Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
But I hadn’t fought in a ring in well over ten years.
Adam was good.
But he didn’t stand a chance against me, although he’d tried to prove otherwise once before, and I’d shut him down, not giving him the fight he wanted.
“I was just doing you a favor, anyhow. She’s lost a lot of customers; that’s why I started coming once or twice a week instead of every other week,” Adam said, smiling.
He slipped his hands into fingerless gloves, watching me, assessing my face, trying to gauge my reaction.
Outwardly I showed no reaction at all, but on the inside, I was stunned.
I hadn’t realized that Annie’s business had been affected by all of this.
Just how many customers had she lost?
A few?
A lot?
And why hadn’t she told me?
Now that I knew, however, I would be able to figure out a way to help her.
And it sickened me that my rash act of confronting Liam Cornell at Annie’s salon had made her feel any recourse from that situation at all.
I sat on the bench and slowly started to unlace my boots, taking the time to collect myself as I did it.
The first rule of fighting was not to let anger play a part in your decision to fight.
And that was what Adam had been trying to accomplish.
Once my boots and socks were off, I stood up and stretched my arms up high above my head.
My spine cracked as it lengthened, and I wanted to laugh when CeeCee made a gagging sound.
She hated it when people popped their knuckles or their backs, and made no secret of her opinions.
The door jingled again, causing me to glance in its direction out of habit.
I wasn’t at all surprised to see Peek, Ridley, Wolf and Griffin coming through the door, either.
The office that Griffin, Wolf and I shared was located just down the street, so it wouldn’t have been that hard for them to get here.
Peek and Ridley, though, had been out of town.
Vaguely I wondered why and when they got back, but chose not to question it until I was done with my fight.
It shouldn’t take long.
“Who’s officiating?” Adam asked as I finally moved to the cage.
It wasn’t really a cage.
It was more like a ring but surrounded in netting.
It was there as a visual aid and it didn’t really serve any other purpose.
“No official. First one to pass out loses,” I told him, causing him to blink in surprise.
“Okay,” Adam agreed a little too eagerly.
That was a second stupid thing he’d done.
Adam was pretty smart, but he let his emotions get the best of him.
I knew he was excited to fight me.
He wasn’t, however, excited to know we were only going one round.
“How is that going to accomplish anything?” Adam asked in confusion.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to let you get a good 20 seconds in before I knock you out,” I taunted.
He narrowed his eyes on me, and I heard an amused chuckle from behind me.
Casten.
He knew this would be my fight.
I would control every aspect of it.
Adam would be along for the ride, so to speak.
“Fine,” Adam said, holding out his hands.
I punched them, taking a deep breath, before I launched right in to my attack.
See, that’s the thing about me.
People, or other fighters, expected a big man like me to be slow.
I probably had fifty pounds on Adam.
Normally, we’d be in different weight classes, but I knew Adam could take a punch.
He’d been trained by Casten.
But he’d never had to fight for his life.
Deep down, Adam was basically a good guy, he just needed to learn to control his mouth better.
And to stay away from my woman, I thought darkly.
I switched off those thoughts and cast my mind back to a place it hadn’t been in well over ten years—since that last summer when I was twenty and spent a week with my father.
It’d also been the very last lesson he’d ever given me.
And I remembered every single bit of it.
I’d taken that knowledge into the Air Force with me.
I’d honed my body into the machine that my father had started sculpting, and I’d only gotten bigger, stronger and more solid since.
Something I was about to prove to Adam.
See, the real reason I wouldn’t spar with Adam wasn’t because I didn’t want to—it was because I did.
In a few minutes, every man here would learn who was the real fighter in the room.
But it was never good to reveal your hand too early, because if you ever had to use the skills that I possessed, then you weren’t in a good place.
If Adam knew how good I was he’d bug me incessantly until I helped to train him.
Adam was a good fighter, and part of the reason why was that he was not only religious about his training, but he also had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about the sport.