Hayes whistles through his teeth. “Shit. All right. We’re on it.”
They leave, only I’m not granted any alone time. “Winner takes fifty grand,” Seamus says by way of a greeting, with a greedy gleam in his eyes. He’s feeling me out. Seeing where my head is. There’s no other reason for him to be in here before the fight.
I pull off my leather jacket and black T-shirt before slipping off my pants and changing into shorts. My muscles are charged, and my blood hums. I fucking love this feeling. It’s the high that never gets old.
Even if the reason I do this haunts me like a never-ending nightmare.
“Roman, did you hear me?”
I don’t know why he bothers to tell me the night’s amount. I don’t care about the money. It’s not why I do this, and he knows it. All of my winnings are anonymously donated to charity anyway.
“Cool,” is my only reply. He gets forty percent of that regardless of who wins. It’s an easy deal for him. Even if this place is raided by cops or feds, no one in this city will go after him. The risk is all mine. I’m the one with everything to lose. But when you already know what it feels like to lose everything, you no longer have fucks to give about that threat.
“I’ll go check on Biscuit and make sure he’s ready to go.”
Biscuit? What the fuck kind of name is that for a boxer? Without waiting for me to acknowledge him—because he knows I won’t—he heads out the door, and I’m finally alone.
Only once again, my solitude doesn’t last long. Not even two minutes later, the door opens and the handler announces, “It’s time.”
With a nod, I roll my head and crack my neck while I jog lightly in place to keep my muscles warm. I step out of the room and take in the scene before me. A couple of hundred people are crammed into the warehouse, actively making bets and shouting. Smoke curls up toward the high rafters, making the already dim lights hazy and the air reek of cigarettes and weed.
Biscuit stands beside me, a mountain of a man with a ridiculous name, and I take him in as he does with me. Neither of us speaks, but I can already see his weakness. His size. It gives him a false sense of confidence, though I have no doubt he’s a bruiser when he gets going. Good. I relish that in an opponent.
Turning away from him, I scan over to the VIP area and lock in on Braelyn, who’s standing there with Forest and Hayes. She rarely, if ever, misses a match. A smile curls my lips before I can stop it.
“That your woman?”
I don’t answer Biscuit, and this pleases him.
“She’s beautiful. She’ll look even better on her knees sucking my cock after I win.”
I hold in my smirk. He just put the nail in his own coffin with that.
Arnett, a henchman of Seamus’s, goes through the whole welcome speech from the center of the makeshift ring. Then Biscuit and I are announced, though he refers to me as Romeo, my fighter name. We enter the ring to thunderous applause and shouts, but I ignore everyone as I head over to Braelyn and the guys. Hayes and Forest each give me a nod that I return. Braelyn doesn’t say anything. She just holds out her pinkies to me, and I lock mine with hers.
We squeeze them together, and I give her a wink. It’s become our thing over the years. It’s ourI’ve got you no matter whatsignal. It’s for luck, and it never fails.
My head clears, and I meet Biscuit in the center of the ring, my gaze deadlocked with his as I study him one final time. He’s smiling like a smug bastard, but he’s already lost. He just doesn’t know it yet.
“Fight!” Arnett calls and jumps out of the way. And as I suspected, Biscuit is impatient. He rears back with a mighty swing he lets fly, and I duck to the right, making him miss. It pisses him off. I bet that move has knocked a few guys out before, but that’s not how I operate. He comes at me again, and when I go left this time, feeling the air displace against my cheek from his fist, I swing around and nail him dead in the ribs.
And with it, everything fades. The restaurant. The fame. The pressure. The stormy waters. The main reason I’m leaving the country.
All of it.
The violence, the blood, the sweat, the pain. It feeds the darkness of my soul.
Back and forth, we do this dance. Over and over. Round one is called. Then rounds two, three, and four. He nails a few punches, one of which manages to cut my upper lip, filling my mouth with blood, and another that slices beneath my eye. But for every hit he lands on me, I get five on him.
He’s slowing. He’s tired. He’s big and used to relying on his size and strength, so his stamina is shit. By the time we reach round five, he’s winded, hardly able to catch his breath despite the two-minute break we had. So much so that as he charges at me, I don’t move. He was fun at first, but now he’s starting to bore me.
I rear back and nail him right in the face. His nose shattersbeneath my fist, and he tumbles to the concrete in a bloody heap.
I’m breathing hard, blood trickling down my cheek, and my knuckles are raw despite the wraps. Arnett checks him and declares a TKO, or technical knockout, and me the winner. And that’s that. Match over. Cheers ring out, but after he holds my bloody fist in the air, I retreat back into the room I came from, immediately followed by Braelyn, Hayes, and Forest.
“Twenty grand,” Forest tells me. “You turned that into forty. Do you want me to manage it?”
“Sure,” I reply as I dry my hands with a wad of paper towels. “Along with my winnings.”