Page 20 of The Hunter

“I know you,” a sweet voice crooned from one of the silk tents. “You only want girl on her knees.”

Argent turned, looking down at a small woman with long, long black hair and startlingly red lips painted on a face so white, he could barely distinguish it from the color of the tent.

She was right. He only took women from behind. He didn’t want to look them in the eyes, either.

Reaching for him, she placed a demure hand on his jacket. “I get on my knees for you,” she offered in a husky voice. “I not afraid like the other girls.”

She said that now…

“Some other time, perhaps.” He brushed her off.

It was a different vice he searched for tonight. A different woman he wanted on her knees…

God, what that image did to him. Millie LeCour bent over for him, her creamy skin bared and her body accepting his.

Christ,he needed some kind of release or he’d immolate there in the frigid London night.

When a door opened and two men dragged a half-naked body to bleed into the gutter, Argent knew he’d found the right place. Nodding to one of the house employees he’d known for years, he caught the gleam of greed in the man’s eyes. “You going to give me time to place my bets?” the man asked, dumping his charge and wiping filthy hands on his trousers.

“Only if you place mine, I’ll give you six percent of the winnings.” Retrieving his clip of notes from his pocket, Argent tossed the entire thing to the man, Wei Ping was his name, and mounted the rickety stairs into the unmarked building.

Three flights down into the bowels of the earth the sound became so deafening, it drowned out the storm. Men. Hundreds of them. Some in white-tie finery and others in tatters and rags, all screaming, sweating, and swearing at the fighter upon whom they’d risked their money.

Ducking below the door frame, Argent nodded to the corpulent Chinese, Pan Lee, who leased the building from Dorian Blackwell who took a commission from the business. The man held up two fingers, raising a questioning eyebrow.

Argent held up three.

Receiving a nod from Pan Lee, Argent strode toward the pit. His jacket hit the filth that covered the floor. Then his tie, his waistcoat, and finally his shirt.

People always gasped when he removed his shirt. He’d stopped noticing years ago.

Rainwater and sweat dropped from his hair and ran down his spine. His muscles were warm from his run. He was ready.

He was like water.

Pandemonium spread through the crowd when they saw him. Christopher Argent. Last student of the Wing Chun Kung Fu master Wu Ping. The weapon of the Blackheart Brothers of Newgate Prison. The youngest, highest-earning pit fighter of the previous decade. The Blackheart of Ben More’s master assassin.

The coldest, deadliest man in all London.

He knew what they saw when he removed his fine shoes at the side of the pit, certain that even in this den of thieves, no one would dare to swipe them.

Please—don’t hurt my son.

Those words had followed him around for two decades.

They’d hurt him plenty in the years after his mother died. The guards. The prisoners. Even his allies. In a world like Newgate Prison, pain was how one communicated, it was the only language they all understood. And once they’d hanged Wu Ping a couple years later, pain had become Argent’snewteacher.

His torso was a large, pale record of lessons learned, of lashes he’d returned and pain he’d answered in kind. Of brutish strength gained through forced labor, disciplined training, and pits like these in the early days, when he’d followed Dorian Blackwell into the hells of the East End. They’d each done what they had to do to earn money. Unspeakable things.

Like the cavern carved through time by a single trickle of water, Argent had honed himself into a sharp-hewn weapon, an instrument of death. And he’dneverfailed to deal the fatal blow.

Until tonight.

The question remained… Why?

Three men filtered into the round pit, a hole in the ground, really, the depth of a grave and the width of a small bedroom. Once you entered Pan Lee’s pit, you left broken or victorious. There was no in-between.

And no one hadeverbroken him.