Chapter 3 - Rampage
The basement smells like sweat and blood and money.
I can hear the crowd before I reach the bottom of the stairs, that particular sound of too many people packed into too small a space, voices bouncing off concrete walls, the energy already building even though the first fight hasn't started yet.
It's eleven-thirty at night. The gym closed at nine. I spent the last two and a half hours getting the space ready, moving equipment, checking that the cash box is secured, making sure the Savage Riders have their cut already set aside because you do not fuck around with the MC's money. Not ever.
Tank meets me at the bottom of the stairs. He's the Riders’ Vice President, handles security for the Pit, built like his name and about as conversational. He nods at me. I nod back. This is our entire relationship.
"Full house tonight," he says.
"Good," I say.
It is good. Full house means money, means the Pit is working, means I can keep paying the MC their protection fee and keep the cops from asking questions and keep this whole operation running smoothly.
The fights started five months ago, about two weeks after I opened the gym.
Some asshole was bothering one of my morning regulars, getting too close, not taking no for an answer, the kind of shit that makes my jaw tighten just thinking about it.
I pulled him aside. Told him once to back off.
He didn't. So, I beat the shit out of him in the parking lot.
Turned out half the people in the gym that morning followed us outside to watch.
Turned out they liked what they saw.
Turned out Blackwater Falls wanted somewhere to bet on violence, and I was very good at providing it.
The MC approached me three days later with a proposal. They'd protect the operation, keep it quiet, provide security, take a cut. I'd provide the space and the main event. Everyone makes money. Everyone stays safe.
I said yes because I needed something to fill the hours between midnight and dawn when sleep isn't an option and the walls start closing in, and beating someone unconscious in front of a crowd is better than beating my own knuckles raw against the heavy bag in my apartment where no one's watching.
I move through the crowd toward the makeshift ring, just tape on the floor marking boundaries, nothing fancy, nothing that can't be cleaned up and cleared out before dawn.
People make space for me as I walk. They always do.
I'm not wearing a shirt, just training shorts and tape on my hands, and the scars on my knuckles are visible even in the dim lighting down here.
I'm Rampage. I'm undefeated. I'm the reason most of these people showed up tonight.
The opponent is already waiting.
I don't know him. That's unusual. Most of the fighters here are regulars, guys I've fought before or guys who've worked their way up through smaller matches.
This one's new. Taller than average, built solid, maybe early thirties.
He's got the look of someone who's done some training, some discipline in how he's standing, but there's also something hungry in his eyes.
Something that says he thinks beating me is going to prove something.
Good luck with that.
"Name's Garrett," Tank says, appearing next to me. "Showed up two hours ago. Wanted to fight the champion specifically. Said he'd pay double entry."
I look at the guy. He's staring back at me, rolling his shoulders, loosening up.
"Fine," I say.
Tank nods and moves away.
I should be focused right now. I should be running through strategy, reading my opponent's stance, getting my head in the space it needs to be for this.
But I'm not. My head is somewhere else entirely, and it's been somewhere else for the past nine hours, ever since a curvy woman with brown eyes and glasses left my gym and I spent the next forty minutes in my apartment trying to convince my cock that we were not doing this, we were absolutely not going there, and my cock completely ignoring every logical argument I presented.
Chloe Marsh.
I've taught dozens of people. Hundreds, if I count my time in the military. I have put my hands on more bodies than I can count, correcting form, demonstrating holds, teaching people how to survive. And my body has never once reacted the way it did today.
The moment my hands touched her hips, I was hard.
Fully, painfully, immediately hard.
And it didn't stop. Not when I stepped back.
Not when I put distance between us. Not during the entire goddamn hour I spent teaching her, my voice staying level while my cock throbbed against my shorts and my brain tried to simultaneously teach proper self-defense technique and calculate exactly how many different ways I could bend her over that mat.
I don't think like this.
I stopped thinking like this years ago, stopped letting my body want things I couldn't control, stopped letting anyone close enough to trigger the response in the first place.
Sex is a complication I don't need. Attachment is a liability I can't afford.
I learned this in the desert. I learned this when everyone I cared about died in the space of four minutes and I came home alone to a country that didn't know what to do with me.
And now I'm standing in my own fucking basement about to fight a stranger, and all I can think about is how badly I wanted to grab her.
Not guide her. Not adjust her stance.
Grab her.
Pin her to that mat and find out if she'd tell me to fuck off or if she'd open for me, spread those legs and let me bury myself inside her while she made whatever sounds a woman like that makes when she's being fucked by someone who knows exactly what he's doing.
The bell rings.
I move forward.
Garrett comes at me fast, which is smart.
Get inside my reach, don't let me use my size advantage.
