by Meghan March
* * *
I stare down at my phone. Well, shit, at least I won’t have to come up with the money to pay Hal. One problem solved off my long list. I’ll fucking take it.
Next up, to figure out if the cameras caught any footage of Moses inside Legend.
Eleven
Legend
Q is in his office when I make it inside, and he’s already got camera feeds up on both of his monitors.
“You see anything?”
“Not yet, but I only vaguely remember what he looks like from that picture you showed me years ago. Fuck, now I feel like I should’ve had it framed on my desk so I was ready.”
I shake my head. “I’m so fucking sorry, man. I brought this to our door—”
Q waves me off. “Stop. I’ve known since the beginning that tying myself to you could mean that I’d find myself in this situation. I know what I signed up for, Gabe.”
I pull one of the extra chairs around the side of his desk and sit down beside him. “Regardless, it’s eating at me. I should’ve handled my shit all those years ago.”
Q turns, and his dark gaze pierces mine. “You were a scared-as-fuck kid back then, and it doesn’t make you less of a man to admit it. I wouldn’t have gone after him either, if I’d been in your shoes.”
“So, what do we do now?”
Q releases a long breath. “I don’t know. Because if this fight really comes together and you win . . . we’re still fucked.”
“I will win. Losing isn’t an option.”
“So we find out where the fuck Moses is holed up and take him out ahead of time.” Q leans back in his chair. “Or get a million and a half from someone who isn’t your girlfriend.”
I shake my head. “No one is giving me that kind of cash to pay off a gangster from Biloxi. I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have a fairy godfather.”
Q grunts out a laugh. “No shit. Because we wouldn’t be in this position if you did. He’d be turning piles of dog shit into stacks of hundreds instead of pumpkins into carriages.”
“You’ve been watching cartoons with your nieces again, haven’t you?” I ask him.
He points at me. “So what if I did? You going to judge me for it, after going to a gala with the richest assholes in town?”
“No judgment.” I raise my hands in surrender. “But I’m still going to give you shit about it.”
“Whatever. Back to Moses. Even if we spend hours going through security footage, it’s not going to help us find him now. You got any idea where he’d go?”
I shake my head. “None whatsoever. Could that PI buddy of yours take a look?”
“Eduardo? He’s fucking crazy. You know he only takes payment in cash up front, and we’re not exactly rolling in it . . . which brings me to another question. If your plan is to bet on yourself for the fight and win big, where the fuck are you going to get that money, man? I assume you’re not asking Scarlett for that either.”
It’s a question that’s run through my mind more than once since I came up with this plan to pay off the investors after I win.
I lean back in the chair and cross my arms, ready to put it out there. “I’ve only got one idea right now, and you’re really not going to like it.”
“Tell me.”
“Putting the club up as collateral with a loan shark.”
Q bursts out of his chair so fast, it tips over backward. “Are you fucking shitting me? Gabe, what in the actual fuck? If you lose, then we’re fucked on every goddamn level. Not to mention, Cannon Freeman and Creighton Karas will probably have you offed by the fucking mob if you do that. And guess who most of those loan sharks are in bed with? That won’t work.”
“What other option do I have?”
He jams his hands into his hair. “Fuck. Me. This isn’t the conversation I wanted to be having right now. Goddammit, Gabe. Swallow your pride. Ask your girlfriend. She’s got the money, and she’s a hell of a lot safer than a New York City loan shark.”
I know he’s right, but everything in me is screaming no fucking way am I asking Scarlett for the money, even though I just promised her I would swallow my pride and ask if I really needed the help. I might have to, but I’m not ready to go there yet.
“Let’s table this for now and deal with it later, okay? We’ll come up with something. I just need to let it simmer for a few more days.”
Q shakes his head. “This shit is going to age me before my fucking time. Whatever you do, please swear to me that you’ll tell me first, before it happens, so I can be prepared for the fallout.”
“I fucking swear.”
After scanning a few hours of video, I spot Moses. Bold as brass, he walked right into my fucking club and ordered a drink before he left . . . only to show up again in my office and hold Bump at gunpoint.
I have to take him out. That’s my only option. But I’ve got no fucking clue where to find him.
As I’m leaving the club, Q sends a second text to Eduardo, the crazy PI, and I pray he’ll help us on good faith alone. It’s the only chance we have, because I can’t lose this fight. It’s not in me to take a dive.
After I’m forced to park a few blocks away from the gym, I sit in the truck for a few minutes to get my head right. This workout might not be with my fancy new coach, but it’s the first one where battle needs to be at the forefront of my mind. I’m preparing for the fight of my life, the odds are stacked against me, and I have no choice but to win—despite Moses’s threats or the fact that I don’t have a signed contract in hand making the event official.
The fight will happen.
I close my eyes and picture the signed contracts on my desk and Q nodding in approval. The fight is happening, and I’m going to win.
I have no fucking clue how I’m going to pull all of this off, but I have to believe I can. If I don’t, there’s no reason to walk into the gym.
“I got this. All of it. I can do this.” I say the words out loud to myself, psyching myself up until I can speak it with such confidence that I believe it.
