Chapter 26
BLOOD, BUBBLES, AND ONE HELL OF AN EPIPHANY
RONAN
Ineeded to hit someone. Hard.
It was ten minutes past nine when I finally left Blackguard headquarters. The rest of my day had been spent in meetings. Meetings to acquire this company. Meetings to sell three. Meetings to break up two others.
It was repetitive, it was meaningless, and most of all, it was boring. And I had to endure it all with Bas Huntington and Niall Black exercising their constitutional rights as executive board members to sit on each one like Statler and fucking Waldorf, criticizing every damn flaw they could find.
How had Brendan done this for as long as he had? Sure, I’d done the dirty work for who knew how many years, but I was also the one who had the freedom to talk back, make inappropriate jokes, and run his mouth if only to stave off the monotony and the pain of being Niall Black’s son.
No more.
I had a brand-new respect for my eldest brother, if only for his self-control.
They called him the Black Prince, but really, he was a man of steel.
For the first time, I wondered if it wasn’t just Simone that made him want to abandon his inheritance—maybe she just gave him an alternative to blowing his brains out.
“Home?” Mac asked as I slid into the back of the Rover.
“Don’t you have something better to do than babysit me, Mackie boy?” I immediately felt bad.
I knew the drill. I wasn’t just a spare anymore—I was the number-one principal, after my father.
Once upon a time, I could basically say “What’s that?
”, dart into a T-station, and buy myself a solid four hours before Mac pulled me out of an opium den or a strip club or whatever other forms of oblivion I could find at short notice.
But ever since Brendan sent us to Vegas, our head of security had been my shadow.
It wasn’t that Mac wouldn’t let me do those things anymore, of course.
Mac didn’t let me do anything. But there was an honesty between the two of us that right now, I was finding damned inconvenient.
I knew better. He knew I knew better. And I knew that he knew I knew better, which really just made it so I couldn’t do anything at all.
And then there was the reason for my sudden conscious in the first place.
I swallowed as Laney’s green eyes and shy smile came to mind.
Yeah, booze and drugs were out. Other women had become as appealing as an old cigarette butt.
That left one thing.
I lit a cigarette and opened a window. “Just take me to Lopretti’s.”
Mac’s eyes flickered in the rearview mirror. “You got it.”
Twenty minutes later, we pulled up to the curb in a part of Southie even the most adventurous yuppies still hadn’t dared to visit.
Nearby, the sounds of train cars unloading the last of their cargo offered familiar music as I approached the entrance to the old boxing gym where my brothers and I had all been taught our first punches.
The brick building was crumbling now, and the sign reading LOPRETTI’S in neon letters was half burned out.
It was exactly what I needed.
Inside, the gym smelled like sweat, peeling leather, and something metallic that could have been the rusting weight racks on the far side or fifty years of dried blood.
It was quiet at this time of night, with only the diehard fighters and their trainers left. And Jim Lopretti, of course, sitting behind the counter, sucking on a stogie while he studied the fights in the paper like it was before the internet was invented.
The bell over the door pulled his attention as I walked in, Mac on my heels.
“Ronan fuckin’ Black,” Jim crowed, his voice tinged with the thick sounds of Southie I barely heard anymore.
Brendan and Owen had the accent more than I did; Dad even stronger than the two of us.
Mine came out occasionally when I was really, really pissed.
But I could turn it on when I needed to. Like now.
“Jim fuckin’ Lopretti.” I offered a handshake, which he accepted with his gnarled paw. “How the fuck you doin’?”
“Can’t complain. Business is good. These rich fucks who bought everything around the park like to come in and pretend they’re tough guys. Pay good money for me and the boys to treat them like shit, can you believe that?”
I could, actually. Every kid I knew at boarding school had a secret desire to be poor. It was why they treated places like Lopretti’s like a cruise to the Bahamas—for them, the novelty was the same as a vacation.
Me, I just needed to let the demons out.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Jim said. “Thought you might be too fancy for us these days.”
I shook my head as I forked out enough cash to pay for ten sessions beyond the one I needed tonight. “Never too fancy for this place, Jim. You know that.”
He swiped up the cash with a grin that showcased a gleaming silver molar in the back of his mouth.
“Tommy’ll be done with the new kid in ten.
Get dressed unless you’re planning to ruin that fuckin’ penguin suit of yours.
