Chapter 43
Dominic
“You won’t have to worry about him anymore,” Niko tells me as we sit in his office at the Cockpit. “Rafe will never fight here again; that’s for damn sure. We might be pushing the legal boundaries on boxing, but I draw the line at weapons.”
“That’s a good line to draw,” I say, touching my temple. It’s been a week since the day of the fight. The swelling has gone down some, but the bruise looks worse. I can finally open my eye again, but only slightly and the blood vessels are all shot. I look like I got hit by a fucking truck.
“I just hope we haven’t lost you as a client,” he says. I love how they refer to us as clients. It keeps things looking nice on paper, but it also sounds ridiculous when you consider what we do at the Cockpit.
“Oh, I’ll be back. Maybe not soon, but you haven’t lost me,” I tell him, standing up from my chair.
“Of course,” he says, holding out a hand, and I shake it.
Niko is a funny little guy, but this place is a huge part of my life.
It’s also a huge part of who I am. Being the CEO of a security company was my life goal, but boxing saved me.
I’m not about to give that up all because of a smashed cheekbone.
I walk back out into the main bar area. They aren’t super busy right now, probably because it’s only eleven in the morning, and they just opened for lunch hour.
I am about to walk out when Lainey walks in.
She’s juggling her work clothes, a romance novel with a bookmark in it, her purse, and a water bottle.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, stepping aside even though I am holding the door for her.
“Here, let me help you with that,” I tell her, taking her things and walking back inside to set everything down on a vacant table.
“Thank you,” she says. “I’m a mess this morning.”
She pushes her long strawberry-blonde hair back from her face. It’s a shame that Niko makes the girls wear those tacky wigs. I think he’s going for a uniform flight attendant look. But these girls, Lainey included, are beautiful without anything synthetic.
I nod at her before turning to leave. Then she stops me and says, “Dominic? Can we talk for a minute?”
I’m not really sure where this is going. Or how I feel about it. But she’s a nice girl, a girl who doesn’t act like all the other girls here. She also loves Mila, and that matters. So I turn back around.
“Sure,” I answer. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’m worried about Mila,” she says, biting her lip.
“Why? Is everything okay with the baby?” I ask. I haven’t seen Mila since the day of the fight. After she was discharged from the hospital, she went straight to Lainey’s and has been staying there ever since.
“Yeah, the baby and Mila are both fine. No damage done. But that’s not what I mean,” she says, and I wait. “It’s just that…I think you two need to work things out.”
I take in a breath, running a hand through my hair. “Lainey, listen–”
“Dominic, she loves you,” Lainey cuts me off, and it stops me altogether. “I know you’re upset with her, but she really does love you. No matter what your relationship was posed as in the beginning.”
“She is pregnant with my child and didn’t tell me,” I say, keeping my tone low. Although I’m not sure why it matters. Our dirty laundry is hung out on the line for everyone to see.
“She was afraid,” Lainey says.
“Afraid I wouldn’t give her the money I promised?” I ask with some spite.
“Afraid you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her.”
I chew on that for a minute. “It’s not that simple,” I say after a long minute.
“None of it is simple,” she blurts out. “Jesus. You two went from you being her boss to enemies to fake relationship to lovers to whatever this is. You’ve checked off every love trope in the book.
I mean, shit, if you fixed the relationship and let love win, you’d have a bestseller on your hands. Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell level.”
“Who?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
“Never mind. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think you should give up on each other. Because you know that even if it was all part of some grand plan, the lines blurred. There’s no way either of you can deny that.”
“It doesn’t change that she kept the pregnancy from me,” I say, holding to my guns.
“She kept it from me too,” she says, and my brow softens.
“She did?” I ask.
“Yeah. Apparently, she wasn’t ready to tell anyone, and Brynn figured it out. Then she told Rafe who sabotaged everything.”
Jesus.
I knew Rafe was behind most of this, but I did not know that not even Lainey knew about the pregnancy.
“Why would she keep it from you?” I ask. “You’re her best friend.”
“I wondered that too,” she says. “I was even hurt by it. But I realize now she was just afraid. She’s still afraid, Dom. And she needs you.”
I offer a stiff nod. It’s not an answer or a white flag by any means. Mila isn’t the only one hurt by all of this, and I still need time.
“Just talk to her,” Lainey says. “Please?”
