2. Zaria #2
"I know you're in the wrong place." I reach up, pat his cheek condescendingly, feeling the heat of his skin under my palm.
He's still running hot from watching the fight, from our conversation, from whatever darkness he thinks he's chasing.
"Go home, Greer. Find yourself a nice girl who thinks missionary is adventurous.
Someone who'll hold your hand and tell you everything's okay.
Someone who doesn't have blood under her fingernails. "
His hand catches my wrist before I can pull away, his grip surprisingly firm. "What if I don't want that?"
"What you want and what's good for you are two different things." I twist out of his hold easily—he's strong but untrained, doesn't know how to maintain a grip against someone who knows what they're doing. "You're a good boy playing in the deep end. Go back to the shallow water before you drown."
I turn away before he can respond, before that look in his eyes makes me reconsider. The crowd swallows me immediately, people pressing close to congratulate me or proposition me or just exist in my orbit like proximity to violence makes them special.
I push through all of it, heading for the back exit that leads to the employee hallway and eventually the street. My body is starting to come down from the high, muscles settling into familiar aches, the split on my knuckles throbbing now that adrenaline is fading.
The hallway is quieter, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, concrete walls painted institutional beige.
My locker is at the end, next to the shower room that's seen better decades.
I grab my bag, throw on sweatpants and an oversized hoodie over my fight gear, not bothering to clean the blood off yet. I'll shower at home.
The back exit opens onto an alley, night air hitting my overheated skin like a blessing. I breathe deep, letting the evening chill settle into my lungs, clearing out the basement's stale smoke and sweat.
Footsteps behind me. Heavy, familiar cadence.
"Going home alone?" Cain's voice carries that perpetual note of amusement, like everything I do entertains him. "That's not like you."
"Fuck off." I don't look back, just keep walking toward where my car is parked two blocks over.
He falls into step beside me anyway because Cain doesn't understand boundaries.
Six-two of muscle and scar tissue, wearing his usual black jacket and perpetual scowl.
My father specifically asked him to watch over me when he got locked up, and Cain has taken that responsibility way too seriously for the past three years.
Though he's always looked out for me despite our three year age gap.
"Rough fight?" He asks, knowing damn well it wasn't.
"Please. That asshole lasted two rounds. I was being generous."
"Yeah, I saw your generosity. Real charitable, crushing his windpipe like that." He lights a cigarette, offers me one. I wave it off. "You usually find someone to take home after a kill. What happened? Standards finally kick in?"
"My standards are fine. Your face is still ugly."
"And yet you keep me around."
"That's Dad's fault, not mine."
We both know it's not true. Cain is like my big brother, been around since long before my dad got locked up.
He snorts smoke through his nose. "So what's the deal? You turn down that finance bro at the bar who was eye-fucking you? Thought you liked the clean-cut types."
"I thought about it." Greer's face flashes through my mind—those green-gold eyes holding mine while I told him to run. The way his hand caught my wrist like he could keep me there through sheer want. "Decided against it."
"Why? He looked like your usual flavor—pretty, probably rich, definitely out of his depth."
"Exactly." I shove my hands in my hoodie pockets, my knuckles protesting the movement. "He's too far outside. Would've been a mess."
"Since when do you care about mess?"
"Since I'm trying to hold Dad's territory together and don't need complications." We turn the corner onto the street where my car waits, a black Audi that blends with a dozen others. "Some kid with trauma playing dress-up in our world isn't worth the headache."
"Huh." Cain sounds thoughtful, which is never good. "That's almost responsible of you."
"Don't get used to it."
"Wouldn't dream of it, Viper." He uses my fight name like it's a joke between us, which it is.
My father came up with it when I was sixteen and put some asshole twice my size on the ground.
Said I struck fast and left them wondering what hit them.
The name stuck. "You sure you're good to drive?
You took that hit to the face pretty hard. "
I probe my cheekbone with careful fingers. Definitely swelling, going to bruise spectacularly. "I've driven with worse."
"That's not comforting."
"I'm not trying to comfort you." I unlock my car, throw my bag in the passenger seat. Cain leans against the driver's door, blocking me, which means he's about to say something I won't like. "What?"
"Just checking on you. That's my job."
"Your job is to make sure Bennett territory doesn't fall apart while Dad's locked up. Not babysit me."
"Those are the same thing and you know it." His expression softens slightly, which is how I know he means it. "You've been fighting more lately. Taking riskier matches."
"I like the challenge."
"You like the violence." He's not wrong. "I'm just saying—you keep escalating like this, eventually someone's going to get the drop on you."
"Let them try." I shoulder past him, hand on the door handle. "I'll be fine, Cain. Go home. Get laid. Do whatever it is you do when you're not hovering over me like a worried mother."
"Worried brother, actually."
The correction makes something in my chest tighten. Cain has been more family to me than most of my blood relatives, been there through every fight and territory dispute and late-night breakdown when the weight of holding my father's empire together got too heavy.
But I'm not good at sentiment, and he knows it.
"Fuck off," I tell him, but it comes out soft.
He grins, stepping back so I can open my door. "That's my girl. Drive safe, Z."
"Stop calling me that."
"Never."
I slide into the driver's seat, start the engine, and pull away while he's still standing there smoking his cigarette and looking insufferably pleased with himself.
The city passes by my windows in familiar patterns—streetlights, closed storefronts, the occasional pedestrian who doesn't make eye contact. Bennett territory at night, mine to protect and defend and keep intact until my father gets out in five years.
Five more years of this. Of fighting and killing and proving myself over and over to men who think my gender makes me weak. Of handling territory disputes and supply chain issues and keeping rivals from moving in on what's ours.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to walk away. To be someone who doesn't have blood under her fingernails, who can go on dates and have normal conversations and not constantly calculate threat levels.
Then I remember my father's face when they led him away in handcuffs, the trust in his eyes when he told me to keep his empire alive.
And I know I'll never walk away. This life chose me before I could choose it back.
My phone buzzes.
Cain: You left your water bottle at the gym.
Zaria: Throw it away
Cain: It's the good kind
Zaria: I'll get another one
Cain: Wasteful. Also you're typing while driving
Zaria: I'm at a red light
Cain: Sure you are
I toss my phone on the passenger seat and focus on driving. My apartment is fifteen minutes away if traffic cooperates, twenty if it doesn't. Hot shower, cold beer, maybe the fantasy novel I've been reading when sleep won't come. Regular people things, or close enough.
The throbbing in my knuckles has settled into a dull ache. I flex my fingers against the steering wheel, feeling split skin pull against tape. Tomorrow I'll have a friend look at them—she's a nurse, used to patching up our fighters without asking questions.
Tonight though. Tonight I just want to be alone with the lingering adrenaline and the memory of crushing someone's windpipe while two hundred people screamed my name.
And maybe—just maybe—the memory of green-gold eyes that looked at me like I was something worth understanding.
But I shove that thought down where it belongs: nowhere useful.
Greer can go back to his clean life and his matching furniture and whatever nice girl eventually catches his attention. He doesn't need someone like me showing him exactly how dark the world gets.
Even if part of me wanted to.