood drips into it in slow, separate hits.
I’ve got an hour to get my fucking head straight.