by Holly Hart
"So what are we going to do?" I asked. "He can’t off you until after the fight at least, so we've got a few days, if nothing else."
"Figures as much," Conor said, rubbing his stubble thoughtfully. "Always had him pegged for a greedy bastard. Fuck!"
"What?" I asked, startled by Conor’s sudden exclamation.
"He's planning on stealing my share!" Conor said, outraged. "That greedy fucker."
I looked at him, unable to hide my surprise. "Well, yeah. Conor – he's going to kill you…"
He jumped out of bed, his cock flopping around like a python. "Honor amongst thieves, Maya. I don't know if it's a thing over here, but it should be, you know? If you're going to try and thieve a man’s cut, you should at least have the balls to tell him to his face. The pig. The cheek of the man!"
I hid a smile. "Are you serious?"
He stood in front of me with his hands on his hips, his feet planted wide – and everything on show. He looked like someone had tweaked his tail.
"What are you laughing at?" He asked, looking furious.
"Shouldn't we, you know, be trying to figure out what to do? We need to run, Conor, and we don't have much time."
He stared at me, his jaw set. He'd made up his mind – it was plain as day. "I'm not running," he said.
Oh, shit.
This was exactly why I'd been worried about telling him. The man had too much ego, too much pride to just let the insult go. Loving Conor, and the realization that I still did jolted through me like an electric shock, was like playing with fire. I loved his never say die attitude, and his willingness to confront any and every problem head-on. But could I keep loving it if it put Eamon at risk?
"You're not –." I started with shock.
He smiled slyly. "Not running. Not before I tweak that pig's ear, anyway…"
I gulped. "What are you planning on doing?" I asked.
Conor grinned. "He was planning on taking my share, wasn't he?" He asked.
I nodded, not liking the sound of where this was going. "Uh huh."
"Well then," he chuckled, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm going to take his."
20
Conor
You get used to liars in this business.
Liars, cheats, and men who tell you whatever they think you want to hear. As long as it gets the fighters into the octagon, the men at the top will do anything, say anything, and promise anything to make it happen.
This ain't my first rodeo.
"We're going to make lots of money, you and I." Mikhail blustered, clapping his arm around me as we waited in the anteroom, as he lied to my face. "Lots and lots of money."
How do you look a man in the face when you know he's lying to you? When you know that all he wants to do is rip you off and dump you to bleed out in a gutter?
Easy.
You just have to know that you're going to get him before he can get you. $10 million, that's what the Herald says that the bookmakers are going to take, and that’s on my fight alone!
$10 million, and most of that will be crooked cash, gambled by Mikhail and his cronies. I mean, they’ve got guys flying in from all over for this – Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo. The Asians know how to gamble. Except for them, it's not gambling – it's a sure thing, because they know that I'm going to throw the fight.
The thing is? I'm not.
And that's going to be a problem for Mikhail, because his friends aren't very nice people. And losing millions of dollars has a special way of making people do very interesting things. Honest people might go to the cops. But Mikhail's friends, they aren't honest people.
And besides, gambling's supposed to be illegal. They couldn't go to the cops if they wanted to.
"Hell yeah we are." I agreed, plastering a thick, fake smile onto my face. Having to pander to this man hurt, but I knew it was for a good cause, because if I pulled my plan off, then I wouldn't even need to kill him. There would be plenty of takers for that particular honor.
"There's a few people I want you to meet," Mikhail said conspiratorially. "I need you to… reassure them. You understand?"
I nodded secretively. "Got it."
I'd always hated the pomp and circumstance of the weigh-in. Hell, I hate most everything about this sport except the bit where I actually get to fight. Fuck the businessmen, fuck the promotion and fuck the advertising.
I never wanted to be a star. I just wanted to fight.
But now I'd got a new target, and it wasn't the chump they were planning on sticking in the octagon with me.
It was Mikhail Antonov, the butcher of Alexandria.
