HALSTON
The underground fighting arena sat beneath an abandoned warehouse near the docks.
From the outside, it looked like a condemned building waiting to collapse into the harbor.
Rust stained the walls.
Broken windows reflected the city lights.
Nothing about it suggested wealth, power, or violence.
Which was precisely the point.
The real world rarely announced itself.
I stepped from the SUV, adjusting the cuffs of my black shirt as the heavy steel doors ahead opened.
The noise hit with music, the shouting of men and the roar of the crowd.
Beside me, Kaira’s eyes widened slightly as she took everything in.
I smirked.
“Disappointed?”
She glanced at me.
“Should I be?”
“You seem like the type who expected a secret password and a hidden tunnel.”
“It’s surprising how you always conduct my expectations for me.”
I laughed.
The guards surrounding us remained silent, their faces unreadable as we stepped into the dimly lit hall.
The moment we crossed the threshold, something shifted subtly.
Conversations hushed just a fraction, voices dropping to lower tones.
Eyes flicked toward us briefly before turning away, heads tilting slightly, bodies subtly straightening, as if their instincts told them to create space without a word.
Beside me, Kaira walked with her usual calm, her expression untouched by the effect of whatever was happening.
The fighting pit occupied the center of the room, enclosed by steel fencing.
Hundreds of spectators crowded around it.
Some were politicians, some were criminals, the rest were my kind.
The atmosphere smelled of whiskey, sweat, blood, and money.
We took our seats in the private viewing section overlooking the cage.
Oliver settled beside me while still keeping a watchful eye.
Kaira leaned forward, the first fighters were already inside.
They were two enormous men attempting to remove each other’s heads.
The crowd erupted as one fighter slammed the other into the fencing.
Kaira’s attention got locked onto the match.
I sat back, a glass of bourbon resting in my hand, delivered by a serving girl who glanced at me seductively, not minding I had a lady sitting beside me.
A minute later she clicked her tongue.
“Stupid.” She gestured with her hands too.
I glanced toward the cage, it turned out that one fighter had overcommitted to a strike and missed.
His opponent immediately capitalized on it, hit him to the ground unconscious.
The fight continued but I barely watched it.
Kaira was far more entertaining, she leaned forward whenever the fight got hotter, rolled her eyes at sloppy attacks, and muttered criticism beneath her breath.
At one point she actually applauded after a particularly brutal knockout.
She claimed to hate my world, yet she was fascinated by the brutality of it.
The contradiction was captivating.
As the third round commenced, I noticed her loose focus.
Her posture stiffened.
She looked away from the ring, scanning the crowd briefly.
“What?” My gaze followed her.
Her eyes swept the arena.
“Nothing.”
“You’re sure?”
” Yeah” she turned back to the fighting pit.
Eventually she relaxed, her jaw tightening at a near-miss.
**********
By the time we left the arena, the city had fallen asleep.
The convoy moved through the darkness, two SUVs in front, two behind, ours in the middle.
Oliver drove us.
Kaira sat leaning onto the window, visibly exhausted from the evening.
The streetlights flashed across her face as she stared outside.
BOOM.
An explosion rocked the vehicle ahead.
The second lead vehicle swerved sideways, the car’s brakes shrieked to a halt.
Oliver slammed on the brakes, fighting for control as our own tires blew out with a deafening pop, grinding the SUV to a screeching halt halfway into a ditch.
“Ambush!
Get down!” Oliver shouted.
The doors flew open.
My men drew their weapons.
Before Kaira could even process the command, the night exploded into a series of gunfire.
Bullets tore into the lead SUV.
One of my men dropped, another collapsed beside him.
The attack came from both sides of the road.
Trees, abandoned structures, the darkness itself.
“Cover!” Oliver shouted, returning fire.
My surviving guards formed around us, the entire road transformed into chaos.
The attackers surrounded us, their guns pointed at us, and ours at them.
Suddenly, a whistle pierced the air, and the firing ceased.
The attackers who had circled us, parted.
Creating a lane in the center of the chaos.
From the darkness of the highway, a lone woman stepped forward.
She was dressed black, everything of hers was in black.
She was tall and exuding the aura that would make lesser men flinch, not me.
I have been through worse to be scared of a woman covered in black.
However, something drew my keen attention to her.
Her mask.
It was black as midnight with thin silver lines running across its surface.
