Fearless (The Solomon Brothers Series Book 3)

by Leslie North

  “Mr. Howard?” God, why hadn’t she paid better attention getting out of the car? Her brain splintered—part of it to the thread of conversation, part of it to recalling the location of her cell phone. Back pocket of her jeans.

  He didn’t confirm or deny his identity.

  “Your son is safe, Mr. Howard. He thrives here. We should be celebrating his achievements, not arguing over where is…”

  The man rounded the car, slow, predatory.

  “…best for him.” She struggled to keep her voice even, to not betray the fear knotted inside. Her heels bumped against the curb.

  “You don’t care what’s best for him.”

  She could do this. Her logic, her arguments had gotten her out of pinches before. Henry spoke with his fists; Maggie used her mind.

  “Mr. Howard, I know we both care about Roosevelt. We want what’s best for him. I know his gift of reasoning, his talents, had to have come from somewhere. He’s an inspiration to the other boys here. A role model. If you could just see…”

  “What I see is a white bitch trying to tell me how to raise my boy.” He took a step closer. The garden light at the back of the house reached his face, illuminated his frown. “We don’t live in your world of privilege. Every day is hand-to-mouth out here. It’s time for him to take a job, pay his way, be a man.”

  Ignore the bitch comment. He’s angry. Possessive. Ignorant.

  She stepped up onto the sidewalk, chanced a fast glance over her shoulders, slid her cell from her pocket.

  Damn it, where was Jerry?

  “Education is the only thing that will elevate Roosevelt, and your family, out of these streets.”

  Her point lit him. His arms gestured fast, livid; his words came rapid-fire.

  “Who says we want out? That’s the white mentality, coming in here, telling us what to think.”

  Reason wasn’t working. Go. Go now. Run.

  For Roosevelt, she had to try. Wasn’t she always telling him that courage meant moving beyond fear?

  “Statistics show college graduates double their annual income over high school dropouts. It isn’t a white mentality to want the best for your children. It’s economics, Mr. Howard.”

  “Economics ain’t going to put food on my table.”

  “Or alcohol in your hand?”

  Immediately, she wanted to bite back her words. They were a strike from a dark place inside, from unsavory stories of her uncle fresh on her mind, from Roosevelt and Layla’s neglect-filled history that made her stomach lurch. She knew the moment her words sunk into Davonte Howard. His nostrils flared; his frown pitched at sharp angles. No longer content to exchange words, he lunged for her.

  She dropped everything in her hands and turned to run up the knoll, slippery with dry leaves. A scream rent from deep in her belly.

  He grabbed her shoulders, hard, one arm from behind—the exact attack she’d seen Henry teach Roosevelt a way free from inside the octagon. The way free—an evasive dip where the arms rifled up simultaneously—didn’t work. Maggie had executed too slow.

  By then, he had turned her around, a switchblade in hand.

  Her knees nearly buckled. The knife was a game changer.

  He had her left arm but not her right.

  Best punches are from the hips. Every time you hit, the body rotates.

  One punch. Just to get her arm free. Then she could run.

  Her hand clenched into a fist; her mind keyed in on which knuckles were her strike zone. She reared back, rotated at the hips, and aimed for his nose. A fresh cry ripped from her throat.

  Cartilage crunched under her knuckles. His hands slipped loose of her arm. She clawed her way up the knoll because the steps were too far away, every second of her mountain-climber sprint marked from behind her by a litany of foul language and mentions of his nose and blood on the tail end of groans.

  A figure rounded the house—arms outstretched, weapon up. Jerry. He barked orders for Davonte Howard to put his hands up, but Roosevelt’s stepfather had already dodged between a row of cars and disappeared into an alley.

  Jerry holstered his weapon and ran to Maggie. He caught her under the porch lights as her legs gave out from the struggle, from shock. Employees swarmed her. Someone called the police. A few of the boys straggled out, one of them Roosevelt.

  She saw his beautiful, broken, knowing expression, and her tears flowed.

