No wonder the crowd was riled. If a Leopard had taken that bad a beating, it must have been one hell of a fight. Brutal enough that Mika put a hand on the girl’s pale arm to keep her from swaying.
Down the shadowy hall that led into the arena, one of Falcone’s bouncers beckoned. Selina shut the door behind her. She’d left no valuables. She had nothing worth stealing, anyway.
“Be careful,” Mika said as Selina passed, the Asian girl’s voice low and soft. “He’s got a worse batch than usual tonight.” The kitten hissed, yanking her head away as Mika dabbed her split lip with a disinfectant wipe. Mika snarled a warning at her, and the kitten wisely fell still, trembling a bit as the Alpha cleaned out the cut. Mika added without glancing back, “He saved the best for you. Sorry.”
“He always does,” Selina said coolly, even as her stomach roiled. “I can handle it.”
She didn’t have any other choice. Losing would leave Maggie with no one to look after her. And refusing to fight? Not an option, either.
In the three years that Selina had known Mika, the Alpha had never suggested ending their arrangement with Carmine Falcone. Not when having Falcone back the Leopards made the other East End gangs think twice about pushing in on their territory. Even if it meant doing these fights and offering up Leopards for the crowd’s enjoyment.
Falcone turned it into a weekly spectacle—a veritable Roman circus to make the underbelly of Gotham City love and fear him. It certainly helped that many of the other notorious lowlifes had been imprisoned thanks to certain do-gooders running around the city in capes.
Mika eased the kitten to the prep room, giving Selina a jerk of the chin—an order to go.
But Selina paused to scan the hall, the exits. Even down here, in the heart of Falcone’s territory, it was a death wish to be defenseless in the open. Especially if you were an Alpha with as many enemies as Mika.
Three figures slipped in from a door at the opposite end of the hall, and Selina’s shoulders loosened a bit at the sight of the Latina girl who emerged. Ani, Mika’s Second, with two other low-ranking Leopards flanking her.
Good. They’d guard the exit while their Alpha tended to their own.
The crowd’s cheering rumbled through the concrete floor, rattling the loose ceramic tiles on the walls, echoing along Selina’s bones and breath as she neared the dented metal door to the arena. The bouncer gestured for her to hurry the hell up, but she kept her strides even. Stalking.
The Leopards, these fights…they were her job. And it paid well. With her mother gone and her sister sick, no legit job could pay as much or as quickly.
The Leopards had asked no questions three years ago. They hadn’t wondered if she’d deliberately picked that fight with the Razor girl in the block courtyard—and another and another, until Mika came sniffing about the hothead in Building C.
Mika only told her that pulling this sort of shit in the East End would get her killed pretty fast, and that the Leopards could use a fighter like her. The Alpha didn’t ask who had taught her to fight. Or how to take a punch.
The bouncer opened the door, the unfiltered roar of the crowd bursting down the hall like a pack of rabid wolves.
Selina Kyle blew out a long breath as she lifted her chin and stepped into the sound and the light and the wrath.
Let the bloodying begin.
* * *
—
Her hands were so swollen that she could barely handle her keys.
Their jangling filled her apartment complex’s hallway, loud as a goddamn dinner bell.
It took every lingering scrap of concentration to keep her hand steady enough to slide the key into the top lock. Selina refused to look at the three others beneath it—each as imposing as a mountain peak.
Too long. Falcone had dragged out the fight for too long.
Mika hadn’t been lying about her opponent. The man had been a fighter himself. Not well trained, but big. Twice her weight. And desperate to repay his debt. His blows had hurt. To say the least.
But she’d won. Not by brute strength, but because she’d been smarter. When the injuries had started to pile up, when he’d managed to snatch the whip from her hand, when she’d temporarily lost sight in one eye thanks to the blood…she’d used simple physics against him. Her science teacher would be proud.
If she showed up to class tomorrow. Or next week.
The top lock snapped open.
Against larger, heavier opponents, pure physical strength wasn’t her greatest ally. No, her own arsenal was something different: speed, agility, flexibility, mostly thanks to those countless gymnastics classes. And the bullwhip. All things that she might use to surprise her opponents—to harness the speed of a two-hundred-pound man charging at her and wield it against him. A few maneuvers, and that blind rush at her would turn into a flip onto his back. Or a face-first collision with one of the posts. Or the bullwhip around his leg, yanking his balance out from under him as she drove her elbow into his gut.
Always aim for the soft parts. She’d learned that before she’d ever set foot in the ring.
Her left eye still a bit blurry, Selina surveyed either side of the grayish-blue-painted hallway, skimming over the graffiti, the puddle of something that wasn’t water. None of it threatening.
The shadowy parts of the hall…Precisely why there were four locks on this door. Why Maggie was to open it under zero circumstances. Especially for their mother. And whoever her mother might have with her.
There was still a dent in the metal door from the last time—six months ago.
A large, round dent, right beside the peephole, where the sweaty man who’d stood beside her strung-out mother had planted his fist when Selina refused to answer the door. They’d left only when a neighbor had threatened to call the cops.
There were nice people in this building. Good people. But calling the cops would have made things worse. Cops meant questions. Questions about their living situation.
Selina turned back to the door, assured that no one had slipped into those shadows. In the shape she was in…She managed to open the second lock. And the third.
Selina was just starting on the final lock when the elevator grumbled down the hall. The dented doors parted to reveal Mrs. Sullivan, grocery bags in one hand, keys threaded like metal claws through the fingers of her other.
Their eyes met as the ancient white woman hobbled down the hall, and Selina gave her a nod, praying the hood of the sweatshirt beneath her jacket concealed her face. The bullwhip, at least, was hidden down her back. Mrs. Sullivan frowned deeply, clicking her tongue, and hurried for her apartment. The woman had five locks.
Selina took her time with the final lock, well aware the woman was monitoring her every movement. She debated telling Mrs. Sullivan that she wasn’t lingering because she was thinking of robbing her. Debated it, and decided against it at the sneer the old woman threw her way.