5. Sylvie
SYLVIE
The tiny, pipe-lined rooms where the fighters got ready were meant to be off-limits to the audience. But after what happened, I needed Alec.
Going downstairs meant negotiating a rusting metal stairwell, sticky with spider webs and barely lit. Being somewhere dark, on my own, was the last thing I wanted right now. But the guys Aedan had fought weren’t getting up any time soon.
The thought of Aedan made my heart skip in a way it hadn’t in a long time.
Thoughts of boyfriends had been off my radar for so long that I’d almost forgotten what that felt like—that lift you get inside, when you think of his face, the little shiver that goes down your spine when you hear his voice.
Crazy. Okay, sure, he’d helped me, but he’d ripped through those guys as if they were made of paper. He was obviously some kind of fighter, embedded deep into this world that Alec and I only fleetingly touched once a week. Not a guy anyone would want to get involved with. And yet....
And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about him. The pain I’d seen in those pale blue eyes, the way he’d seemed so...protective of me. Before I’d driven him away by staring at his scars. Idiot!
It was all irrelevant, anyway. I didn’t have room in my life for a boyfriend.
Every day since Dad died had been about getting by, scraping together the money from my hotel maid’s job and Alec’s construction work and figuring which bills we could get away without paying.
It had been getting harder, since both of us had our shifts cut.
The only thing that had kept us going was Alec’s fighting.
Rick, the guy who organized the fights, paid him a flat fee with a bonus if he won.
The big money, of course, was in the gambling.
The rich thought nothing of putting thousands on a fighter to win, or to draw first blood.
But we never saw any of that. We didn’t have the money to put any bets on ourselves, even if we’d dared to risk it.
Tonight, Alec had to win. He’d won every time so far, thank God, and hadn’t gotten too badly hurt.
Tonight’s win would give us enough money that maybe it could be the last one.
It would buy us some breathing room, at least. I could job hunt and maybe find something better paid than the maid job.
Alec could do some of those community college courses and move up a little at the construction site—learn wiring or plumbing or something.
If he won.
I emerged into the cramped little room where Alec sat.
With his olive-green tank top and cut-off jeans, he could have been some guy chilling on a beach.
That’s what he should have been doing, instead of risking his life to pay our bills.
Great cheekbones, blond hair—my brother had it all going on.
He should have been a lifeguard or a DJ or something, knee-deep in adoring women.
Not sitting there in this overheated tomb, maybe minutes away from—
My mind rebelled against it. Please let him be okay, tonight, I offered up to whoever was listening.
Alec turned and his face lit up as he saw me. “Hey!” Then he frowned and jumped to his feet. He must have been able to see I’d been crying. “What happened?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Some guys shook me up.”
His face hardened into a snarl. “Who? Where?” He glanced upstairs, ready to run up there.
I pulled him into a hug. “It’s all over,” I told him. “They’re dealt with.” I squeezed him close. “Somebody came along and beat the crap out of them.”
“Who?” His voice was surly, now. I knew what it was—he felt guilty he hadn’t been there, and now he needed to know every detail.
I squeezed him harder. “It’s okay. Just some Irish guy. I think he fights here, or he used to.”
Very slowly, he stepped back so that he could see me properly. “Irish?”
I nodded, confused by how shaken he looked.
“Not Aedan O’Harra? The one with the scars?”
Now I stepped back. “Yeah.”
His eyes had gone wild. “Sylvie, stay away from that guy.”
“Because he used to fight here? You fight here!”
He shook his head. “He didn’t just fight here. He fucking demolished anyone who set foot in the pit. He’s the meanest son of a bitch anyone’s ever seen. A legend.” He lowered his voice and took my hands. “Sylvie, he’s a real bastard. I heard—“
At that moment, someone else descended the stairs.
I recognized the footsteps all too well: unhurried steps in expensive leather shoes and an accompanying clang and rattle of metal.
My mind had been spinning with what Alec had told me, but suddenly raw fear pushed all that aside.
I felt my shoulders tense up. Alec squeezed my hands.
But I could see that he was just as scared as me.
“Well,” said a voice from the doorway. “Isn’t this cute?”
Rick scared the crap out of me. Rick scared the crap out of everyone.
Once, about twenty years ago, Rick had probably been an okay kid.
Then—the story goes—his dad beat him so bad his leg didn’t heal right.