It’s a trick I picked up early in my fighting career, the first time I was going up against a nasty opponent who’d killed a guy in the ring earlier in the year. I pictured myself standing over his body as the ref raised my hand in victory. I lived that vision over and over and over until I was certain of exactly how the fight would end.
I took him out with a brutal TKO from a ground-and-pound finish, and he was still on the canvas when the ref raised my hand in victory.
This is how winners think, I realized.
Two years later, I’d earned enough to start Urban Legend. From the goddamned day I was born, the odds have been stacked against me. It’s nothing new. I haven’t let it stop me yet, and I’m sure as hell not starting now.
“Let’s do this.” I hop out of the Bronco, shoulder my bag, and head inside. I walk differently, with more purpose.
I barely see the other people in the gym as I go to the lockers and get ready to train. It’s like tunnel vision, but different and hard to explain. Regardless, when I finish my warm-up and start working the bag, I’m in the zone. My muscles remember every damn move and combination that’s been drilled into my head since the first time I put on gloves. I savage the bag, switch to jumping rope until I can barely breathe, and chug some water before doing it all over again and again and again.
It’s as familiar to me as breathing. Hell, sometimes I think this is what I was meant to do with my life. Train, fight, and overcome battle after battle. I understand this world. I know how to win. But for so many years, I’ve had Jorie’s dreams in my head, and those are what drove me to open my underground club, and then Legend.
Is that really what I want? I push the question away and return my focus to the bag.
I’m drenched with sweat and grinding out one last combination when I sense someone behind me. I finish and grab the bag to steady it and myself.
“What do you want?” I ask before I haul in a deep breath of oxygen, hoping to make
the black spots dotting my vision disappear.
“Damn, man. I haven’t seen you train like that in . . . a long fucking time.”
Hearing Rolo’s familiar voice makes me stand upright and turn to face him. “Seems like one hell of a coincidence I keep seeing you here, what with the odd training hours I’ve been keeping and all.”
Rolo crosses his arms. “We could pretend it’s a coincidence, but we both know it’s not. I got people. They let me know you were here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
The last thing I want to do right now is have this conversation, but just like I thought before I got out of the car—if you don’t deal with shit, it keeps coming back until you do. And it always returns bigger, meaner, and more prepared to take you out.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask him.
The older man sighs and shakes his head, his chin dipping close to the gold chains around his neck. “You and me both come a long, long way, boss. We’ve always been a damn good team.”
I know where he’s going with this. No doubt he’s heard the rumors about the fight that are apparently already all over the city. I wait, and he continues.
“We both made a lot of money together too.”
“I know,” I reply.
“I’m the one who came to you about the rematch with Black, so imagine my surprise when I hear my boy, my partner, is cutting me out of the action and making that fight happen without me, after everything I did for you. That’s some cold shit, man. Really fucking cold shit.”
I expected Rolo to be pissed—really fucking pissed—but the betrayal in his tone takes me by surprise.
Other than Q and his family, Rolo did more for me than any other person in New York or Jersey. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. He got me fights that people thought were insane, because he believed I could win.
Now, don’t get me wrong—he was in it for the money, and if I hadn’t been as good as I was, he wouldn’t have done all he did. But back in the day, it was more than that. We were friends.
When I was broke and needed help getting Bump into a doctor because he was sick, Rolo fronted me cash, knowing he’d make it back from the next purse I won. I’m not the kind of guy who turns his back on the people who helped him get where he is, and from Rolo’s viewpoint, that’s exactly what he thinks I did.
“I’m sorry you didn’t hear it from me first, man. That was shitty of me, but in my defense, nothing is for sure yet. Until I have a signed contract in my hand, I don’t have much room to talk about what is or isn’t going down.”
Rolo’s entire posture seems to hunch forward like he just absorbed a blow. “But it is true that it’s in the works. You and Black. Sanctioned fight. At your club.”
I bounce on my toes and smack my gloves together to keep my muscles warm. “I’m in a tough spot, Rolo. This is my way out. If you were in my shoes, you’d do the same thing.”
His dark eyes sharpen on me. “I wouldn’t cut you out, man. That’s where we’re different. Don’t sign the contract. Do it underground. Fewer rules. No taxes. Whatever tough spot you’re in, I’ll help you out. We’ll make it happen our way. Fuck those guys who want contracts and assurances. That’s not how we roll.”
I inhale slowly and then release the breath. “I can’t do that. Sanctioned is the only way I’m fighting Black. Neither of us are dying in that cage, because that’s not how it should be either.”
Rolo shakes his head at me. “That new woman of yours don’t want to go slumming. That’s what it’s really about, ain’t it? She ain’t the type to go to an underground club and be able to hold her own.”
I don’t like hearing him talk about Scarlett. Not one fucking bit. But what he said is true.
“If you were me, you wouldn’t risk exposing her to shit like that either.”
