Zane
I didn’t expect not to win my first match, but all the same, it was a blessed relief. And what a win! That prize was as good as mine. I’d been so caught up in my game that I’d zoned out everything around me. There was no noise, no people, nothing. I existed in a zone of perfect calm and blackness. The only lights were the colored balls that rolled across the felt and did exactly as I told them to do.
But now that the lights and noise were seeping back in, I looked around for my prize. But where was she? Sasha wouldn’t have left, not even for a drink. Not when I’d been nearly finished, anyway. I began to worry that whoever was out for my title had done something to her. Maybe they were planning to use her against me.
My heart thumped loudly, but I forced myself to coolly scan the crowd while I sipped my drink. I needed to think rationally and to keep my shit together if something had happened.
Grant pushed through the crowd, his lumbering form more than enough to cut a swathe through any group of people. He stopped in front of me, his face doing that thing it did when he talked about his granddaughter.
“I need to talk to you, boss,” he said. He leaned into my ear. “Sasha’s mom is sick. I just dropped her off at the hospital.”
The amount of relief I felt also made me feel guilty as hell. Yes, Sasha was fine—but her mom wasn’t. God, but if she’d been captured by a rival gang? I ached just thinking about it. I couldn’t handle it if something happened to her. But she was okay. Physically, at least. I knew how much she loved her mom, and how she was probably torn to pieces at the moment.
I had to get to her.
I put my drink down and began to walk to the door. Grant stopped me. “You’ve only got an hour until your other match.”
It didn’t matter. I shook my head and continued walking. Grant stepped aside to let me, but I would have beaten him to a pulp if need me. It didn’t matter to me that he’d been around since I was a kid. This was my girl we were talking about—and her mother. I began to realize that the protectiveness I felt for Sasha had transferred to her mother as well. I needed to get to them.
“Where you going, Zane?” Paul Hellenes, the leader of The Jokers, sneered. The Jokers were one of my prime suspects when it came to threats against my club. He was the same age as my father, and I’d heard that once they’d been friends. Any time I tried to ask Dad about it, he’d brushed it off, but I suspected something had happened in their past to make them hate each other.
“None of your business,” I snarled, pushing past him.
Whenever Paul smiled, the ragged purple scar on his cheek seemed to split his face in two. He’d gotten it in a drunken brawl between him and the former leader of The Jokers. They were more brutal in their hierarchical climbing than we were.
He butted in front of me again, and I was forced to stop. Beneath his scraggly brown mane of hair, his shit brown eyes looked up at me with disdain. “I hope you’re not leaving.”
“Why?” I asked sweetly. “You bet some money on me?”
He scoffed. “That would be like betting on the dog with three legs.”
I rolled my eyes. “Everybody loves an underdog story. Now get the fuck out of my way.”
“I know where he’s going!” hooted another Joker. “I saw his girlfriend run out of here twenty minutes ago. They must have had a fight.”
Paul laughed. It was loud and seemed forced. “Trouble in paradise, Zane? I hope you can keep control of your club better than you can keep control of your woman.”
I couldn’t start a fight with him now. That was exactly what he wanted. If I did that, I’d be disqualified from the tournament entirely. Instead, I filed it away, and simply responded with a caustic smile, “I’d like to see her hear you say that.”
I blasted through him with considerable force, sending Paul staggering off to the side. Even my satisfaction at having done that did little to ease the ache in my gut. Sasha was hurting, and I wasn’t there. I needed to be there.
I found my bike outside and hopped on. I knew people were watching me leave. I knew what I was doing could potentially make me look weak in front of my club. Worse, in front of others, like The Jokers. But I had to go. Sasha needed me.
I drove fast enough that they would have taken my bike away from me if they caught me. The journey that had taken Grant ten minutes only took me five. The drive was short, but it was long enough for me to decide that I would do whatever was needed to fix this. To help. I would scale Everest if that’s what it took.
For Sasha, the world.