Little Rick got a walking stick. And maybe from the pain in his leg, maybe from his dad’s cruelty, he developed a mean streak.
The sort of kid who beat stray dogs with a car aerial until, exhausted and terrified, they’d fight one another.
Twenty years on, he’d moved up to people.
He got through most days, from what I’d seen, by downing coffee and snorting coke.
It had left him thin, his eyes bulging from his skull.
Not a guy who’d win in a fight. So he’d traded his wooden walking stick for an aluminum cane, vicious as a baseball bat but less conspicuous on the street.
It was a gaudy thing with a crystal on top as big as my fist. He kept it polished and he didn’t use it all the time when he walked.
He preferred to trail it along walls. It was the cane, banging against the metal staircase that I’d heard as he approached.
Rick’s favorite way of punishing someone was to get them down on the ground and then beat an arm or a leg with the cane until the bones were powder.
And this was the man who basically owned my brother, in the kind of backroom “management” deal that involves no paper or ink, only handshakes and threats.
Alec could easily have taken him in a fight—maybe even with the cane. But Rick never went anywhere without his protection, two ex-heavyweight boxers called Al and Carl.
We turned. Rick was in his favorite gray suit with a blood-red shirt and silver tie. He always dressed classy, as if that could disguise what he was. His two bodyguards were right behind him.
“Am I interrupting something?” asked Rick. “That how it works in Holland? Brothers and sisters get....close?” He leered at us.
I wanted to kill him. Alec was the one thing I had left in the world. How could Rick take something so good and twist it into something perverted? I shook my head.
That was a mistake. With Rick, there never was any right answer. Whatever you did, it would end in pain or humiliation.
“I don’t mind,” said Rick. “If you want to kiss him for good luck. A good, big kiss on the lips.”
I heard Alec’s intake of breath. Normally, he tried to keep me away from Rick and I was happy to oblige. Coming down here had been a mistake.
I shook my head again.
“Rick—” started Alec. He tried to keep his voice level, but I could hear the anger there.
“WHAT?” screamed Rick and slammed his cane against the pipes beside Alec.
Everyone, even his two bodyguards, jumped.
The sound reverberated around the room for long seconds.
God, his pupils were enormous. He was really coked up.
“She should kiss someone, for good luck.” He wasn’t going to let go of the idea.
“Maybe she should kiss me.” And his thin lips twisted into what he called a smile.
Alec was standing close enough to me that I could feel him tense up. I knew he was getting ready to fly at Rick and I knew how that would end. But the idea of kissing Rick made me sick.
Rick stepped forward. Alec squared up to him. Shit! Rick was going to wind up beating him up, before the fight had even started. I had to do something.
Before any of them could stop me, I stepped forward and grabbed Rick’s hand where it held his cane.
His skin was cold and clammy, very different to Aedan’s warm touch.
Rick’s eyes widened in surprise and I thought he was going to hit me.
But then I gently lifted his hand, and the cane with it, towards my face, and he relaxed as he saw what I had in mind.
I brought the ugly, gaudy crystal head of the cane up to my mouth and kissed it softly, the facets sharp against my lips. When I looked up at Rick, he was grinning all over his face.
“There,” he said. “See? She’s got the idea.”
Rick planted his cane back on the floor with a hard little rap. I winced. I couldn’t imagine how painful that thing would be, against flesh and bone. “You can take this guy, right?” he asked Alec.
Alec was still having to restrain himself. “Sure,” he said tightly. “No problem. He’s a little guy. One good hit and he’ll go down.”
“Good, ‘cause I got a lot of my own money on you, tonight,” said Rick. “Make sure he goes down and stays down.” Then, with a final leer at me, he was walking out into the pit to introduce the fight, his bodyguards trailing him.
Alec turned to me and pulled me into another hug.
“You sure about this?” I said. I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly panicking. “There’s still time to pull out.”
Alec didn’t answer, but I knew what he was thinking: no, there isn’t. Even if we didn’t need the money, you don’t just walk out on one of Rick’s fights. You did what you were told or you had your legs broken.
“I got this,” said Alec. “He’s just a little guy.” He released me from the hug but I kept stubbornly holding him until the last second. Then, reluctantly, I tapped my fists against his like we always did, our good luck charm.
“I’ll see you afterward,” said Alec. “Go upstairs and watch. And stay the hell away from Aedan.”
And then he was jogging out into the pit.