  All night, Roosevelt was a caged animal. He had gone through the gamut of reactions: checking window locks and doors a million times, wanting to call Henry, wanting to cancel the trip to New York, unable to leave Maggie’s side and unwilling to stop fawning over her bruised and bloody hand. He felt responsible. It took everything in Maggie’s intellectual arsenal to restore his common sense: let the law handle it, it’s better for Layla this way, she needs you to be strong and smart about this, New York is the best thing now—to put some distance between us and him so the police can do their job.

  By the time Henry showed up at seven the next morning, Maggie had decided her best plan on the five-hour trip was to catch up on sleep. She had showered and packed, but sleep had eluded her most of the night. Most disturbing was not Roosevelt’s go-to response to pursue his stepfather, because Henry had already succeeded at grooming the kid’s fighter instincts. Most disturbing was that she had gone there, too. A pacifist throwing a punch. What did that say about the strength of her convictions? What did that say about how much influence she had allowed Henry over her?

  Henry and Roosevelt loaded the crate containing the bridge onto the pickup’s bed. Henry knew something was up—Maggie felt suspicion vibrating off him, from his careful body movements to his side glances.

  “You cold?” Henry nodded at the knit gloves covering her hands.

  “A little.”

  Her gaze shifted to Roosevelt, afraid he would betray her.

  Roosevelt held her gaze a half-second longer than he might have otherwise then climbed in the cab and scooted to the center seat. They had an understanding. Henry couldn’t know about the attack, about the punch, until Pittsburgh was long out of his rearview mirror. By hours. Some things, she supposed, were inevitable. Henry taking the law into his own hands, as he had on multiple occasions, was one of those things.

  Henry couldn’t take a fucking deep breath until eight that night.

  They had reached Harrisburg before Maggie confessed that she had been attacked the previous night by Davonte Howard. Part of him wanted to kiss her wounds and never let go of her right hand. The other part wanted to scream and punch a bag until his knuckles bled that he had been powerless to stop it. If only she hadn’t pushed him away, if only he hadn’t lied, Henry might have been with her.

  Then what?

  What would he have done?

  Roosevelt was quiet the entire trip. Henry was well-acquainted with that brand of anger—the kind that holds you hostage and makes you question everything about your world, about yourself. Securing a spot in the university exhibition hall and setting up his bridge gave the kid something else to focus on. By dinner time, his demeanor had relaxed. Vitalis’s boys helped. They were twenty and fourteen. Roosevelt split their ages and interests, but they all agreed on one thing: a virtual reality gaming experience and unlimited New York pizza was a necessity on his first night in the city. Kid deserved to blow off a little steam, and Marvin Vitalis always traveled with bodyguards. Still, Henry worried.

  He was glad when Maggie opted to stay at Marvin’s penthouse. The entire sixty-eighth floor of the Giancinta Towers was more opulence than most saw in a lifetime, but Henry knew her reason for staying wasn’t retractable televisions in every room or marble floors or killer skyline views in the lush, outdoor spaces. She had packed all her emotions in her soft-sided luggage and carted them with her. That kind of weight would make anyone immobile. Add to that a messed-up hand and a more-than-healthy investment in the outcome of the bridge competition, and a night in the penthouse, a place that felt like a safe house when Henry had been
at the pinnacle of competition, was something solid, still. Something they both needed.

  Somewhat.

  Having feelings for someone who wanted nothing more to do with him felt like a body lock, two breaths shy of a takedown.

  Henry finished buttoning his shirt and checked the time readout embedded in the corner of the bathroom mirror. Eight-oh-five. He swiped a hand through his damp hair, messed it up a bit, decided against a shave, and searched the penthouse until he found Maggie.

  She had changed into an oversized cable knit sweater and a floor-length skirt that rippled in the slight breeze on the terrace. Her hair was corralled into a loose gathering at the base of her neck; a few face-framing strands hypnotized him with their air movement. A take-out bag from the best upscale Chinese restaurant in Manhattan and two full place settings waited on the glass table beside her.

