Page 51 of If You Fight

“You won’t need it. You’re going to do great tonight.”

He kissed me, his lips lingering on mine like he didn’t want to leave. Holding my hand, he backed away until he had to let go of me and walked out of the apartment.

As the door clicked shut, I whispered, “God, please let him be okay tonight. Don’t let my father win.”

I didn’t care if Ryder beat the hell out of the guy he went up against. I didn’t care at all about this stupid fight. I just wanted my father to finally understand that no matter what he did and no matter how many obstacles he threw in front of us, Ryder would do whatever he must to make sure we were together.

As the minutesticked by to the time I knew Ryder would be fighting, my stomach twisted into knots from my fear that he wouldn’t come out of this okay. What if my father had found someone bigger and stronger to ensure he lost? Would Ryder be able to defeat someone like that?

I didn’t know. All I knew about this kind of fighting was what I’d read online. Everything about it sounded barbaric and horrible. I couldn’t imagine seeing two men savagely attack one another like animals just to entertain a crowd.

A knock at the front door tore me from my thoughts about what he’d have to endure, and I answered it to find my father standing alone outside. He looked down his very straight nose at me, inhaling a deep breath before he let it out slowly.

“I was surprised to see you didn’t go with Ryder when he left for his fight,” he said in that way that told me surprise wasn’t at all what he’d felt. I suspected disappointment was closer to the truth.

But why?

“He didn’t want me to go. From what he says, it’s no place for someone like me. Or you, for that matter, Dad.”

My father narrowed his dark eyes until they were barely slits. “I think it would be good for you to see where your boyfriend came from.”

“You mean the man you refer to as your adopted son? You think I should see where he came from? Why do you act like you’re any better than he is? He fought and you ran the fights. Doesn’t that mean that he was an employee all along? Is that what your problem is with us together? You’d rather me be with someone like Oliver who had money?”

“Get your coat, Serena. It’s time to go.”

His command left little room for more argument, and to be honest, I didn’t want to hear his answers anyway. I also had a burning curiosity about seeing Ryder fight. My father thought it would make me turn away from the man I loved, but I knew better. It didn’t matter what Ryder did before he came into my life.

All that mattered to me was who he’d always been to me once he got there, and nothing I’d see from his fighting would change that.

I did as my father ordered and followed him down to the limousine waiting for us outside the garage. We said nothing to one another the entire way there. I stared out the window as the car rolled into a section of Baltimore that seemed to be an endless line of old warehouses near the docks. I’d never spent time in this part of the city, only once making a wrong turn and ending up here on my way to meet some people in Inner Harbor. It wasn’t the type of place a young woman in a sports car should be alone at night.

The car came to a stop, and I looked out the window to see busted windows and graffiti covering the brick exterior of the building in front of us. A light flickered on and off inside a room on the main floor giving the place an eerie feeling I hadn’t expected.

I turned to look at my father and asked, “What is this?”

Matter-of-factly, he answered, “A building I own, but people like Ryder call it The Pit. It’s where fights are held.”

“And this is legal?”

His mouth turned up into a smirk, and he shook his head. “Legal or illegal. Doesn’t matter here. Watch where you step when you get out. There’s glass and other things you don’t want to cut yourself on all over the ground.”

He leaned forward to tell the driver to wait for us there and then got out of the car without another word to me. I opened the door and saw garbage and glass like he’d warned me about, and as I walked toward the building, I saw syringes strewn about, evidence that his claim of legal or illegal, neither mattered here was right.

I swallowed hard thinking about Ryder spending his days and nights here before he came to the estate. This was no place for anyone to live.

My father led the way around to the side of the building, and we entered through an old metal door that slid open with a terrible scraping sound to reveal a dark hallway with a single dim light at the end of it. It reminded me of a horror film I’d seen a few years ago set in an abandoned factory where a killer tortured teenagers he found before dismembering them and hanging the body parts on meat hooks like fleshy trophies for him to admire. Every victim walked down a hallway just like the one we were in before they met the man who eventually killed them.

I only watched that movie once, but I still had nightmares about it.

“Nice place, isn’t it?” my father asked in a teasing voice.

“Well, you own it. Maybe some lights would be nice,” I snapped back as my shoe crushed a piece of glass I suspected had once been part of a lightbulb.

“Lights draw attention to things. Better to keep things in the dark,” he answered curtly before stopping at a second sliding metal door.

He turned to face me, and I barely made out the contours of his face it was so dark. “If I were you, I’d stay close, Serena.”

His cryptic warning only served to make me more terrified of what I’d see when that door opened, but I didn’t want him to know how frightened all this made me. Working to sound casual, I said, “I didn’t want to be here in the first place, so I have no intention of wandering off.”

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