I knew exactly what was going on. The people that Mikhail wanted me to meet – they were his friends, the men who'd be profiting off me throwing this fight. The men whose money I planned on taking.
Mikhail snapped his fingers and one of his men, stationed out of earshot by the door snapped into action, opening the thick wooden hatch and ushering several men into the room. I took a careful look at them. After all, if my plan failed, then it wouldn't just be Mikhail out for my blood, it would be all of them.
"Victor, brother," Mikhail beamed, opening his arms out wide as the first man approached him.
Will it be you, Victor? I thought as I watched the two gangsters embrace with distaste. Will you be the one who kills him for me?
"Mikhail." The man acknowledged in a gravelly tone of voice. "Thank you for inviting me. You’re too kind to your old brother.”
Brother? Perhaps not then.
His black eyes were portals into a soul that was dead inside. I shuddered, imagining how something that awful could possibly come about. I had no doubt that this man was a killer, and that every time he had killed, or perhaps even ordered someone's death, a little of his humanity had been carved away. A little piece of his soul.
Victor even looked cold, like if I reached out to touch him, I’d freeze to ice.
"Is this the boy?" He asked roughly, turning toward me.
I winced. I wasn't the kind of man who could easily bite back my pride, and let an insult like that stand. I knew that I needed to, but even so, every fiber of my being was screaming at me to tighten my fist and punch his lights out.
Boy? I'll show you…
I held myself back from the brink. I might have stiffened involuntarily, but I kept my cool, and as far as I could tell, no one noticed my momentary lapse of concentration.
Victor was nothing, not in the grand scheme of things. So what if he made himself feel big by insulting me? It was probably so ingrained in him that he didn't realize he was doing it. Besides, I had more important things to concentrate on.
"He is," Mikhail confirmed, all smiles. "You're going to make Victor and I rich men, aren't you, Conor?"
I nodded, tight lipped. "So I will," I said, playing up the Irish. The less they thought of me, especially if it was just as some dumb leprechaun, the better.
"Good man," Mikhail bellowed, clapping me on the shoulder. "Arkady, Pyotr, come over here, come meet our horse."
His other two guests approached me, each as grim faced as the other. All four of the gangsters in the room wore the same same old, sallow face, and bore the ill-effects of lives of power and gluttony: scarred cheeks, boxer's ears and guts that rivaled Mikhail's.
For the briefest moment I thought about how easy would be to kill all four of them, imagining how I could dance around them as if they were set in stone. Compared to me, they might as well be. I could smell their blood as if I’d already spilled it.
I noticed something… off about Mikhail now. He seemed somehow nervous, and I figured that one of the two newcomers must be the cause of it. It didn't take long to work out which one it was.
"Conor," Mikhail said, in an almost awkward halting manner, as if he was worried he might say a word out of place – and more than that, suffer for it. "Meet Arkady."
The man they called Arkady, without offering a surname, reached out his hand.
"Good to meet you, Irishma
n." He said formally. His hand closed like a vice around mine, and I almost yelped with pain. He had a bullish strength that I hadn't expected.
Perhaps I should have.
A person terrifying enough to make a man like Mikhail Antonov afraid was certainly a man worth respecting…
I held firm, not reacting as the hand closed around mine, crushing my fingers against each other. "You might," I started calmly. "Not want to do anything that's going to make it too obvious that I'm in no condition to fight…"
I'd laid down my marker. I'd shown that I wasn't simply going to stand for him intimidating me like that. Arkady's eyes narrowed with surprise. I didn't imagine people opposed men like him very often.
He dropped my hand like a hot potato, but he wasn't done with me, not by a long shot. He leaned in so that his face was barely half an inch from mine. His putrid breath invaded my nostrils, and it was all I could do not to react to it. I had a funny feeling that that wouldn't go down very well.
"Know one thing, Irishman." He growled in a voice so low that only he and I could hear it. "If you betray me, I'll make you pay. Understood?"
I nodded stiffly. I had no doubt that he was telling the truth.
