Page 150 of The Black Trilogy

I staggered.

Alex let me have a brief respite over a lunch of quinoa salad with sliced turkey—thanks, Toby—then announced we’d be doing fight training in the afternoon.

“Who am I fighting?”

Please not him. I might as well lie on the driveway and get someone to drive a truck over me—back and forth, back and forth, back and forth—because it would have the same outcome but save an hour or so.

“Nick is here.”

Oh, thank goodness. Seconds later, Nick pushed the door open and stepped inside. I flung my arms around him out of relief.

“Whoa! That’s quite a welcome. You feeling all right?”

No, of course not. What was I even doing? I never showed emotion like that. Hurriedly, I dropped my arms and took a pace backwards. “How were things in England? Is Tia okay? And Luke?”

“Tia’s got a therapist helping her, but she misses you. You should give her a call.”

“I’m not sure Luke would like that. We didn’t exactly part on good terms.”

“He might have thawed a bit. I got the impression he’d been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing? What if I make things worse?”

“Promise me you’ll consider it.”

“I will.”

I didn’t promise I’d act, though. I’d already thought through the situation over and over as I lay awake at night, but I was no closer to working out what to do.

A shadow fell over us as Alex came over. “Are you ready?”

Nick seemed to shrink an inch or two under Alex’s piercing gaze, and I couldn’t blame him. Nick normally used his own trainer, but he’d heard my tales of Alex’s particular brand of motivation. Or punishment, depending on how you looked at it.

“We will start off in the cage,” Alex told us. “No gloves.”

“At least you’ve already done your quota of nose breaking for this week,” Nick said.

“Bradley’s got a big mouth.”

“He seemed quite annoyed. Apparently he got blood on his new Vans.”

“That mugger was horribly inconsiderate. He made a massive mess.”

“Stop talking and fight,” Alex interrupted. “I am not waiting around all day.”

For twenty minutes, fists flew. And feet, and overly polite non-curse words, from me at least. Nick thought my new un-potty mouth was funny, but he soon stopped laughing when I got in a good uppercut. Then he swore like the sailor he was.

“You’re a sadist,” he muttered during a brief water break. “And so is Alex. How do you put up with him?”

“Because he is so tough on me. The more I sweat in training, the less I’ll bleed in a real fight.”

“Or you’ll just die in training instead.”

“Well, that would mean I wasn’t good enough, wouldn’t it?”

And that was unacceptable.

Because I had to be perfect. Absolutely perfect. My husband had drilled that into me over the years. At first, I was convinced I wouldn’t make it through the training tasks he and Alex set for me, but every time I cracked one of their evil games, I became a little bit stronger. Eventually, I’d believed I could do pretty much anything.

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