  “Hey,” he said from the open French doors.

  She mustered a weak smile. “Hungry? Marvin ordered before they left. Said it was your favorite. He’s a nice man. Also a very rich man.”

  Henry sat adjacent to her, his knees inches from hers. He could fit three of Sol’s Gym inside just the outdoor spaces of Marvin’s penthouse; her proximity made him feel anchored. “Does that bother you?”

  “That he’s successful?”

  “That he found that success on the backs of fighters like me?”

  “I guess that just makes him a savvy businessman.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Maggie Kavanaugh that came into my office that first day and busted my balls about the sport.”

  “Well, I’m not sure that Maggie Kavanaugh exists anymore.”

  Two weeks ago, that admission would have been music to Henry’s ears. Now he felt a thudding, sickening vibration behind his stomach that his betrayal might have had something to do with dousing her fire.

  She preoccupied herself with the meal, plating it, making sure he had chopsticks and sauces and a fortune cookie, being nice to him when he didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t proud of his reaction outside Harrisburg. It had involved pulling off the road, slamming the heavy truck door hard enough to potentially damage the bridge in back, stalking into a random field of asparagus, and upsetting tall, bushy crop rows. If he had been at home, in the gym, he would have rediscovered his head inside the stuffing of a bag. But the greater world, life, wasn’t lived in a gym or an octagon. As much as he preached that anger had no place in fighting, he wanted nothing more in that moment than to rip Davonte’s head from his neck for laying a hand on Maggie.

  And that scared the shit out of him.

  “What makes you say that?” Henry said, pulling his head back to the penthouse terrace and the Maggie Kavanaugh that might or might not exist anymore.

  “Remember when you said I saw everything black and white?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When I hit that man last night, I saw gray. I’m not proud of myself, but I tried, Henry. I tried to talk to him, to reason with him. He loves his son, I know he does. He’s just lashing out. Anger does that.”

  It was a dig. Maybe she hadn’t meant the comment to cast judgment on Henry, but it did.

  “You did what you had to do, Maggie. Roosevelt says if it comes in powder or liquid, it’s in his stepdad’s nasal passages or his veins faster than he can cook it over a flame. There’s no reasoning with that.”

  “I have to get him out. I have to get Layla out.”

  “That’s a huge responsibility. You can’t save everyone.”

  “I can save them.”

  Henry thought of Irma, Sol’s wife, so very altruistic and nurturing, so very much into the idea of family not tied to blood but love. Chase had found his Irma in Willow. Was Maggie his Irma? As soon as the question shaped, he dismissed it. In her eyes, he would always be violent. He knew it by the haunted, weary way she had watched his reaction from the passenger window of his truck, by the fact she didn’t tell him about the attack until distance made retaliation impossible.

  “Roosevelt is almost an adult. And Layla has other family. An aunt on Roosevelt’s mother’s side.”

  “Where has she been all this time?” Her voice wavered, the raw edge of concern nipping at her words.

  “I don’t know.”

  They ate in silence. City noise rose around them.

  “Did you get the estimates for repairs on the gym?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah. That old business partner of your uncle gave me a good price. Thanks for the recommendation. Still more than I can afford.”

  “Is that why you’re fighting the day after tomorrow?”

  Henry popped a rice-wine sautéed prawn into his mouth. Gave him a chance to think.

  “Who told you?”

  “In addition to being nice and being rich, Marvin also has a big mouth. And Cal told me you had been training extra. That why we’re here? It fit into your fight schedule?”

  “It just came together is all. No plan. Another fighter backed out at the last minute. Promoter already had twenty thousand tickets sold.”

  “There are other ways, Henry.”

  “I’d like to hear them. Investors won’t take a chance on me because I’m a high insurance risk. My reputation goes south, I get my head bashed in, gym goes down with me. No one gives a loan to a guy with nothing more than a high school diploma. And my best friends won’t back me because they’re too far removed from the place to summon anything close to give-a-shit.”

