Page 33 of Rent a Bad Boy

Only when I answer, it’s not her.

I mean, it is her. She’s on the screen. But she’s not holding the phone.

She’s sitting in a metal folding chair with her hands behind her back. Her glasses are crooked. Her face is chalky white, and her eyes are wide and wet, locked on something I can’t see.

Everything in my body goes cold. She’s tied to that chair. There’s a strip of duct tape hanging loose from her jaw, like she was wearing it, but someone ripped it off.

“There he is.” A male voice, off-camera. Casual, cold. “The man of the hour.”

“What the fuck is this?” Every muscle in my body is locked, but my voice is steady. If I let it shake, he wins. Whoever he is. “Who the fuck are you?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he replies off-camera. I hear the smile in his voice. He’s smug. Proud of himself. “What matters is who she is.”

Her whole body is trembling in the chair. She’s biting down on her lip hard enough that I can see the dent from here. “Cute girl,” he says. “Tiny, though. Feels like she’d break easily.”

My hand clenches around the phone, but that’s nothing compared to the way my jaw clenches. “If you touch her, I swear⁠—”

“Relax, Stone.” He chuckles, and Isla flinches at the cold sound. “Nobody’s touching anybody. Not if you do what I need you to do. Isn’t that right, little girl?”

Isla’s whole jaw quivers, and the tears filling her eyes spill over onto her pale cheeks. “You’ve got a fight tonight. Everybody knows you’re undefeated. Everybody’s betting on you. Which means there’s a lot of money on the table for the guys smart enough to bet against you.”

My body is cold. Icy. I know where this is going.

“Tonight, you’re going to lose. Convincingly,” he adds while I watch Isla struggle not to cry, and there’s nothing I can do about it. “Make it look real, and your girl goes home safe. You still get paid. Not as much, but enough. And everybody walks away happy.”

“And if I don’t?” I grit out.

“You’re a smart guy.” He chuckles again, which makes Isla do the funniest thing. She doesn’t shiver or tremble, or beg. She bares her teeth at him. All right. Maybe she’s handling herself better than I thought. But still. “I don’t think I need to spell it out for you.”

The call ends. For a long time, I stare at the screen. There’s still tape hanging from my left hand. I’m still sitting on my open tailgate, and all I can see is her. All I hear is the blood pounding in my ears, drowning out everything else.

Do I call the cops? The question races through my head, but I dismiss it right away. Of course I can’t call the cops. I’m about to participate in an illegal underground fight in a warehouse that doesn’t officially exist. The girl has been kidnapped and tied to a chair because of me, because someone figured out she matters to me. Because I was too fucking stupid to keep her at a distance, the way I keep everyone at a distance.

This is my fault. All of it.

I don’t lose. I never lose.

But what if it means losing her?

My jaw is clenched tight enough to make my teeth ache by the time I get down from the tailgate. My feet carry me across the littered lot to where people are gathering near the warehouse. I have nothing to do with my body’s actions. It took over because my brain can’t handle it.

What am I going to do? I can’t let her suffer. If I tell Reece or anybody else involved in the fight, there’s no guarantee whoever’s behind this won’t take it out on Isla. It’s too big a risk.

When I get inside, the crowd is already thick. It’s the same setup as always, not that I notice much of it. Reece finds me near the entrance and starts going over the matchup, but I’m not listening. I’m not paying much attention to the first or second fight either. I’m too busy scanning the floor until my gaze lifts to the catwalk running along the upper wall of the warehouse, where nobody usually stands because there’s nothing up there but old electrical panels and dust.

Except for tonight. Tonight, there’s something up there.

Isla.

She’s standing between two men I’ve never seen before. Her hands are free now, but her posture tells me everything I need to know. She’s stiff, rigid, with her arms pressed against her sides like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible. One of the guys stands close behind her, with his right hand tucked against her lower back in a way that looks casual from the floor but isn’t casual at all.

I know what’s in his hand. I don’t have to see it to know.

She sees me. Our eyes lock across the distance, and I watch her face crumple for half a second before she pulls it back together. She’s trying to be brave. She’s trying to be the girl who stood up to me in bed and told me to stop lying to her. The girl who doesn’t back down, the girl with steel in her spine.

But she’s so scared. I can see it from thirty feet away.

“Who am I against?” I ask Reece after the second fight ends.