Chapter 49 Griffin
Griffin
“Gimme our money, Frankie,” I say with a big, toothy smile.
Frankie’s the one in charge of this fighting ring. I don’t know how to put it, but he just seems like the kinda guy who would run a joint like this. Thick brows, thicker skull, and an even thicker midsection.
Talking to him and owners of the different fight clubs is just par for the course. Normally my dad would do this, when I used to fight for him, but I never want to see my dad for the rest of my life, if I can help it.
I do have to say, I’d much rather be in the car with Mirabelle, where she’s waiting with Rowan and Rage right now.
“You expect me to pay up full price when your guy went rogue and didn’t even put on a show?” Frankie huffs, eyeing the two of us warily.
His bodyguard stands behind his desk. The yellow light from the old lamp in the corner shines off the guy’s bald head.
I hold my hands out to my side.
“I’m sure I gave you a plenty good enough show,” I say, my toothy grin shifting ever so slightly into a menacing snarl. The change in my expression has Frankie paling as he turns to me. “I can give you another one. Maybe a private one, special just for you.”
Frankie narrows his eyes on me. He opens his mouth like he’s going to yell at me more, his blubbery cheeks moving with the motion.
Ash stands abruptly from where he’s leaning against the wall, cracking his neck with a single turn of his head. The motion seems to scare Frankie straight because he sighs and rolls his eyes.
“I expect a better fucking show next time, okay kid?”
“Don’t call me kid,” Ash spits.
“Fine, whatever,” Frankie says with a wave of his hand as he moves to open his safe beside his desk. “Just make sure you put on a better show. You’re new, Griffin’s not, so he’s got that going for him. You’ve gotta play it up and make the crowd bet, that’s how you get higher cuts, got that?”
“I don’t need you to tell me shit,” Ash snarls, taking a menacing step forward.
“Hey,” I say, holding my hand out and pressing it against his chest. His silver eyes are sparking with something that’s really close to anxiety. “I got this man, we’re good.”
Ash isn’t used to this kind of thing. The only people who ever managed his fights were those fuckers at the farm. Frankie’s a grubby, money-hungry dick, but he’s a lot better than anyone in charge of the feral alpha fighting rings.
At least Frankie’s predictable. He cares about his bottom line.
“I’ll explain things to him later,” I say to Frankie, ignoring Ash’s following growl at my words.
“You can tell he’s a good fighter, though.
We’re gonna continue making our rounds at all the other clubs, so you’ll be hearing about us a lot.
Sweeten the prize money up and we’ll make sure we keep coming back to your establishment. ”
Frankie narrows his eyes on us as he pushes over a stack of cash. A massive stack of fucking cash.
Just what we need.
“Sweeten it up? You askin’ for access to some of the girls?” Frankie asks slowly. “I know you’ve been gone a while, but that part of the family business’s paused after my cousin went and got himself killed.”
“What? No, I’m talking cash,” I shake my head. “What the hell’re you talking about?”
He opens his mouth to talk again but I just grab the cash and sweep it into my duffel bag.
“Actually, scratch that, I don’t wanna know. Night, Frankie,” I say with a wave over my shoulder.
“What the hell was he talking about?” Ash hisses, shoving past me into the hall.
“Cool it when we’re around people like that,” I sigh. “Frankie’s a beta so we can get away with pushing him around more, but other owners of different clubs have egos that wouldn’t let them get disrespected.”
“Then I’ll just punch their faces in,” Ash mutters.
“You can’t fucking punch everyone’s face in when you don’t like them.”
“Can’t I?” Ash snaps.
I hold my hands up in surrender, stopping while we’re still in the more private back hallway of The Warehouse. “What’s going through your head right now, Ash?”
“I don’t know,” he sighs, his hands clenching and unclenching. “The guy I fought wasn’t a good enough fucking challenge, I guess. I still feel that itch.”
“To punch people’s faces in?” I chuckle.
“Yeah.”
“I think that’s a withdrawal symptom.”
“Well, whatever it is, it fucking sucks,” Ash sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Now are you gonna explain what the fuck that guy meant about girls?”
