by Holly Hart
The bartender was mixing a drink with his back to me – all showman and style, and as far as I was concerned, not much substance. I planted my palm down on the bar with a thud and growled. "Gimme a whiskey, Irish."
He laughed, but didn't turn to look at me. "Nah, buddy – you don't want any of that crap. Try something decent instead. I've got a great rye from Arkansas, you've got to try it. It's real peppery –."
"What about my accent." I drawled dangerously. "Makes you think I'm from Arkansas?"
He put down the polished chrome cocktail shaker he'd been manipulating and turned toward me slowly, almost dreading what he'd see. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it…"
"Look around you, kid," I growled. "You think this is the kind of place anyone wants to hear about your ex-ten-sive knowledge of the craft beer industry?"
He shook his head. He looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
"Damn right it isn't. You see that guy?" I said, pointing toward a fat man in an ill-fitting brown suit. He nodded wordlessly, shaking his head up and down and vibrating like he'd replaced his torso with a jackhammer. "Sure you do," I grinned. "Now look down, at his left shoulder. See that bulge?"
The bartender turned to me, apparently stunned by what I'd pointed out, and I shook my head. I was stunned that anyone working in a place like this could be so naive. "That's right kiddo," I winked. "Not so funny now, is it?"
Shake, shake.
Hell, it wasn't just his head that was shaking, his whole body was trembling now.
"I'm just playing with you, kid," I laughed raucously. "Long day. Please tell me you've at least got Guinness? And don't tell me you've got it in a can – I don't want to hear it."
The bartender looked at me tremulously. "So it's not a gun?"
I laughed again. I couldn't help it "Jesus kid!" It came out more like jay-sus, because I never sound more like a kid who half grew up on the streets back home than when I'm pissing myself with laughter. He stared at me uncertainly, and I could tell that he was trying to figure out whether I was messing with him…or just batshit crazy. "Of course it's a fucking gun! What, you wanna touch it? Gotta be sure, so you do?"
Shake, shake. "Are you crazy?"
I leaned over the table menacingly – or at least menacingly enough to send this kid from a white picket-fenced house in the suburbs into a tailspin. "You better watch who you're calling crazy, boy…"
Nod, nod.
"So where's me Guinness?"
"Coming right up, boss." The terrified bartender yelped. The kid was in a tricky situation, and the truth was I almost felt bad for messing with him. But the truth was, working in a place like this, if he didn’t get some street smarts pretty damn quick, he was going to find himself in a whole world of trouble.
A muscle-bound mobster further down the bar, with cauliflower ears and a rasping Russian accent that told me everything I needed to know about his intellect, growled out in protest. "Hey! You gonna get around to giving me this drink, kid?"
He looked at me with pleading eyes. I shrugged. "It's up to you, buddy. Who do you want to piss off more?"
The bartender's eyes flickered back and forth nervously, and beads of sweat glistened on his forehead as he attempted to decide which of the two men in front of him was more likely to take offense. I could see the gears turning in his mind.
Option one: pick the Russian. Pros: he's in the Mafia, and he's probably armed. Cons: the Irish guy beats the crap out of me.
Option two: pick the Irishman. Pros: I don't get beaten up. Cons: I might end up dead in a ditch.
Okay, so I wasn't leaving him with any good options. Then again, I wasn't planning on letting it get that far. I just liked to test men, to find out where they would draw the line, and to see how far I could push them. It was the same with Shannon.
Men like me don't like boundaries – we like to be in charge. Men like this bartender, on the other hand – well, let's just say they're the reason I get to be at the top of the food chain…
"Holy shit," the mobster exclaimed. "You're that guy, the guy from the cage!"
Where do these guys learn their English
I looked down the bar, scoping the Russian thug out properly for the first time. I've got a routine for men like him. A habit, you could call it. I check the ankle, shoulder and waist for weapons. Then I pass my eyes over his fists – do they have that scarred and slightly thickened look of a seasoned fighter?
Finally, his eyes – are they shiny with intelligence, or do they have the lifeless, unimaginative glaze of a dullard.
You can tell everything you need to know about a man by looking him in the eye.
It didn't take me long to realize that the Russian was nothing more than a common street thug. Then again, if the Russian Mafia in Alexandria was anything like the old firm back home, then he might well be the godfather – the man they call the Pakhan. "You talking to me, boyo?"
"There is someone you want to meet," he said in a Russian accent that brooked no argument as he waddled toward me – a once proud street-fighter laid low by the twin evils of age and potato dumplings. My eyes flickered over the bulges at his waist and ankle – a gun and a switchblade if I was a betting man.
Well, I was – am – but what kind of idiot would take that bet?
"To be perfectly honest 'wit you," I said warily, "I'm just here for the free beer, and then I'll be on my way. I'm not wanting to meet anyone."
He stuck out his hand, as if my refusal had bounced off his skull, or passed through without registering. "Sergei."
I shook it. "Conor, Sergei. Like I said, I keep myself to myself."
"The boss will meet you." He replied doggedly.
Again with the commands.
"Listen boyo, you're not listening to me – if I wanted to meet your boss, I'd introduce myself, so I would. Now why don't you sit yourself back down, drink your girly drink and stop bothering me."