Oh, he's the man who’ll kill Mikhail, I thought. But there’s every chance I’ll live to regret crossing him.
Mikhail clapped his hands, beaming. "Excellent," he said loudly.
"Excellent." He repeated. I got the sense that he was struggling to maintain his sense of authority in Arkady's brooding presence. "Now that we've inspected the goods, gentlemen, I hope you’ll accept my hospitality. I’ve prepared a room upstairs for us. We have much to discuss."
He snapped his fingers, and a brooding figure emerged from the shadows in the corner of the room. "Sergei, show my guests upstairs."
"Yes, boss."
The third gangster, Pyotr, who'd otherwise kept entirely to himself since entering the room, stirred himself to grunt one word in a thick Russian accent that I could barely penetrate. "Girls?"
Mikhail plastered an offended look on his face. "Pyotr, Pyotr. What must you think of me to doubt me so? Of course I've found us some girls. Russian, Ukrainian. Oh, you must see the ass on this girl Kyra. I think you'll find her very nice…"
I curled my upper lip, glad that no one seemed to be paying attention to me anymore. These men made me sick. I felt sorry for the girls that Mikhail had had brought in, because I highly doubted that they were there willingly. I couldn't imagine how terrifying spending the night with any of these men would be, let alone Arkady or Pyotr.
Pyotr didn't so much as break a smile. He just nodded, his thick neck barely moving as his head bobbed up and down. "Good."
They filed out of the doorway behind Sergei. Pyotr led the way in his eagerness to reach the girls he'd been promised. Then it was only Mikhail and me left in the room, alone. Maya's father closed his eyes for a second, and seemed to physically sag in front of me. He suddenly looked every one of his six decades.
I watched him closely, careful not to be caught staring. Clearly he wasn't quite the fearless mobster that he portrayed himself to be. There was at least one man that kept him up at night: Arkady.
Can I use that to my advantage?
"Conor," Mikhail said, looking relieved that Arkady was gone. "Come with me. There's one last person I want you to see."
We stepped out into the arena, at the very top of hundreds of steps that led down to the octagon, dozens of yards below us.
What seemed like dozens of people scurried like ants in the cage and all around, CFL employees setting up cameras and scales for the big weigh-in, journalists and photographers getting walked through to get their shots for the papers.
It all seemed so small up from here.
It was strange, I thought as I looked down, to see a place like this not filled with thirty-thousand screaming fighting fans, all baying for blood. I didn't like it. It seemed an empty shell of a place now, fake without the sound of thousands of hoarse voices ringing from the rafters, and without the lights beating down on my back.
"Who are we going to meet?" I asked curiously, as I effortlessly kept pace with the Russian gangster as he took the stairs two at a time.
You're going to regret that…
Mikhail huffed as he spoke, and chest heaving, he looked like he was already ruing his decision to run down the steps. I smiled, picking up the pace, figuring that he wouldn't protest. After all, he couldn't back down now without looking weak. And Mikhail Antonov was a man who hated showing weakness.
Still, he couldn’t hide the fact his chest was heaving fit to burst.
Hell, maybe he'll have a heart attack and do us all a favor.
"A very special boy." Mikhail eventually spluttered.
The man's huge bulk rose and fell with every step, and each time his foot thundered down on a concrete step, a ripple seem to flow like a wave through his entire gut. A visceral sensation of hatred ripped through my body every time I looked at the man, one that did more to get my heart rate racing than any of this so-called exercise.
I'd never felt anger like this toward anyone. Not my father, for leaving me before I knew him. Not my mother, for leaving me and lavishing her love and attention on the drugs instead. Not even Maya, for abandoning me just when I finally thought I'd found someone to love.
What would happen if I tripped you?
It took everything I had to resist the temptation. The thing that stopped me was the sure knowledge that Mikhail would get what was coming to him. I was going to make him regret ever tangling with Conor Regan, even if it was the last thing I ever did.
