Page 120 of The Vigilante's Lover

Maybe she won’t come until Lukov’s match.

I settle back in my seat. Might as well just watch the show.

The ref brings the boys together and says something unintelligible, just a mumble of reverberating speaker noise. I glance over at Mia, who is rapt, sitting forward in her seat. Color washes over her as the lights pulse and move around.

This feels so normal, so civilian, sitting in an arena attending a public event with a crowd. Beer guts, pushup bras, and all. I shift in my seat. It’s almost like she said last night, forgetting about the vendetta and Klaus and just living a life.

I have more than enough money to last ten lifetimes, no matter what I do. We could do anything.

She looks over at me and pats my leg. I take her hand and bring it to my lips. I can’t see her blush, but I know it’s happening by the way she casts her eyes down.

Pushup-bra woman leans over the empty seat between us. “He’s a keeper,” she says to Mia.

I’ve been exposed to a lot of toxins in my career, but her overdose of cheap perfume makes my head rush. Mia catches it too, as she absently brushes her hand across her nose.

“I think so,” she says to the woman, or shouts it, rather, as the music has gotten crazy again now that the ref has stepped back.

A buzzer sounds and the two men begin their patterns. One slams a hard kick into the other and the crowd roars in appreciation.

I watch Mia’s reaction. I’m curious to see how she feels about violence, if she’s a shrinking violet who will look away.

But she’s up, out of her seat, jumping up and shouting, “Kick him again!” The crowd all gets to their feet as the action in the cage gets more aggressive, the two men tearing after each other.

Mia can’t stand still, hands in the air, yelling in chorus with all the voices around us.

No shrinking violet here, for sure.

The flying arms and legs slow down when one fighter gets the other in a submission hold, elbow locked around his neck, one leg wrapped around the other guy’s. They fall to the floor.

Then suddenly the ref is on the ground, looking intently, and one of the guys jumps up, arms in the air.

“What happened?” Mia asks. “I don’t get it.”

“The other one tapped out,” I say. “Submitted.”

I scan the arena one more time. Still no Jovana or Klaus. With the unexpected lengths of these matches, some ending in less than a minute, like this one, she should be here.

She must have bowed to the pressure not to come, not with everything going on. She did, after all, try to kill us just yesterday.

If they don’t show, I’ll have to decide on a second plan.

10: Mia

This is the coolest thing I’ve ever been to.

The second fight goes longer than the first. These guys are super tiny, flyweights, the announcer says. The program says they only weigh 125 pounds, and that seems crazy. They zip around like acrobats, tossing each other into the cage walls.

Jax seems disappointed that Klaus isn’t here. I know I’m not much help, but I do try to keep him distracted. When the model-perfect ring girl comes out to hold up a big card announcing the start of the next round, I make a big show of moving the dial on his binoculars to MMW and wiggling my eyebrows.

I don’t know what we’ll do next. Judging by the concentrating scowl on Jax’s face as we approach the third match, he’s plotting something.

The brother of this woman he knew, Lukov, is devastatingly handsome. I take the binoculars again, forgetting they are in see-through-clothes mode, and focus in.

Oops. I can see every muscle. Each bulge.

Yes. Each. Bulge. He’s definitelynoton steroids.

I pull the binoculars down sheepishly and switch the modes. But Jax isn’t paying any attention. He’s scanning the people who follow Lukov in.A trainer. Some boy who holds his towel. A couple others. But no women. And not the woman he’s looking for, it seems.