I vaguely registered Sergei's shocked expression, but by this point in my life I'd insulted enough thuggish brutes to know I'd get away with it – and besides, I had more important things on my mind.
I felt the atmosphere in the room shift – as though a bolt of electricity had surged through the bar, heating the air and sizzling everything it came into contact with. Suddenly, Sergei was at the bottom of my list of priorities.
For a second it seemed that even the pianist had noticed, and his dancing fingers faltered for the finest fraction of a second before resuming their frenetic dance. All conversation in the room seemed hush.
I turned away from Sergei, ignoring him as he grunted something about, "the boss…" I didn't care about his boss, and I didn't care to meet him – especially as the only reason some Russian mobster would want to shake hands with a man like me would be to sign me up to fight for him.
The only person I fight for is myself. I've been doing it for years, and I'm pretty damn good at it.
A brown-haired beauty dressed in black had just walked into the bar, her black leather boots helping her tower over half of the short, stocky gangsters and their tall, glitzy hookers alike. It was her – the woman I'd been searching for all these years. And as she stood there, her eyes nervously searching the room for someone or something, she looked every inch as stunning as the day she'd disappeared from my life.
No, more so.
Every man in the place was staring at her, and she didn't even know it. Every woman, paid to be there or not, had a look of irritated jealousy on their face – but I knew they needn't bother. A girl like her wouldn't go out with the types of human scum they'd draped themselves over. I still had no idea, all these years on, why she'd ever so much as looked at me.
Let alone nearly married me…
A cowering voice sidled its way into my entranced daydream. "Your beer, sir?"
I grabbed it dismissively, deciding that the sniveling bartender wasn't worth another moment of my time. I only had attention for one person in this room, and if it wasn't Sergei, it sure as hell
wasn't him.
I glided through the crowd on autopilot as my brain directed me toward the lover I thought I'd lost forever, drunk with the delight of rediscovering every light freckle and strand of hair on her golden-hued face that I barely registered the expressions on the faces of the men around me – or the size of their shoulders.
Big mistake.
I wasn't five feet from my estranged lover when a rotten smell invaded my nostrils, so at odds with the beautiful floral scent of her perfume that it seemed aggressive, almost alien.
"Mr. Regan," a Russian voice scoffed from behind me. "You've got big balls coming here, you know that?"
I batted an encroaching arm away dismissively. "Sergei, I told you –."
"Not Sergei," the man grunted, forcefully and deliberately placing a fat, powerful hand on my shoulder and spinning me around to face him. "My men call me The Bull," he said, pausing to appraise me. I must have passed his silent test, because his tone of voice softened and he continued. "But a man like you? No – you can call me Mikhail."
The Bull pushed his face up against mine, grinning at his own joke, with his jaw locked open in an awful rictus grin. My nose wrinkled – he didn't need the gun he had so prominently ‘concealed’ between his shiny black shirt and the tailored suit jacket that was struggling vainly to contain his enormous bulk – his breath was bad enough.
I didn't have time to deal with this two bit mobster – not when my girl was so close. But as I glanced around, it was clear that I didn't have a choice. Mikhail was flanked on either side by men every bit as thick, pig ugly and of course, heavily armed as Sergei.
I sighed and shook his proffered hand. "Nice to meet you, Mikhail. If you don't mind –."
He cut me off.
What is it with these Russians cutting off my sentences?
"Big balls," he repeated, nodding his head sagely. "To come here."
I looked around. The Bull's men were looking at me warily – all grim faced with hands resting in waistbands or tucked inside jackets, inches from their weapons. I was no fool – I knew they outnumbered me five to one, and more worryingly, that there wasn't a man or woman in this bar who'd remember noticing me if the police found my body dumped next to the highway out of town.
Not even that sniveling bartender.
I need to move this along, I thought. I’ve got more important things to do.
"Glad you noticed," I grinned mirthlessly, scanning my potential assailants for any glaring weaknesses. I wasn't looking forward to fighting my way out of this one – but if it came to it, I needed to have an edge. I always have an edge. "Why'd you say that?"
"You know how much money I lost on you, Irishman?"
"Call me Conor."
The Bull grinned, like I was granting him a personal favor. They were all the same these Russians, painfully simple once you realized how their minds worked, but no less dangerous for it. The Bratva – the Russian mob – aren't like other criminal organizations, not in my experience, anyway.
No, these Russians were what the Italians used to be – vicious, single-minded in the pursuit of their criminal activities, and unyieldingly hierarchical. But there was another side to them too – a side that wasn’t talked about nearly so much. Like the New Jersey Italians, before they started selling each other out for shorter prison sentences, anyway, their word was the bond – and giving them your first name is a sign of respect.
"Oh, I'll call you Conor alright," Mikhail laughed. "I reckon fifty grand buys me at least that much. You owe me, Regan."
I curled my lip derisively. There was an energy running through me now – the relentless drumming in my brain that had carried me through the last four years was now eating away at me, pushing me to do something stupid, to pick a fight I couldn't win in a place I couldn't possibly hope to survive.
"That's all you bet? Didn't back your boy, did you?"