In this line of work, I had seen so many masks, most with ones intended to scare but ended up looking like a clown and others who did make an effort.
But this was different, like her very own signature.
She stopped a short distance away, completely ignoring my guards, ignoring Oliver, ignoring Kaira.
Her piercing eyes locked entirely onto mine.
The night grew quiet.
The masked woman tilted her head slightly, as though she was studying me and then she did a subtle flick of her wrist and muttered something.
Suddenly, a wave of a familiar, suffocating dread I hadn’t felt in years slammed into my chest.
happening, my knees buckled.
Strength vanished from my bones, my legs turning to water as I hit the ground.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t move.
I was trapped inside my own mind, drowning in a terror I thought I had buried a decade ago.
My vision blurred.
The road vanished.
“What the hell—” Oliver’s voice sounded distant, as though he were underwater.
“Halston.” Oliver crouched beside me, his hand grabbed my shoulder.
“Halston, what happened?”
I could barely hear him, but I couldn’t answer because I didn’t even know what was happening.
The woman hadn’t touched me, she hadn’t even fired a weapon, yet my body suddenly felt like it belonged to someone else.
Behind Oliver, I saw Kaira staring down at me.
The Mask’s gaze slowly shifted, leaving me and settling on Kaira.
Kaira followed her stare, their eyes met.
For a moment neither of us moved.
Then everything exploded.
Gunfire erupted from every direction, the remaining attackers opened fire.
Their muzzle flashes tore through the darkness, bullets screamed across the road.
Oliver shoved me behind the SUV as chaos consumed the convoy.
One of my guards took a round through his throat.
The road became a battlefield where bodies collided, glass shattered and metal sparked.
Faster than I expected, Kaira moved, yanking a handgun from one of the fallen guards as her free hand disappeared beneath her jacket, bringing out the silver dagger I had gifted her.
The masked lady moved like a shadow, ignoring the gunfire as she charged directly toward the back of the van where Oliver had pulled my body out of the crossfire.
Kaira threw herself directly into her path, the Mask’s blade missing my throat by inches.
The two women collided in a blur of movements.
Every strike from the masked seemed effortless, while Kaira intercepted her every move.
Around them, Oliver and the remaining guards battled the attackers.
Bodies fell, gunfire echoed, blood stained the road.
The fight continued.
Kaira ducked.
A kick followed but she blocked it.
A knife flashed toward her ribs.
She twisted aside just in time.
Get up.
My internal voice screamed against the paralyzing dread holding me down.
Get the fuck up.
Slowly, agonizingly, the suffocating fog in my mind began to tear.
Rage burned through the paralysis.
My fingers gripped the gravel and I dragged myself up back onto my feet, drawing my backup weapon.
“Boss—” Oliver saw me standing, relief flashed across his face.
I ignored him for the moment because my eyes were on Kaira.
I lunged forward to join her in the fray.
The masked retreated a step, knowing she now faced both of us.
I met Kaira side, we exchanged a glance briefly.
It seemed as though her eyes asked if I was fine before we proceeded back to fighting.
One attacker appeared from her blind side.
His rifle raised, his finger tightening on the trigger.
I reached him, shooting him down.
Next, I turned back to seeing Kaira burying the blade deep into the top of the assassin’s shoulder.
She let out a sharp hiss as the steel bit deep.
The blade tore free, blood soaked her cloth and sprayed across the ground as she staggered backward.
She whipped a hidden pistol from her waist, aiming it directly at Kaira’s exposed chest while Kaira attention was divided—shooting an attacker lunging closer to Oliver from where she stood.
My body moved before my mind could calculate the risk.
I threw myself across the space, stepping directly into the line of fire, using myself as a human shield to cover Kaira.
The impact hit like a sledgehammer, the bullet tore into my flesh.
The force staggered me backward into Kaira’s arms as my breathing came out ragged.
“Halston!” Oliver’s voice boomed as he spun around, his rifle raised to eliminate the leader.
But there was nothing to shoot.
Suddenly, she was gone.
Unnoticed, terrifyingly unnoticed.
She had vanished into the shadows of the tree line like a breath of wind.
Like a ghost that had never truly been there.
The world lurched.
Kaira’s eyes widened, her trembling hands pressed into my chest as though she could stop the blood from seeping between her fingers.
Then we both collapsed to the ground.