“I don’t know what happened with his cousin, but Frankie’s family ran clubs and stuff, you could pay to spend time with the girls there.”
“Omegas?”
“Yeah, some of ‘em, why?”
Ash’s jaw clenches. “I don’t like the idea of that being Mirabelle’s fate if she’d ended up being sold somewhere else.”
“I mean, where she ended up wasn’t all sunshine and fucking rainbows either, the farm sucked ass.”
“But we were there to protect her. We wouldn’t have been there if she was fucking sold somewhere else.”
I reach out and grip his shoulder, squeezing it.
“We could probably spend forever agonizing over all the what-ifs. What’s important is our omega is waiting for us out in that car right now, and we’ve got enough cash to upgrade from that cheap-ass motel. Let’s focus on that, okay?”
Ash rolls his shoulders back, shrugging off my hold and nods.
“I fucking hate it when you’re right,” he mutters.
I bite back a grin, but apparently not well enough, considering the glare Ash shoots at me.
“Wipe that fucking smirk off your goddamn face before I wipe it off for you.”
“Smirk? What smirk!”
“With the concrete,” Ash says through gritted teeth, rolling his eyes.
I see the sparkle in his eye. I think I’m growing on him.
Good.
My family never felt like much of a family. I was always the one taking care of everyone and everything. I guess it’s nice that my efforts with my newfound pack and bondmate actually mean something.
The two of us make our way out to the back parking lot.
“Hey,” Rowan says, hopping out of the front seat of the car.
He’s still got a bit of a limp, but he tries his best to hide it. I think it’s a pride thing, especially since the rest of us heal so much faster.
“You didn’t have to get out for us,” I say, reaching out and tugging him under my arm.
“Get off of me, you’re all sweaty and shit,” Rowan says, shoving at my chest.
“Aw, I’m not that bad,” I laugh.
Mirabelle rolls down the back passenger window, leaning past Rage to look at me.
“You do look pretty sweaty, Griffin,” she says.
I clutch at my heart like I was just shot. “Ah! You wound me, Sweetheart.”
“Stop trying to claim my trauma for yourself,” Rowan says with a huff of laughter.
“I’m gonna claim your seat in the back,” Ash mutters, wrenching open the back door and slipping in next to Mirabelle so she’s sandwiched between him and Rage.
“Guess I’m sitting shotgun then,” Rowan shrugs. “Unless you want me to drive?”
“Nah, I’m driving,” I say, releasing him from under my admittedly sweaty arm. I lower my voice so Mirabelle can’t hear. “We’re all packed up, right? Everything from the old room is in the back?”
“All packed up,” Rowan nods. “We going to change places or something?”
“Yeah,” I say, a toothy grin splitting my face. “We’re gonna get some place fancy. Place with 24/7 room service or something.”
“Seriously? That’s fucking awesome, man! Is it a surprise?”
“Totally, I want to see the look on Mirabelle’s face when we roll up to it. Fanciest hotel in the Southside. Used to drive past it as a kid.”
Rowan’s excitement mirrors mine as he makes his way to the passenger side.
I was a little worried Mirabelle would notice Rowan and I were talking outside, but she seems focused on making sure Ash is okay.
“That guy sounds mean, but he can’t do anything to you,” she murmurs, running her nails over Ash’s scalp. “You’re okay.”
I meet his gaze in the rear-view mirror. His glare says one thing: don’t say shit about me being babied right now.
And I don’t. Because sometimes we all need a good hit of Mirabelle’s sunshine and reassurance. And he doesn’t have the bond to fall back on yet.
“How was your night, Rage?” I ask, glancing at the big guy as I turn over my shoulder to back out of the parking spot we’re in.
“Fine...” Rage says. “Really loud.”
He’s been talking a lot more. There’s obviously some lingering physical damage to his vocal cords, but without going to a doctor to get some x-rays and testing done, none of us know the full extent of it.
But it seems like a big part of his inability to talk at the farm was a mix of a mental block and the ridiculous amount of drugs they had him on.
The withdrawals have been the worst for him, I think. He complains the least, but I see the way he clings to Mirabelle’s side, constantly touching her in one way or the other and soaking in her perfume.
