Mia stopped jumping and nodded. “I’m ready.”
Kizzy slapped Mia’s cheeks, making me take a step forward until Slater shook his head. Who was I to interrupt their pre-fight routine? “You’re going to kick ass, aren’t you, Spyder?”
Her dark gaze never flickered. “Yes.”
I swallowed, caught between abject pride, shock and a deep sense of unease. I’d never been in the room with her before a fight, and she wasn’t my girl right now. She was someone else. Completely focused, quietly lethal.
It left me in awe, even more than I’d been when we’d walked into the makeshift locker room in the abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn where the fight was being held. As impressed as I was with Mia’s dedication and overall conditioning, the mental space she dropped into so effortlessly before she walked into the ring amazed me even more.
She was the born fighter I’d never been.
That conviction remained even as she stepped into the octagon with the music playing. They’d gone with a newer hip-hop song, something that shook the rafters and got the crowd pumping their fists. Evie was in the other corner, her back turned to us. Her corner man was Timmins and a small Asian woman I recognized from The Cage as one of the newer trainers. But she wasn’t conferring with them or stretching or even gloating as most fighters did before the match.
Nope, she was having a heated argument with a dark-haired man in a gray suit, who appeared on the verge of reaching up into the ring and dragging her out. The anger contorting his features didn’t exactly fit with the slick, polished vibe he had going.
But it wasn’t until Kizzy let out a low whistle that I realized why he looked so familiar. “Holy shit. Sutton Pierce, here in the flesh.”
I glanced at Kizzy, who was bouncing hard enough to make her hair hit maximum heights. “Sutton from Mark’s Gym? The dude who took it over?”
“As in my asshat boss, who makes my life a living hell. He hates everything MMA. Wonder what the hell he’s…” She trailed off. “Pierce. Fucking Pierce.”
“Evie’s brother?”
Shit. Now that I was looking more closely, I could even see the resemblance. Dark hair, blue eyes, permanent sneer.
Well, that explained why she’d come to New York after fighting in Europe. She had family here. Enraged family, but family just the same.
All at once I remembered I was supposed to be focused on Mia, not gossip-mongering with Kathleen Cavanaugh. I turned around and saw Slater crouched in front of Mia, talking softly to her while she nodded, listening.
I smiled. She was in good hands. The same hands I’d been in for years, ones that had never led me wrong. Slater was good people, and an excellent trainer, no matter how much he inherently hated blood and guts and disliked the violence of MMA.
Mia rose and came over to me, her expression intent. “Carly?”
“She’s fine. I checked in with Gio about an hour ago. They’re in Queens.”
“Queens?” Mia’s brow furrowed. “What’s there?”
I shrugged. “They’re in a safe spot with his backup, he said. No, I don’t know what that means, but I’m trusting the guy.” At this point, I didn’t have much choice.
Kizzy snagged Mia’s elbow and led her away from another quick talk while Mia went through a quick stretching routine. She grabbed her ankle behind her back, then touched the mat and rose to her toes to reach for the sky. Then her gaze drifted back to me, for one last lingering look.
We didn’t need words. She was ready, and I was behind her every step of the way.
A moment later, she tapped gloves with Evie in the center of the ring as the fans roared. Evie had a confident smile in place, but she wasn’t the same cocksure woman I’d met at The Cage. Something had her rattled, whether it was her brother’s interference or the presence of the men in black suits who were lurking around the fringes of the crowd. There was no missing them—or the way they touched the guns at their waists as a not-so-subtle reminder of who and what they were.
How had I never noticed them around the fights before? I’d obviously had tunnel vision on my opponent. On winning, the only thing that mattered.
I looked back toward Mia. Until now.
The opening bell rang and I sucked in a breath. I’d never been in this position before, watching on the sidelines. I’d never had to fist my hands and plant my feet to keep myself from harming anyone who dared to touch my girl.
Not that she needed that from me. Not one fucking bit.
From the first, she was in attack mode, just as we’d practiced. Evie’s tapes had showed she was a fighter who liked to sneak under her opponent’s guard from the start. So Mia combated that by striking first. She landed a fierce uppercut to Evie’s jaw that snapped her head back, though she hadn’t gone for the side with the scar. Kizzy had told her to, instructed her to exploit that weakness as much as possible, yet Mia had chosen to fight fair. The hit would still hurt like a bitch, but what could have been a murderous blow was much less on the opposite side.
Unlike Giovanni Costas, who’d jumped on every weakness of mine he could, Mia was operating above board. And I loved her more for it.
At the end of the first round, both women were panting hard and Mia had a cut at the corner of her lips. It bled freely while I poured water into her mouth. Kizzy and Slater were shouting praise and encouragement. Me, I was watching her back while she guzzled one bottle of water and went straight for a second.