  “Business isn’t about emotion. It can’t be. For starters, it’s no longer Sol’s gym. It’s yours. Having the name of a two-time middleweight champion tied to the business would draw sponsors. And you have a wealth of experience in the boxers who once frequented there. Imagine the mentorship—the caliber of one-on-one instruction.”

  “Boxing is totally different from MMA.”

  “Is it?” said Maggie. “Not from where I stand. Maybe Cal and Manny and all the other boxers don’t know the intricacies of MMA, but they sure as hell know how to take a punch. They know the importance of footwork and balance, how to navigate the streets, how to condition the body into health.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”

  “I’m just saying there are other ways. It’s been eighteen months, Henry. You’re stuck. In Sol’s messy office. In Sol’s life. In Sol’s dreams. It’s time for you to have a few of your own.”

  Exactly what Chase had told him.

  “I’m not sure what those are anymore. So much has changed.” In truth, nothing much had changed but Maggie walking into his life, making him question everything, inspiring him to be a better man, someone she deserved. He’d failed. Miserably.

  “Roosevelt may not be here if you hadn’t stepped in. You’re a good mentor.”

  “And if the dream is to go back to fighting?”

  He knew her answer. Before the lines of her expression fell, before disappointment clouded her eyes, he knew Maggie’s answer. Running a gym that saved kids was okay; fighting in an octagon that once saved him was something that she would never find okay.

  “Then it’s time to move on.”

  The gym or her—he couldn’t be sure. Maybe both.

  Maggie pressed her napkin to her lips and stammered through an excuse, something about trip fatigue, a big competition day tomorrow. And then she was gone, retired to her room, the penthouse silent but for the city noise rising up to choke out the sounds of his breath.

  12

  Henry was up at dawn, punishing the speed bag in Marvin’s state-of-the-art training facility—nearly a quarter of the sixty-eighth floor with one entrance from Marvin’s penthouse and another from his private elevator. In the two years since Henry had trained here, Marvin had moved things around a bit, upgraded the equipment, and added a few custom-framed, poster-sized photos of his clients’ victory moments. Most of them were kids, certainly younger than Henry. MMA was not a longevity sport. Careers faded out because of injury or disappointment. Not because any of the fighters compromised themsel
ves for a woman.

  The longer he battered the bag, the more centered he became. It was insane to think of giving this up for Maggie. Fighting wasn’t just what he did; fighting was who he was. She needed a bridge-hugger. An activist who ate soy everything and refused to wear leather, much less throw a punch with it. He needed…well, fuck.

  He went another round with himself, trying to exhaust his way out of wanting her.

  Marvin joined him near seven. Said he and Maggie had orange juice in the kitchen, shared a few words.

  “Not so big on the fighting, is she?” said Marvin.

  “She gave it to you, huh?”

  “Whipped out her big words. More like a high-class take down.”

  Henry laughed, glad to hear Maggie was back to her old, fiery self. At least it was better than knowing he owned a part of the sadness in her eyes.

  “She’s all right.” Marvin pulled on target mitts, invited Henry to switch gears from the speedbag with a wave of his hands. “She loves that kid.”

  “We both do.” Henry pivoted toward Marvin and nailed a triple jab, left-right-left.

  Marvin stumbled back a bit, Henry clearly the more awake of the two.

  “He’s good,” Marvin said. “Showed me a few moves when we got back last night.”

  “Won’t find a more academic fighter. Tell him something once, it’s never a problem again. Like a fucking sponge. He thinks three moves ahead at lightning speed. Never seen anything like it.”

  “I want to put him in the cage tomorrow night, couple of exhibitions before you.”

  Henry straightened his spine, fists down. “He’s not ready.”

  “He’s ready.”

  “Ain’t eighteen yet. No parental consent.”

  “So we lie.”

  “I don’t know, Marvin.”

  “Did you or did you not bring him to fight? What he told me.”

  “I didn’t make promises. We came for his scholarship competition. Kid has a chance at full-ride to Columbia.”

  “Goddamnit, Lawless. You sound like that redhead out there. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s got you by the balls.”