It’s the only thing that eases that violent, buzzing itch beneath our skin.
We’re lucky as hell we have her with us because I think the withdrawals from the ridiculous doses we were forced to take would drive us insane.
Now that we kind of know how they work—and how they’re made from the blood of tortured omegas—I can kind of see in a twisted way why being around an omega that’s happy can really help reverse whatever fucked up effects it had on us.
“How was ... your night?” Rage asks slowly.
“Hm? My night? Same old, same old. Gave a good show, got a fuckton of money. You know, it’s nice getting all the money to myself instead of having my dad divvy it up and giving me a fraction while he blew the rest on God knows what.”
“Same old... is good then,” Rage says with a nod.
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”
“I think it was good ‘cause you guys didn’t get hurt!” Mirabelle says, smiling brightly. “I could actually watch without being super scared.”
“Glad it wasn’t like before,” I say, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. “I like the idea of rewriting those shitty experiences and making new ones, what do you guys think?”
“I’ve loved all the experiences we’ve had so far! Like shopping and eating good food and being able to go wherever we want whenever we want, even though that was scary at first.” Mirabelle’s excitement is infectious. It’s been a highlight of our time out here.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried about us getting out and trying to be a functional pack. We’re not your normal bunch of people. We’ve all got our shitty pasts that make us do stupid things.
Maybe that’s why we work.
I throw on some peppy pop music, which Mirabelle seems to really like, and focus on getting us to the new hotel.
“Where’re we going?” Mirabelle asks after a few songs.
“It’s a surprise,” Rowan says, turning and flashing Mirabelle a wink.
Rage stiffens beside Mirabelle, his brows drawing down in concern.
Shit, I forgot to explain to him what we’re doing.
Rage tugs Mirabelle closer to him, resting his nose against her hair.
“It’s a good surprise, big guy, no need to sweat it,” I say to Rage.
“Okay,” Rage says quietly.
That’s a good sign! He’s still talking.
He stops talking when things get bad. I think he’s got as difficult of a time dealing with changes in routine as Mirabelle used to, though they react to them completely differently.
“It’s okay,” Mirabelle says, reaching out and squeezing Rage’s hand. “They wouldn’t do something mean or scary!”
My shoulders relax as I let out a breath. I didn’t even realize I was tensing them up. I guess it’s just nice to hear that Mirabelle trusts us.
As we drive, the more industrial concrete buildings and yellow street lamps shift to taller buildings, narrow alleyways, and bright neon lights.
Since the separation between the rich Northside part of town and the shithole Southside got real bad 15 years ago, the two have effectively operated as two separate cities. Minus the Northside government still making terrible decisions, because on paper, we’re still one city.
But that means that we’ve got our own downtown. It’s still seedy and the buildings are probably a lot older than the Northside’s equivalent of a downtown, but there’s an energy here that makes this part of town feel alive, even this late in the morning.
Or early, depending on how you look at it.
In this neighborhood, though? It’s late. Nightlife is huge here.
“Whoa,” Mirabelle breathes, leaning past Rage as she tries to peer out the window. “We’ve never been here before!”
I pull up outside the hotel I’ve been planning on taking Mirabelle to ever since I first stepped into the tiny ass motel office with yellow water damage on the walls that were supposed to be white.
Mirabelle has viewed us escaping the farm as an adventure.
She doesn’t know what to expect, let alone what she deserves.
It’s our job to show her.
I’ve only been here once. With my father when he was talking to one booky he owed money to.
It’s a fancy place. Hopefully fancy enough for Mirabelle.
“This is the surprise,” I say, turning around in my seat and flashing Mirabelle a toothy grin. “We’ve got all our stuff in the back. We’re getting a room here.”
It probably won’t be permanent. Eventually, we’ll want to find a place that’s more permanent than hotel rooms, but with the way Mirabelle’s eyes light up as she stares at the 15-story building and the glittering neon lights outside, the only thing on my mind is her.
“Oh my God!” She says, practically bouncing in her seat from excitement. And she hasn’t even seen the inside yet.