brutal

Chapter 17

VERENA

"Let's go out."

I looked up from my phone with raised brows. "Where?"

Yuna shrugged and sat on the foot of her bed. "Anywhere. We don't have any tasks to do and we don't know when Kai's coming back. We could do anything we want."

I leaned back on the sofa. A few days after the meeting with Therman, Yuna invited me to go back to their home. My lips agreed before my mind could even process the question, which I guessed wasn't so bad. One text to Irene was enough to let them know I wasn't coming back any time soon.

"Oh!" Yuna gasped out loud, emphasized by her standing up. She clapped her hands together and pointed at me with a wide smile on her face. Gone was the girl drowning in sorrow earlier when we decided to add alcohol into the mix."The Ring! We should go to The Ring!"

I gave her a puzzled look. "What is that?"

"It's this club Siege recently bought a few blocks away from the building. The company usually buys establishments like clubs and restaurants where agents have complete control over everything. They use it all the time to lure their targets and catch them red-handed with whatever transactions go down like drug busts and all that."

"And The Ring is..." I crossed my arms at her. As far as I could remember, I've never heard of anything like it, which made me wonder what other establishments Siege owned around New York.

She sat down and smiled at me, her grin a little bit too creepy to seem sweet. "Fight club."

"Fight club?"

"Fight club," she parroted. "It's basically a bar with a huge ring in the middle where agents can beat each other up as they please."

I tilted my head at her in question. "Isn't that kind of stuff illegal?"

"No. Not really." She brought out her phone and started typing on the screen. "There's a contract to sign before you fight and it's completely safe. It prevents the participants from beating each other up to the point of unconsciousness. A few injuries, sure, but they're the ones to blame if they mess up their missions because of it."

"And I take it you can't choose who you're up against?"

Her fingers started quickening their tapping. "Nope," she made sure to pop the word out with her lips, "it's usually new player versus previous winner. There were cases where the winner had to fight one after the other without any breaks. One time, a guy fought against seventeen agents and got off without a scratch."

My eyebrows scrunched. The idea was just too impossible that I couldn't stop the scoff that came out of my mouth. "That's not true."

"It is." Yuna nodded her head vehemently at me and pocketed her phone. "I should know—I went up against him."

"Then who is it?"

She smiled as she shrugged. "Guess you'll have to come with me to find out."

「＊」

Yuna looped our arms together, Roman and Seth behind us. The Ring was exactly as Seth had explained it to be in the car ride on the way here: a normal looking bar upon entering, and the VIP Area with the fighting ring itself below.