I was smoldering with rage by the time I reached the cage. I almost wished that the fight would happen then and there, because I knew that when I was in a mood like this, it didn’t matter who they put in the octagon with me.
They wouldn't stand a chance.
Mikhail rested his hands on his knees, doubled over and choking as he gasped for oxygen. All around us, his men studiously averted their eyes from their boss, pretending they couldn’t see their master’s weakness.
I can.
I allowed myself a quick, private smile as I reveled in his discomfort, and a much longer, surprised, even goofy grin as I realized that the one person I knew could pull me out of this black, seething rage was behind the chain-link fence on the other side of the octagon.
Maya was holding a clipboard and chatting earnestly to a technician when she noticed me. Her eyes widened with worried surprise as she noticed her father next to me, but she quickly realized that he was in no fit state to be watching her, and shot me a happy, surreptitious wave. I returned it, just glad that she was happy.
I hadn’t seen her smile often enough. I wanted the old Maya back in my life – not this scared little girl whose gentle, spontaneous personality had been ground down by a vicious sandpaper of fear and intimidation.
I added it to the list of things Mikhail was going to pay for.
"You," Mikhail barked hoarsely at one of his men, his voice sounding strained with exhaustion. Even tired, his voice had a weight to it, and I wasn't surprised at all that his men followed him unquestioningly. He even sounded like a leader.
"Get Eamon."
Eamon? That's not a Russian name…
I ignored it, figuring that whatever was going to happen would happen, no matter what I did – so I might as well keep my eyes focused on Maya's killer ass. There were worse views in life, and I was getting pretty turned on by the fact that Mikhail had no idea I was screwing his daughter.
Hell, maybe the old man's just covering his bases, and Eamon's the referee.
I wouldn't put it past the grizzled mobster to have a backup plan, just in case I didn't do what he wanted when it came to crunch time. Mikhail seemed just that paranoid.
Whatever the hell was going on, and whoever this guy was, I didn't need to let any of it affect me. My job was simple – to get Maya the hell out of town, and make it so that her father, not that the evil bastard deserved
a title like that , would never be able to find her again.
Maya's posture stiffened as Mikhail's voice echoed around the arena, and she dropped her clipboard, staring at it in dull shock. For a good couple of seconds she didn't even move, as if her brain was in full fight or flight mode – and stuck between the two.
An old boyfriend? I wondered. Or worse, could it be someone she was afraid of?
"Father," Maya gasped. Her eyes had acquired an air of sheer panic, and she was glancing around, eyes raking every entrance to the massive arena, searching for something.
Or someone.
Mikhail's breathing had, finally, returned to normal by the time he replied. "What is it, girl?" He asked dismissively. I wanted to punch him for it. She's your daughter, I bristled, not a slave.
"What are you doing with Eamon? We agreed –."
Mikhail cut her off. "We agreed nothing," he said curtly.
"Besides, I don't need to justify myself to my own daughter. It' s about time Eamon grew up, and when I told him about Mr. Regan here, he asked to meet him. Who am I to refuse him that?" His eyes glinted dangerously as he saw off his daughter's meek challenge.
I stared at Maya curiously. I'd never seen her like this – she looked like a hunted animal, not the girl I knew. Strands of hair had escaped her ponytail, and hung waywardly around her face, and her cheeks were flushed with emotion – which emotion, I didn't know. If I'd had to guess, I'd have said fear, but I just didn't understand what she was so scared of.
A steel door clattered behind us, and Maya closed her eyes, seeming to give in and accept her fate. I turned to look at the newcomers, and my mouth fell open with surprise. A little boy dressed in a gray, maroon-accented school uniform, had wriggled free of his minder and was running full-pelt toward us.
I didn't know what I had been expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't a kid.
"Mama!" He cried as he barreled forward, his face full of childlike delight. "Mama! The man came and took me from school, mama. Are you happy to see me?"
The kid had a full head of black hair and looked about four years old. Four years old…
Who's he calling mama?