Chapter Thirty-Three
The MGM Grand’s conference room had been rearranged to accommodate a spectacle.
A raised platform had been set up, alongside two podiums, and a backdrop wall plastered with sponsor logos so densely packed that they blurred together.
The lighting rig hung low enough to cook anyone standing beneath it, and the press pit was already heaving.
There were three hundred cameras, give or take, all angled at the two chairs centre stage where Lex and Morozov would sit, stand, posture, and give the photographers what they’d come for.
Lex had done twelve of these big draw fights before.
He knew the choreography. Walk out to your entrance music.
Stand at your podium. Let the promoter talk for six minutes about legacy and destiny while you stare at the other man and pretend you want to kill him.
Then there would be the face-off. Standing with their foreheads an inch apart, jaws set, muscles all tensed to show them off to their best advantage.
All he had to do was hold the pose while the shutters rattled. Give the photogs the shot, and save the violence for Saturday.
He’d always loved the theatre of it, the pantomime aggression that both men understood was performance.
He’d laid it on thick at every one, and then shared a drink with his opponent directly after, the pair of them laughing about it in a hotel bar while their promoters argued over revenue splits in the next room.
He couldn’t do it today.
The Tokyo Tumble Tally had turned this fight week into a circus.
The fight had become secondary to the story.
Every journalist in the pit had one eye on the boxing and the other on the spreadsheet, and the questions they wanted to ask had nothing to do with his jab, or whether he could handle Morozov’s reach advantage.
They wanted to ask about Barnaby.
Sharon had briefed him in the hotel suite that morning, her voice clipped while she laid out the ground rules for the presser.
No personal questions. No comment on Lord Ashworth.
No deviation from the fight. The promoter’s media team had agreed to enforce it, but enforcement at a boxing presser was like crowd control at a football match; theoretically possible, but practically a fantasy.
The greenroom was a curtained-off section backstage with a folding table, two plastic chairs, and a monitor showing the live feed from the conference room. Lex sat with his elbows on his knees and watched the press pit fill. Malik stood behind him with his arms folded.
“Forty seconds,” the stage manager said through the curtain.
Lex stood. His suit was charcoal, slim-cut, one of Harding’s. Barnaby would have approved of it. The thought arrived before he could block it out, quick and clean. Slicing directly into the soft tissue beneath his ribs.
He walked out into the fray and the flashbulbs hit him like a wall of light.
There were hundreds of them, firing in staggered bursts that strobed the platform white and left purple imprints behind his eyelids.
The noise was enormous; the mechanical clatter of shutters, the bark of photographers calling his name, all converging into meaningless sound.
Morozov was already on stage. He was six foot five, two hundred and sixty pounds, and his neck was wider than Lex’s thigh. He wore a black shirt unbuttoned to the sternum and a gold chain that caught the stage lights. His promoter flanked him on one side, his translator on the other.
Lex took his seat. The MC gripped the podium with both hands and launched into it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to witness the final chapter in a collision that the boxing world has been waiting for. Two warriors. Two champions. Two men who have dedicated their lives to the sweet science, who have sacrificed everything — blood, sweat, tears, and time with their families — to stand at the pinnacle of the heavyweight division.” He paused for effect.
The pause went on long enough that Lex wondered if he’d lost his place.
“On my left, hailing from Novosibirsk, Siberia. A city forged in ice, and breeds fighters! The undefeated, the undisputed, the unstoppable force of nature that is Dmitri ‘The Hammer’ Morozov!”
Morozov raised one fist. The press pit roared its approval.
“Born into humble beginnings,” the MC continued, and Lex’s jaw tightened, because he happened to know that Morozov’s father was a dentist and his mother taught piano at the Novosibirsk Conservatory, “Dmitri Morozov learned to fight on the frozen streets of Siberia, where only the strong survive, and brought that warrior spirit to the professional ranks with a record of thirty-four wins, zero losses, thirty knockouts.”
Lex stopped listening. He let it wash over him the way he let ringwalk music wash over him. It was all ambient noise. Someone else’s performance.
The MC called them forward for the face-off.
Lex and Morozov stood. As they walked to centre stage, the press pit surged and the noise climbed.
Lex planted his feet shoulder-width apart and looked up at Morozov, who had four inches on him and used every one of them, tilting his chin down so his brow hooded his eyes.
Lex met his gaze and held it. This was the part he was good at, where his body did all the talking and his brain shut up.
Then Morozov puckered his lips. He made a kissing sound, wet, deliberate, and pitched for the microphones.
His mouth spread into a grin that was all teeth.
He leaned in close enough that Lex could smell his aftershave and said, in English thick with his accent, “You miss your boyfriend, Murphy? He miss you too?”
The press pit erupted as the cameras honed in on Lex and his reaction. The MC stepped forward with his hand raised.
Lex closed the gap. He pressed his forehead against Morozov’s, bone to bone, his eyes locked on Morozov’s from an inch away.
The height difference meant Lex had to drive upward, his neck rigid, his traps engaged, and the force of it pushed Morozov’s head back a fraction before the bigger man braced and pushed forward.
They stood like that. Forehead to forehead, breathing each other’s air, the cameras going mad around them.
Lex could feel Morozov’s pulse through his skull and see the capillaries in the whites of his eyes.
He held it until the shot was done. Until every photographer in that room had the frame they’d sell to every front page from London to Moscow.
Then he stepped back, his hands still at his sides. He looked at Morozov for one beat longer, just long enough to send the message that the next time they were this close, Lex would be wearing gloves and throwing real punches. Then he made for the exit.