He's faster than I expected. His first combination is clean, disciplined, and I block it but I'm a half-second slower than I should be.
My head isn't here. My head is still upstairs in the training room watching Chloe's hips shift when I touched her, watching her face in the mirror, watching the way she bit her bottom lip when she was concentrating.
Garrett lands a jab to my ribs.
It's not a hard hit, but it shouldn't have landed at all, and the crowd notices. There's a ripple of noise, surprise, excitement. Rampage doesn't get hit in the first thirty seconds. Rampage doesn't get hit period, not unless he's setting something up.
I'm not setting anything up.
I'm distracted.
And a distracted man is a dead man.
I shake it off. I step in and throw a combination that backs Garrett up three feet, that reminds him and everyone watching exactly who they're dealing with.
He blocks most of it but not all of it. My right cross catches him on the jaw and his head snaps back and I see the moment he recalculates, realizes he might have made a mistake asking for this fight.
We circle each other.
I should end this now. I should put him down fast and clean and get out of this ring before my head does something stupid.
But I don't. I let it draw out. I'm looking for something slower tonight, something I can control, something that doesn't require my full focus because my full focus is apparently not available.
Garrett comes at me again.
I block. Counter. He's good enough to make it interesting, not good enough to be dangerous.
We trade hits for two minutes, three, the crowd getting louder as the fight goes on.
I can feel the rhythm of it, the way the violence builds, the way my body starts to settle into the familiar pattern of reading an opponent and responding.
And then I see her.
Top of the stairs. Back by the wall where the lighting is worst. But I see her anyway, because apparently my brain has decided to catalog every detail of Chloe Marsh's existence and can now pick her out of a crowd in the dark.
She's with someone: another woman, blonde, taller than her.
They're standing close together, the blonde's hand on Chloe's arm like she's either providing support or preventing escape.
And Chloe is staring at the ring with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open and her whole body radiating tension that I can read from thirty feet away.
What the fuck is she doing here?
I've been running these fights for five months, and she has never once been in this basement. I would have noticed. I notice everyone who comes down here because situational awareness keeps you alive, but I would have especially noticed her.
And now she's here.
Watching me fight.
Garrett's fist connects with my face.
My head snaps to the side. Pain explodes across my cheekbone, sharp and immediate and entirely my own fault. The crowd erupts.
I taste blood.
I turn back to Garrett and the look on his face is pure shock. He didn't think that would land either. He threw it hoping, and I was too busy staring at a woman in the corner to see it coming.
Focus.
I need to fucking focus.
Garrett comes at me again, smelling blood now, thinking maybe he's got a chance. He doesn't. I slip his next combination and drive my fist into his solar plexus hard enough that he folds forward, and then I bring my knee up into his face and he goes down.
He doesn't get back up.
The crowd roars.
Tank steps into the ring, checks Garrett, confirms he's done. I step back. My face is throbbing where he hit me. It'll bruise. I'm going to have a black eye tomorrow, which is fucking embarrassing, which is what I deserve for getting distracted.
I look toward the stairs.
Chloe is still there.
Her hand is pressed to her mouth. The blonde next to her is talking, saying something I can't hear over the crowd noise, but Chloe isn't looking at her.
She's looking at me. Our eyes meet across the basement, across the crowd, and I see something in her face that I don't have time to interpret before she turns and disappears up the stairs.
Gone.
The blonde follows her.
And I'm standing in the ring with blood in my mouth and a growing bruise on my face and absolutely no idea what the fuck just happened.
Tank approaches. "You good?"
"Fine," I say.
"You sure? That hit—"
"I'm fine."
I'm not fine.
I step out of the ring. People are trying to talk to me, congratulate me on the win even though it was sloppy as hell, ask about the next fight.
I ignore them. I move through the crowd toward the stairs, toward the door she just left through, and I don't know what I'm planning to do when I get there.
Follow her? Demand to know why she's here? Pretend I didn't see her?
I reach the stairs.
I stop.
Following her is not an option. Whatever reason she had for being here, it's none of my business. She paid for self-defense lessons. That's the extent of our relationship. That's all it can be.
I turn around and go back to the ring.
There are three more fights tonight. I watch them from the edge of the crowd, my back against the wall, my hand pressed against the bruise forming on my face. The pain is good. The pain is useful. The pain reminds me that distraction in the ring gets you hurt.
Distraction anywhere else can get you killed.
By three a.m., the crowd is gone. By four, the basement is clean. By four-thirty, I'm alone in my apartment staring at the ceiling and replaying those five seconds when our eyes met.
She looked terrified.
Not of the fight. Not of the violence.
Of me.
And I have no fucking idea what to do with that.