Page 2 of Ignite
It sounded like cage fighting to me. Illegal betting, hot men, danger, and a place to score a steamy one-night stand with a bad boy Adonis…everything I would usually hidefrom.
“Alison?”
I glanced up and saw Susan hovering over my desk. Queen bitchherself.
“Did you finish those reports yesterday?” she asked, raising an eyebrow when I didn’treply.
“Yes,” I replied. “They were submitted lastnight.”
Susan flicked her awful stringy hair over her shoulder and smiled. “Perfect.” She reached down below the partition where I couldn’t see and produced a stack of hard copy files. “If you’ve done those, then you won’t mind doing these.” She dumped them onto my desk without so much as aflourish.
They fell half on the desk and half on the floor, and I bit my lip to stifle the groan that was about to burstforth.
“Five o’clock?!” Susan exclaimed, giving me a little wave before shimmying off to her owndesk. ?????
What abitch.
Setting my coffee down, I bent over to retrieve the folders, scooping up the papers that had fallen across the floor. There was a pop, and I groaned as the safety pin holding my shirt in place over my boobs fell to the floor. It hit the carpet, the metal bent out of shape, and I felt like crawling under the desk and never comingout.
I was a complete and uttermess.
* * *
That night,half an hour of Internet sleuthing gave me the location of TheUnderground.
The illegal cage fighting operation was set up in a warehouse in Abbotsford, just north of Melbourne’s central business district. Or just up a little from the bit with all the skyscrapers. It was a pocket of industrialization the inner-city hipsters forgot, and developers overlooked it for more accessible plots of land by the docks to the southwest. It was the perfect place to conduct shady business if you askedme.
I’d totally looked up the place with the intention of going. It was a terrible idea, but I was at my wits’ end. My life had been a slow simmer up until this point, and now the pressure had finally reached my brain. Something had popped today, the safety pin holding my boobs in place a metaphor for something a lot larger than mytits.
I had to do something because so far, excuses had gotten menowhere.
This steaming pile could not be mylife.
So, I got into my car—the car I only used once a week to go grocery shopping—and drove across the city. I was never out this late, and it was thrilling even if it was all a littlesad.
I found a spot to park a block away, and when I got out, I was surprised to see quite a few people on the street for such a barren area. They were all moving in the same direction I was headed, and I wondered if they were there for The Underground, as well. Thrusting my hands into my jacket pockets, I followed them toward thewarehouse.
I’d put on a pair of black jeans, a plain navy singlet, a silver necklace, a pair of boots I’d found at a secondhand shop, and a cheap leather-look biker jacket. My hair was scraped back into a loose plait that swung down my back, and my makeup was just as plain as usual. A bit of foundation and some mascara. Glancing at the people around me, I fit right in, and it was the first time I didn’t feel ashamed of what I looked like. Poor andordinary.
Rounding the corner, I saw the warehouse ahead, and it was a hive of activity. Music filtered out onto the street where people milled, moving to and from the entrance. On first glance at the exterior, it was nothing like I’d expected. I was ready for cloak and dagger espionage and secret code words to get inside, not this. I wondered why the cops never shut it down because it wasn’t exactly a covert operation. Bribes—had tobe.
There didn’t seem to be an entry fee, but a huge man with a shiny bald head eyed me as I slipped inside with the group of people I’d followed. I swore he rolled his eyes as I passed, but there was no way I was looking twice at theguy.
Standing just inside, I shifted nervously, my hands shoved into my pockets. I fiddled with my car keys, my gaze darting around, but no one paid me any attention. Just a normal day in paradise, then. I took a deep breath and did what I did best. Becameinvisible.
On the surface, The Underground looked like any sports club slash warehouse nightclub I’d seen on TV. There was a large wire cage surrounded by bleachers and a generous standing area—this was where the fights took place. To the side was a full bar that was pumping with customers and staff, and next to that, there was a lineup of bookies taking bets. A large digital board above them listed the fights for the night with odds being shouted out above the din. Toilets seemed to be further to the back, a set of doors guarded by a pair of security guards led someplace else, and there was plenty of other seating scatteredaround.
Passing by the bookies, I stared up at the board. All the fighters had names like Goblin, Viper, Storm, Sabre, and Roar. If the setup here weren’t so high tech, I would’ve laughed at the absurdity of it all. Calling yourself Goblin.Seriously?
“Hey, lady,” a man called out, causing me to pause. “You want to place abet?”
I hesitated, glancing up at the boardagain.
“We’ve got Blade against Sabre starting in ten minutes,” he went on, trying to reel me in. “Blade is two to one. Good odds, lowrisk.”
I grasped the coin purse in my jacket pocket. Why not? What did I have to lose? Maybe twenty bucks. I would just have to eat a few packets of instant noodles instead of chicken drumsticks this week. In the spirit of winning back my life, I decided to give it ashot.
“Put me down for twenty, then,” Isaid.
