“You didn’t have to do that, Ky,” the kid said quietly. “I was handling it.”

I kept my eye roll to a minimum when I handed him the money. “What’s your name?”

“Jackson,” he told me. “I live next door to you.”

I picked my backpack up off the ground and tried to remember if I had ever seen him before. But then again, I made a conscious effort to not pay too much attention to my neighbors.

“I’m sorry I don’t know you,” I said lamely.

“It’s cool. I don’t expect you to. I guess it’s just kind of hard not to know you.”

***

We walked home in dead silence, only stopping when I got to my gate. “So this is me...” I said quietly. I looked over at my house, sure that it had changed a lot in the two years since we’d moved in. Back then; it was a picture perfect suburban home. Now—the word shithole wouldn’t even cover it.

It was exactly the kind of house you’d expect someone just like my dad and his pathetic friends to occupy.

At first, the neighbors called the cops because the loud music and the general sound of assholeness never stopped. The cops came around a few times, but they never did anything. After a few months, the number of bikes in our front yard outweighed the number of residents that lived on the street. I guess they had no choice but to put up with his shit.

Just like I did.

My front door burst open, and my dad walked out—shirtless, tattoos on display—scratching his nuts. His eyes narrowed at us.

“Perfect,” I whispered sarcastically.

“Well, if it isn’t the useless cunt!” Dad yelled.

Jackson shook his head; his eyes cast downwards as he fiddled with the straps of his bag. He waited until he heard the front door close before looking up at me.

“So that’s my dad,” I mumbled.

After shoving his hand in his pocket, he pulled out the money provided by the twins. “You should take this.”

“Nah.” I waved him off.

He lifted my hand and placed the scrunched up cash on my palm.

I stayed frozen in my spot—not sure how to respond. Pity—especially from him—was the last damn thing I wanted.

“I’ll see you round, Jackson.” I started to walk away, but he grabbed my arm.

“What are you doing now?”

I looked at his hand on my arm, then to my front door. “Probably getting my ass beat.” I scoffed. “Again.”

He looked like he wanted to say something—maybe ask a bunch of questions no one had the balls to ask me yet. “Hey...” His voice shook as if he was nervous. “Maybe we should both use this money. We earned it, right?”

We walked to the closest diner and ordered everything we could afford—the splurge made even sweeter because of how we obtained the funding. We talked about movies and TV shows. Turned out, he was only a year younger than me. I would have sworn by his physical appearance and the way he acted that he was no older than ten.

After a few minutes of us eating everything, and me watching him eat, he rested back in his seat with a huge grin on his face.

“Did you enjoy that?” I asked.

He nodded enthusiastically. “You want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Because it tastes like victory.”

***

Jackson doesn’t offer small talk or even a greeting when I show up at the station the next morning. He leads me to the same room as the night before and motions for me to sit down. Then he removes his jacket, takes a seat, and pushes a picture under my nose. “Nate DeLuca,” he says.

I lift the picture for closer inspection. It isn’t a mug shot; it’s a surveillance shot, and from what I can see, there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about the guy. Dark hair displayed under his ball cap, average build, around the same age as me—maybe a couple years older. That’s basically all I can make out. “And?” I ask.

“And he’s who you need to get close to. He runs the fights, but like we said, we suspect it’s a cover up for the drugs. You need to get to know him. You need to live and breathe him. And if you can do that—get in his circle, get in his head—then it can lead us to the people responsible for Steve–” He cuts himself off and looks down at the table, realizing the mistake he was about to make. “For the deaths...” he corrects himself.

“And what do you get out of it?”

“Justice.”

2

THE FIGHTS, JACKSON told me, are held in basements of bars throughout Philly. You can buy your way in with a five grand VIP membership. The memberships were limited to two hundred. You show up and act like a dick; your membership’s revoked.

The venues are announced to a maximum of only sixty people, chosen randomly, via text message two hours before fight night begins. In order to get into the basements, you needed to meet at somewhere off-site first, show the message on your phone, text it back to a number, and they mark it off the list.

Obviously, Jackson had prepared all of this in the few days since I’d agreed to the deal.

I did everything that was asked of me, and now I find myself standing in the basement of a bar I’d never stepped foot in before. The place is exactly how I imagined—tiny room with barely enough space to move. The crowd’s rowdy, but obviously interested enough in the fights that they’d fork out five grand just to watch.

But I don’t watch the fights. Instead, I watch the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of a man I’ve never met before. The man whose life I’m about to ruin. His name—Nate DeLuca—repeats in my head over and over, playing hostage in my mind. I have to live and breathe him; that’s what Jax said. And that’s what I plan to do. Because Jax isn’t just some newbie detective.