Silas laughed. “After you cry a few tears for your dead wife, yeah? That’s what happened last time, isn’t it? Couldn’t get her out of your head, could ya? What was her name again? Mallory, Marjorie?”
“Her name was Meredith,” he spat as his stony facade chipped away.
Crack, crack, crack.
He locked in on Silas’s slippery smirk. His heart hammered, and the ice in his veins turned to fire, incinerating his last shreds of self-control.
But it wasn’t anger lighting him up.
It was fear.
Fear of losing the fight.
Fear of failing Meredith.
“Erasmus, Raz.”
He could hear Libby calling his name, but her voice was barely a murmur, hardly a blip in the red haze enveloping the room. Blood pounded in his ears. Adrenaline spiked as he balled his hands into fists. “You say another word about my wife, and you will bloody regret it.”
Silas lifted his chin defiantly. “I wonder, was Meredith as good in the sack as Libby Lamb?”
Crack.
The final fracture to his arrogant armor left his cocksure mask in a pile of dust on the ground. A ragged rush of palpable pain, raw and festering, flooded his system.
How dare this weasel of a man speak of Meredith or Libby.
He reared back, fists at the ready, prepared to deliver pain and send the Snake to the ground with a swift jab square to his smug face. But the slimy bastard dodged the punch. Skirting his fists, Silas sidestepped his advance. For a fraction of a second, the men’s eyes locked, and Raz recognized that glint in Silas’s eyes. It was the hunger to win and conquer and leave no man standing—an unabashed desire to succeed at all costs that had once burned white-hot in him.
Did he still have that drive, or had it died with Mere?
Confusion clouded his mind, and in that flicker of hesitation, the Snake landed a quick shot to his kidney. Raz doubled over, working to regain his balance, when Silas executed an uppercut and popped him clean in his left eye.
He should have bloody known the man would fight dirty. But he wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t thinking at all. A fight-or-flight reaction had taken hold, and alarm bells blared in his head as the world went topsy-turvy.
Do not succumb to a panic attack—not bloody here.
He stumbled back. Electric agony thrummed in his belly as his eye throbbed. Acute and razor-sharp, he leaned into the pain, praying it would ground him. He sucked in a gulp of air and steadied himself, prepared to hurl his body at his rival when Libby threw herself into his line of sight. Standing between the fighters, she raised her hands defensively.
“Erasmus, stop, please!”
He blinked, watching as tears trailed down her cheeks.
“Briggs is here,” she rasped, gasping like she was the one out of breath from brawling. “Our ride is here. It’s Sebastian’s birthday. We need to get to him, to your son,” she pleaded.
Punch-drunk, he scanned the lobby. Where was the healing blue-violet aura? Where was the peace and harmony? Where was his bloody balance? Had it all been a mirage? Had he been fooling himself?
He couldn’t meet Libby’s gaze, but he nodded. An eerie silence consumed the terminal. No one said a word as bystanders held out their mobiles, and Silas Scott puffed up like a peacock and crossed his arms.
The victor—for now.
The bloke had gotten exactly what he’d come for. He’d walked right into the Snake’s trap and served up this viral video on a gold platter like a bloody chump.
But no, that’s not all the bastard had gotten.
Along with a video sure to skew the odds of the fight, the Snake had delivered something far worse than the pain of a bruised kidney, a black eye, or the sting of another embarrassing video.
The same sickening sensation that left him a heap on the bathroom floor before his last fight returned.
And it had a name.
Doubt.
Five letters.
One syllable.
And it seeped into every cell in his body.
“Have fun at the party. Who needs training when you can wear party hats and play Pin the Tail on the Donkey? That’s got to be Erasmus’s favorite.” Silas clucked as his crew barked out the happy birthday song, clowning and laughing at his expense.
Libby gathered their bags and took his hand. “Let’s go, please.”
“Call me, Libby Lamb,” Silas crooned. “I’ll make some time for you to tickle my chakras. And then you can see what it’s like to be with a real winner.”
“Ignore him,” she whispered, tightening her grip on him as she dragged him through the sliding glass doors and ushered him into a large SUV.
“What was that, Erasmus?” Briggs asked, glancing over his shoulder from the front seat. The man had turned as white as a ghost.
Dammit! He could see the ticker, numbers flashing, counting the video views wherever the hell Silas’s minions had posted the footage of their skirmish. It would make sense that Briggs would keep track of the Snake’s posts.
He shook his head, unable to respond. His thoughts rattled through his brain, knocking into the memories he’d pushed away.
Mere’s cold, lifeless body.
Her muted, dead aquamarine eyes.
The sheet draped over her, and Sebastian crying out for his mum.
Breathe, just breathe.
“How do you know what happened?” Libby asked Briggs as the man shifted the SUV into drive.
“I saw it. The world saw it. The whole thing was livestreamed,” his agent answered, holding up his mobile.
Just like he thought, another viral video.
And remarkably, that was the least of his worries.
A tiff on social media was one thing.
Losing in the ring with a billion people watching would wreck him, would ruin him. A loss would be the ultimate insult to Mere’s memory.
He swallowed past the lump in his throat. He was so bloody sure he was on the right path—so confident that his time with Libby doing Pun-chi yoga was time well spent. He’d convinced himself that with her by his side, he couldn’t lose.
He was wrong.
He loved her—he did—but he had to get back to doing what made him a champion.
He cradled his head in his hands, then pressed the swollen skin below his left eye. Stars flashed against his closed eyelid as shooting pain tormented his face. But he didn’t move his hand, didn’t let up the pressure. He needed to feel it, needed to allow the pain to consume him and bury his failure beneath a mountain of anguish. Only the searing pain could stop the clawing doubt from taking over his mind.
Briggs and Libby spoke in hushed tones, but he zoned them out.
Concentrate on the pain.
He slowed his breathing, glaring at his shoelaces when Libby touched his arm.
“Raz, let me see your face.”
“I’m fine, plum.”
“Let me take a look. We need to know if we should bring you to a hospital.”
“What do you think I do for a living? Ride around on donkeys and meet the day with a sunrise yoga flow? I’m a fighter. What happened was nothing.”
Lies, lies, lies.
If it was nothing, he wouldn’t be a breath away from shaking like a leaf. He needed his mask, needed to become the beefcake to allow arrogance to disguise his anxiety.
But there was more.
He’d broken the first rule of boxing.
Don’t let your opponent get under your skin.