Catch Me When I Fall Read Free Page A

Ivan, their leader, spotted me and smirked.
    In my training, Ivan and I had been at the top of our class. I’d grown up in one of England’s noble families, trained from birth how to fight, and Ivan had been raised in a Russian war family. We were perfectly matched, and at the end of our training period, we’d been the last two standing in the Catchers’ Competition. For hours we’d fought, neither one of us yielding to the other, until finally he’d tired. My stronger stamina had been my saving grace, and I landed the finishing blow after two hours and five minutes. Since then, he and his posse had been relentless in their hatred of me.
    “So, I see they’re letting the swine in, too?” Ivan led his group to where Seth and me sat at the bar.
    I ignored him and stared straight ahead at the TV. Seth, on the other hand, loved confrontation. He turned around in his stool to face Ivan. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”
    “This is my business,” Ivan replied in his thick, Russian accent. “You two are in my bar.”
    “Last I checked, this bar belonged to Nico Bellandi.”
    I closed my eyes.
Seth, shut up.
    Ivan grabbed Seth’s shirt collar and tugged him off his stool. “If you don’t get out of my bar, negro, the counter is going to belong to your face.”
    Standing up, I smacked his hand off Seth’s collar. “Shove off, Ivan.”
    “Don’t touch me, Tinker.”
    Ignoring the insult, I dropped cash on the bar and shifted Seth toward the door. “Come on. There’s no point in fighting with him.”
    “Yeah,” Seth said, “I guess he can’t help being a prick.”
    We hadn’t gone five feet when Ivan spoke. “Ouch, I’m hurt. Did you kiss your mother’s
pizda
with that mouth?”
    Seth stopped in his tracks and turned to face him, his hands balled into fists. “What did you say?”
    I jumped in front of him and placed a hand on his chest. “Seth, don’t.”
    But he knew as well as I did how to translate Russian. If I didn’t get Seth out of here now, he was going to beat the living shit out of Ivan.
    Ivan crossed his arms over his chest and raised his eyebrows, taunting Seth. “You heard me. Tell me—did she beg for it after a while?”
    Seth clocked him in the jaw.
Damn.
Ivan flew backward into his friends, knocking one of them to the ground. They jumped into action. While one went after Seth, another swung at me. Dodging the punch, I grabbed his arm. With one hand on each side of his elbow, I tugged down while bringing my knee up to strike. I heard the snap of his elbow when the joint hit my knee. His arm bent in half and with a cry of pain, he fell away.
    Ivan’s elbow caught my nose as I spun around. Swearing, I stumbled into the bar stool behind me, my nose gushing blood. Ivan’s fist came for my face again. I spun out of the way and heard the crack of knuckles when he punched the countertop. Grabbing the back of his head, I smacked his skull into the hard marble.
    By now the bartender was yelling at us to cease fighting or get out, but Ivan wasn’t letting up. Our fight escalated into a boxing match. Again he swung at me, but I blocked his fist and backhanded him into a table. The people sitting there had been smart enough to move when the brawl broke out, but their drinks hadn’t. The glasses shattered.
    I took a second to glance at Seth who had taken down one of the other Catchers and was now in his own boxing match with the last of Ivan’s posse. His bottom lip was swollen and bloody, but other than that, he didn’t look too bad.
    Ivan caught me off guard and picked up the table, throwing it at my head. I ducked just in time and swore when the table soared over the bar into the drinks cabinet, breaking almost every bottle in it. Glass flew everywhere, and I covered my head.
    Before I could drop my arms, Ivan body slammed me. Glass cut through the back of my shirt into my skin as we skidded across the floor. I ignored the sharp pain and brought my arms up to block more punches.