Page 234 of Fractured Allegiance
I arch a brow. “And how exactly do you test that? Ask them to pinky swear?”
“No,” Elias says, pushing away from the table. His chair scrapes loud against the floor. “You put them under pressure. Pressure shows cracks.”
He jerks his chin toward the back of the room. “Basement.”
Jax perks up like a mutt hearing the dinner bell. Ren pales but follows. Jori doesn’t even sigh. He just stands, smooth, silent, too practiced.
I stay seated. “What, we’re giving them recess now?”
Elias’s grin is thin. “We're giving them a chance to show you what they're capable of. Or would you rather wait until Drazen’s dogs are at the door to find out?”
The man’s not wrong. Still, I hate giving him the satisfaction of being right. I drag myself up, grabbing my coffee mug just to let the last bitter swallow burn down my throat.
Lydia watches me, arms crossed. She doesn’t argue, doesn’t tell me not to go. But her eyes say it plainly: don’t prove him right about you, too.
I follow them to the basement.
The basement smells like rust and mildew, old concrete sweating damp under bare bulbs. A punching bag hangs in the corner, split at the seams, sand bleeding out like guts. Elias calls it a sparring ground. I call it what it is: an excuse.
Elias moves like he’s walking through scripture when he sets the rules. He likes control so much he dresses it up asdiscipline. “Pair off,” he says. “Two minutes each. No knives. No choking. We’re not burying anyone tonight. I just want to see if you’ll throw yourself at something that isn’t your own wallet.”
Jax cracks his knuckles like an animal. Ren shifts on his feet with a nervous energy that could snap a tendon. Jori stands aside, hands in his pockets, the kind of placid you don’t trust because it hides calculation.
Lydia watches from the lip of the stairs, dressed in borrowed clothes from Mara—a fitted black tee and charcoal leggings that hug her frame.
There’s a bruise at the base of her throat, pale and petulant. She doesn’t blink as Jax strips his jacket off and stalks toward the center. Her posture says she’s cataloguing facts, filing them away to use later. She’s always been better at folding chaos into a blade than anyone I know.
“Start with Ward,” Elias says. He points at me like I’m a problem he enjoys.
Of course. Naturally.
I step forward. My boots scuff small arcs into the dust. Jax's grin is all teeth and threat. He's built like a boulder someone tried to carve into a man.
We circle. He swings first—not wild, but measured. Testing my reflexes, feeling out my training. I dodge and counter with a jab to his ribs. He absorbs it with a grunt, barely flinches, and comes back fast with an elbow that clips my jaw. The impact rattles my teeth, stars blooming at the edge of my vision.
He's got power, but more than that—he's got experience. The kind you don't learn in a gym. When we break apart, both breathing harder, he's grinning wider, wiping blood from his lip.
And I work my jaw.
Elias watches from the edge, arms crossed. Lydia hasn't moved from the stairs, her expression cataloguing every move, every weakness.
Ren steps up next, gloves half on. He's nervous in a way that smells like fear of consequences rather than fear of pain. But when he moves, that nervousness disappears. He's faster than Jax, lighter on his feet, angles where Jax used force.
We trade sequences. He lands a solid hit to my shoulder that'll bruise purple by morning. I manage to sweep his leg, but he rolls with the momentum, back on his feet in seconds. My knee finds his thigh, he counters with a palm to my sternum that drives the air from my lungs.
By the time we break, we're both breathing hard. He spits to the side and nods once—respect in his eyes. He grins and steps back, rubbing his jaw.
Now Jori moves forward. He takes his turn last, and there's a small smile at the corner of his mouth like he's been expecting something he finds amusing. He doesn't put on gloves. He doesn't need them.
We touch, polite at first. He's lighter than I expect—not wiry like Jax, but compact and quick. He tries a feint. I read it and counter. He shifts, absorbs, comes back at a different angle. We're evenly matched—too evenly. Every time I think I have an opening, he's already moved.
“You’re nervous,” I say. I let the word be an observation and a needle.
He answers without sounding off. “Wouldn’t you be? Sitting in a room with a fugitive and a dead man’s future?” The joke comes out too smooth.
I bait him and I press where the men in this room won’t look. “Who are you watching for, Jori? Elias? Drazen? A mailbox?”
For the first time his smile slips. The eyes that return my stare are not amused. There’s an odd blankness there, an expense of something I can’t tax.