“I’ll think about it,” I tell her.
As Lainey shuffles off with all her things to the locker room, I take in a breath and let it out again. I’m about to head out the door back to my car, but for some reason I am pulled to the back, towards the ring.
I turn the lights on and they flicker with a clamor before everything lights up. Even though the room is empty, silent and cold, I can still hear the sound of the crowd, the cheering and booing, the announcer, the bell.
My hand instinctively touches my face again, softly because it still hurts like a bitch.
It’s not the first time I’ve been injured in the ring.
I’ve been hit hard enough that I spent two days in the hospital before.
I’ve also broken an ankle and had a collapsed lung.
But something about this was different. This time felt more detrimental.
I walk over to the ring and step inside, standing in the middle with my hands in my pockets, turning slowly to look around the room. Visions of Mila flash through my mind, making my head hurt as I remember her calling out to me, trying to warn me.
The back door opens, but I don’t look. My eyes are locked on the spot where Mila was standing before I got hit. Before she screamed. It isn’t until someone starts talking to me that am able to pull my mind away from that moment.
“How did I know I’d find you here?”
I turn to see my dad walking up.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Looking for you,” he says with a smirk as he steps into the ring with me. “Jesus, son. He walloped you good.”
“Yeah, well, he fights dirty,” I mutter.
“No shit,” he chortles.
“So is that why you came looking for me?” I ask, my guard up. It’s an instinct when I am standing in the ring. It’s also an instinct when I’m standing in front of my father.
“I came looking for you because I heard about the fight and wanted to see how you were doing,” he says.
“I think my face says it all,” I tell him.
“Your face shows the outside. But it’s the inside I am more concerned about,” he says. I turn to look at him through my one good eye. My dad is many things, but empathetic is rarely one of them. Especially when we aren’t on good terms.
“I’m fine,” I say, turning to stare in a different direction, my shoulders squared, my hands still in my pockets, and my heart on lockdown.
“Bullshit, you are,” he blurts out. “I know you well enough, Dominic. You’re going through hell right now.”
I whip back around. “No shit,” I snap. “I just got my face cracked open. I found out through you that my girlfriend is pregnant with my child, and my professional life is nose-diving because I have no access to my inheritance. Hell isn’t even comparable to where I am right now.”
“Golden Rule isn’t going to let Shaeffer bid,” he says calmly, and it makes me even more riled up.
“What the hell are you talking about? I lost the fight. Fair or not. There’s no fucking way he won’t contract with them now.”
“Except for the fact that they know about the fight and how he won,” he tells me, mimicking my stance and shoving his hands in his pockets.
“It was enough to make them dig into the dark archives of his history. And between me and some of his past clients, they realized that Rafe Shaeffer is not a man they want to partner with, ever. They also realized who they do want, and it’s you. ”
My brow stitches together as I attempt to keep up. “You talked to James Rickman at Golden Rule?” I ask.
“I did.”
“And he knows about Rafe,”
“He does. And he wants to work with you.”
I can’t seem to wrap my head around what my dad is saying. “Why…why would you do that?” I ask.
“Well,” he sighs. “When I heard you got hurt, I sat down with a glass of whiskey and thought about things. Your career, both in boxing and the industry. You know we may not see eye to eye on a lot of things, son–”
“Do we see eye to eye on anything?” I ask.
“Fair enough,” he chuckles, tilting his head from side to side. “But actually, we do. We are both stubborn, hardworking, and determined to be the best. Your mother used to tell me that all the time when you were little.”
“Mom said that?” I ask, a cut deep in my heart reopening slightly.
“She did. You and I used to butt heads even then. And I’d get so frustrated with you. And she’d tell me that the reason we did it was because we were both hard-headed. And that if we just worked together, we’d be unstoppable.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. My relationship with my father has always been strained, and I’m not exactly in a reconciling mood right now. It’s a lot more to unpack than just a simple I forgive you conversation. But I decide to hear him out anyway.
“You want a drink?” I ask, nodding over at the bar.
“Sure. Anything good here?” he asks.
We walk over to the bar, and I walk behind it, grabbing a bottle of top-shelf whiskey. Then I pour a shot for each of us in two highball glasses and hand him one. My dad takes a seat on one of the stools, and I position myself across from him, leaning forward on my forearms.