“I guess times are a-changin’,” Rolo says with another long sigh. “Never thought I’d see the day when I barely recognized this city anymore. New players coming into the game every day, and here I am, just trying to hold on to our measly slice of the pie. You and me had a good thing going, Gabe. Real fucking good. Pretty soon, I’m just gonna be like one of those high school quarterbacks, reliving my glory days from the sidelines because the best ain’t yet to come. It’s already gone and passed me by. Hell of a reality check, man.”
“Shit, Rolo. It’s not like that. You’ve still got plenty of action. Your new fighter you were with the other time I saw you? Sounds like he’s a solid prospect.” I don’t know why I keep the conversation going. Guilt, I guess. Because I hate seeing Rolo look so damned depressed and beaten down.
“He’s all right. He ain’t you, though, because he ain’t got this.” Rolo reaches out to tap his finger against the side of my head. “That brain of yours was always six steps ahead of everyone else. That’s why I pushed so hard for this fight with Black. You can win. The only person who’s ever been able to beat you is yourself, Gabe. That’s the damn truth.”
My chin dips, and I stare at the spatters of sweat dotting the mat beneath our feet. An idea hits me, and I look up at him. “You ever thought about going legit? Giving Uncle Sam his cut of your take?”
Rolo’s head jerks back. “Now, why would I want to give the government a fuckin’ dime? They didn’t work for that shit. Ain’t no one robbing me of what’s rightfully mine.”
“Just think about it, Rolo. Maybe if this fight goes well at Legend, I could start up my own thing—but legit. High-end fight nights. Bigger money. Bigger gate. Do it right. I’d need someone to help make it happen.” I can’t believe what I’m saying, because I rarely speak without thinking things through—or talking them out with Q—but the fucking guilt is crushing me right now.
“You’d do that for me? Bring me in on your action?” he asks, scratching the back of his neck.
“Let’s see how this fight goes, and then we’ll sit down and talk about it. How’s that?” I’m dodging his question, but at least I don’t feel like such a piece of shit.
Rolo shifts on his feet and cracks his knuckles, which sport heavy gold rings. “Yeah. You and me will sit down and talk after this is over. I miss you, man.”
I step in, and we give each other a half hug, slapping backs. I’m covered in sweat, but that’s nothing new for Rolo.
When we release each other, I shake his outstretched hand. “Thanks for understanding. I’m really not trying to fuck you over here. I just don’t have a choice. I have to do this.”
“Yeah, Legend. I’m getting that. I’ll see you again soon. You got my number. Don’t be a stranger.”
Rolo leaves the gym, and a sense of relief washes over me as he disappears from sight.
Everything’s going to work out just fine. Those contracts will be on my desk and signed this week. I’m going to take out Moses, beat Bodhi Black, make Scarlett happy, and save the club.
I got this. Somehow.
Twelve
Scarlett
Gabriel and I are both working on our laptops when there’s a knock on the interior door Monday morning.
“Amy’s here. Crap, I lost track of time.”
He stands up. “I’ll get out of your way then. I’ve got an office of my own, after all.”
I’ve been struggling with the idea of him out there in the world where Moses can get to him, while I stay at Curated with security out front.
Hal’s half brother, Pat, also a former boxer, is alternating shifts with him until this entire thing is over. When I asked Gabriel if I could pay their salaries, we had our first official living-together argument. It ended in my bed, with both of us naked, so I’m calling it a win.
We agreed to split the cost of Pat’s time, since Hal won’t take any money, but only because I told Gabriel it wasn’t fair to expect me to sit back and contribute nothing when his money could be better spent elsewhere, like on the club.
“Stay. Take the bedroom. We won’t be long. Maybe a half hour. It’s usually a super-quick rundown of the week and any employee iss
ues.”
He tucks the laptop under his arm and kisses my cheek. “I’ll be on that fancy little couch of yours then. That is, if it can hold my weight.”
I squint at him, not really offended at his quip. “The settee is solid. I promise.”
“We’ll see about that.”
He heads for the bedroom as I let Amy in. Her eyes expand to the size of dinner plates as she looks over my shoulder and watches him shut the door.
“I thought I heard a man’s voice in here. I’m sorry.” She glances back to my face. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. You didn’t say anything about changing the time of our meeting, but we can reschedule.”
“It’s fine. No need to change anything. Come sit down.”
Her gaze cuts to the closed bedroom door again. “Does this have something to do with the black SUV out front that hasn’t moved since Sunday?”
“How do you know it hasn’t moved since Sunday?”
“I thought it was suspicious, so I went back and checked the security feeds. What’s going on, Scarlett?”
“I needed to increase security. Ryan and Christine were pushing me to do it when the troll first surfaced, but I didn’t want to overreact. Now . . . I think it’s time.”
Her eyes grow wide again. “This is because of the troll?”
“Not quite. But it’s important.”
“Before I fully freak out, is there some other threat I need to know about? Are you in danger? Because of him?” Amy’s gaze darts to the bedroom door as it opens.
Gabriel comes out with his gym bag over his shoulder. “I’m not trying to step on your toes here, but I’m guessing it would help if I explained what’s going on to Amy.”
“Yes, please,” Amy says, nodding rapidly.
Thankful that he’s going to deliver whatever information we can share, I smile. “That would be great. Let’s all sit down.”