And try not to break anymore of his teeth, all right?
I just cleaned the ring. Mac, you want a beer? ”
I grinned and headed to the lockers to change from the bag I kept stashed in the Rover. Mac chatted with Jim. When I came out, Tommy Switzer was hopping around Ring Three, tossing his head like a rabid dog.
“Black,” he greeted me without fanfare as I stepped in. “Heard you got married.”
I slid my gloves on over my wraps. Tommy and I had been sparring together since we were kids, before he fought Golden Gloves and when I’d just plain fought.
“Look at you, keeping up with the gossip,” I said before seizing one of the velcro straps with my teeth and tightening it over my wrist. “You on the rag too, Tommy? Something you need to share with everyone?”
“Southie keeps tabs on its own.” Tommy grinned, revealing two missing teeth. “Ready to get your ass kicked?”
“Fuck you, Switz. Let’s fuckin’ go.”
I tried to keep it clean. I really did. But I didn’t come here to fight fair, and Tommy was never one to pull his punches, so it didn’t take long before we’d earned ourselves an audience of the younger fighters and their trainers.
By the third round, I was fighting dirty. By the fourth, I was seeing red. And sometime during the fifth, I gave myself to the beast completely and had become a whirlwind of footwork, blind swings, and lethal instinct.
“Black!”
I kept going. One, two, undercut here, followed by two more combinations and a right cross.
“Black, ease up!”
Another quick combo, and I had Tommy up against the ropes, gloves to his face while he suffered an attack on his kidneys.
“BLACK!”
The throng of a bell vibrated through the gym, and it wasn’t until I was yanked off Tommy’s thrashing body by two big arms under my shoulders that I finally responded.
“No!” I shouted, spitting out my mouthguard. “What the fuck, I was winning!”
“You were going to kill him.” Mac’s voice was low in my ear as he dragged me out of the ring and deposited me onto the ground.
“What the fuck, Jester!” Tommy howled, his face streaming with blood. “I got a fight next week! You almost took out my fuckin’ eye!”
“Serves you right, fighting at our age.” I spat a bit of blood onto the concrete floor. “You can’t take a little sparring from me, how’re you gonna fight the kids ten years younger than us? You’re too fuckin’ old for this, Tommy.”
I didn’t mean it. Or maybe I did. I’d offered ten times over to give Tommy enough money to retire, but he wouldn’t take it. Pride still came before everything else in the neighborhood.
“That’s enough!” Jim was in my face, grabbing my collar and yanking me up and off the floor. For an old guy, he was still stronger than most and definitely had the ability to toss any fighter out after they’d lost their sauce.
And I’d definitely lost mine.
“Get the fuck out.” He shoved me out into the night, catching the gloves I proceeded to hurl at him.
“I didn’t do anything,” I snapped through gritted teeth. “Tommy’s seen worse. He knew what he was getting into.”
“Yeah, but my new fighters ain’t seen that shit, and they don’t need to. I let you blow off steam, and you proceed to use every illegal move in the book.”
“But I wasn’t—”
“Who the fuck do you think you’re kiddin’, huh?
I know you, Ronan. You’re a hell of a fighter—always were—but you’re too angry.
Now, my gym ain’t for UFC bullshit. You want to fight like a man, you come here.
You want to fight like a hooligan, you stay the fuck out there on the street, you got that? ”
For a second, I thought I might say yes and fight him exactly like the hooligan he was accusing me of being.
Instead, I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed in through my nose. In seven. Hold four. Out eight. And again.
Laney’s face was the one I saw once the color of blood faded from my vision. Those glowing green eyes. That midnight hair. That starlit smile, calling me home.
I heaved another sigh, and my shoulders finally dropped. “Yeah, I got that.” The fight in me was gone now. “I’m sorry, Jim. It won’t happen again.”
“No, it fuckin’ won’t.” His tone was steel, but he was already lighting a new cigar, signaling our bout was over. “I hear you got married, kid, so lemme give you some advice. Go home and let your woman take care of whatever’s eating you.”
I raised a brow and used the back of my hand to wipe the sweat from my forehead. “You got a lot of experience with that, Jimbo?”
I was teasing, of course. Jim Lopretti was a legendary bachelor.
The silver tooth made another appearance, winking under the street lamp. “Enough to know they’re good at it. God knows why they like doing it, but they do.”