The Bull's men bristled, reacting to my mockery before their boss did. I watched them with interest, noting every move they made – the non-too-subtle drawing back of jackets to reveal weapons holstered at their hips, the animalistic teeth-baring, the puffing out of chests.
The big dumb brutes were spoiling for a fight – but like turkeys voting for Christmas, they were too stupid to realize that this was a fight they couldn't possibly win. Well – unless they managed to pull their guns out, that was. Looking at the way they sat back on their heels I was confident that I could take all four of them with consummate ease.
Their boss though – he was another matter entirely. Mean-looking and built like a brick outhouse, even with twenty years on me and a gut that must have weighed more than most of the women in this joint, I had no doubt that he would put up a mean fight.
Maybe that's what I wanted. I'd spent the last three years traveling from city to city – across America and back again, trying to find someone bigger, stronger and meaner than me, just to get in a cage and feel something again. Even if that feeling was just pain. But what had I got?
Nothing. The same relentless rage that carried me from cage to cage night after night in city after city, also carried me through every fight unscathed. It was rare enough that another fighter managed to lay a hand on me.
Rarer still that it hurt.
And no one had ever beaten me.
Maybe that's why I was here, picking a fight with a man and his gang. Maybe now, so close to the girl I'd been chasing – the goal I'd been chasing – I wanted to wallow in that pain one last time.
Well, for the first time.
Mikhail's men watched their boss carefully, waiting for him to give the order to grab me by the arms, drag me out of the bar and beat me senseless in a dark alley behind the old basketball arena.
The order never came. The big Russian tipped his head back and laughed raucously, a big belly laugh that reminded me of a jackal’s coughing howl, or the blood curdling screams of a pack of feeding hyenas.
"What did I say," he grunted, waving away his men as the humor finally subsided. "Big balls. Fucking big balls."
I saw my girl staring at Mikhail and I, her face aghast, and this time my stomach really did do a back-flip.
"Maya, come here, girl." The Bull roared, his voice turning hard and flinty. "There's someone I want you to meet."
Maya? Why’s he calling her that?
She padded toward us like a woman walking toward the electric chair – heavy legged, limp and broken. No, not broken – fearful.
Maya, or whatever her name really was, looked at me with pleading eyes, and I didn't have to be a genius to know what she was trying to say. She was begging me to pretend not to recognize her – or at least, not to make it obvious. I felt something stir deep inside me – something I hadn't felt in an awfully long time.
My heart.
5
Maya
Conor once said to me that everything you need to know about a man, you can read in his eyes.
If that was true, then when I left him, I hurt him more than I could have ever imagined – maybe even more than it hurt me. But then, when I left at least I took a part of him with me.
He had nothing.
"Maya, come here girl," the Bull shouted across the room. I had to leave the no-man's land where I'd been hovering, trying to observe on the outskirts of his group of scarred and muscular henchmen without being seen and dive into the heart of darkness. I locked eyes with Conor, and the hurt, shock and pain I saw in his glittering, sea-green eyes was almost enough to sink me.
I walked over slowly, as if by tarrying I could somehow prevent the inevitable, but the Bull jerked his head angrily, and I scurried over like an obedient girl. I did the only thing I could think of to help manage the situation – I pleaded with Conor through the only medium available to me – my eyes. I knew that one slip, one loose sentence or even a stray facial expression could betray a secret I'd kept for years.
A secret that had caused so much pain.
A secret that could get Conor killed.
I onl
y hoped he'd understand.
"Conor," the Bull blustered in a proud tone of voice that other men used to brag about their children's achievements. "Meet my daughter, Maya."
Conor blanched, his face betraying his shock as clearly as if he'd said it aloud. My head sagged forward, my chin meeting my chest. This was it – I knew it. The game was up. "Your…" He croaked, trailing off.
My father laughed, belching as he did so, and clapped the man I’d once almost married on the back. I held my breath, surprised by his reaction, but waiting for the inevitable explosion. My father was a proud man, as proud as he was penetratingly perceptive, and he didn't stand for being taken for a fool lightly. I knew he'd see through Conor's reaction for what it was.
"Yes, I know what it is that you are thinking," he said, sounding ever more Slavic as he laughed and rested his hand on Conor's shoulder. "How is it that a man like me can have a daughter that looks like this?"
"Something like that," Conor choked, sinking a large gulp of the almost untouched pint of creamy Guinness in his right hand to distract himself from the shock.
I didn't know what disgusted me more – the way my father was describing my physical attributes like he was my pimp, or his tone of voice. Like I said, other men reserve that tone for bragging about their kids at dinner parties. Mine uses it to flatter his own ego.
"I didn't always look like this, you know." My father chuckled. "And her mother…" He trailed off, bringing his fingers to his mouth and kissing them demonstratively, showing off what a catch my mother had been.
He made me sick.
She’s dead, you pig. And it’s because of you.
"Conor," he continued, tiring of focusing attention on me, or anyone other than himself. "I want you to think carefully about joining my crew. I have a significant, shall we say, investments in the CFL. We could do great things together." He looked toward me meaningfully, making sure that Conor saw exactly what he was looking at.
