Don’t You Dare: A Bad Boy MMA Fighter Romance

by Claire St. Rose

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  “Whoa, Benni! What the fuck is this?”

  “Shut the fuck up, if you know what is good for you,” Benni screamed as he brandished the black pistol at Vinny who was still kneeling on the glass-covered floor.

  “What’s goin’ on here? I just got out of the fuckin’ hospital!” Vinny couldn’t help but be defensive. This was the second time he had gone to bat for the Horsemen only to be brought to the edge of death. Each time, the brothers he thought he was riding with had abandoned him.

  In the case of the most recent attack, he had been left to fight for his death. The Horsemen had been tricked into staking out the local limestone quarry in search of Calvin Jr., a traitor and spy for the Devils. Vinny had driven Benni and a truck full of Horsemen to the Cattleman’s Ranch, a restaurant where both gangs had sold and dealt the majority of their merchandize unknowingly.

  That day, only Vinny entered the restaurant’s kitchen in search of the fugitive. As soon as he had stepped in and called out for Junior to face his punishment, a large group of Devils enforcers charged at him from their hiding places. One by one they came out of entranceways and walkways. They leered at him, their faces lighting up with glee in recognition.

  As at least a dozen men circled him where he stood, their leader, a big, hairy man, shouted out loudly, “So this is the punkass who killed Carl. Doesn’t look so big now, does he boys?” The rest of the group laughed heartily.

  “I killed him with my bare hands, you sons of bitches. And don’t think I won’t take every last one of you down with him to that grave.” Vinny had lied. It was actually Gloria who managed to deliver the kill shot moments before Carl had his chance to finish off Vinny.

  “Not today, my friend. Not today. It looks like you’re well outnumbered. And by the time we finish you, our boys will be busy digging their own plot of dirt of you. Does that sound like a plan, my brothers?” He lifted his arms in the air as the rest of the men shouted wildly around him like a pack of wolves in their den.

  Vinny began backing away slowly as he surveyed what he was up for. To himself, he counted thirteen men. Each yielded some kind of defense. There were switchblades, hammers, baseball bats, and axes—weapons of motorcycle club war. Most of the guys were smaller than Vinny, thus giving him the advantage in hand-to-hand combat, but he knew that was unlikely to happen in this kind of crowd.

  He continued to walk backwards, his hands behind him as the men continued to wait to pounce. None really knew what they were waiting for. Most felt like they had to wait until they were told to get their piece of the action. They all looked to the large man, his face drenched in sweat and concentration, for word.

  Vinny took advantage of the hesitation as he took one more step back against the metal kitchen prep table. His back brushed the side as he moved his hands toward the back until he found it. The blade of the butcher’s knife gleaned in the light as he quickly turned to jump on top of the table and brandish the knife above his head.

  “Come at me!” Vinny shouted as the Devils’ crew suddenly leapt into action. The men nearest to him leapt at him, but Vinny was quick. He jumped out of the way, sending the men flying over the other side of the table and onto the dirty tiled floor.

  Another slowly climbed up on the table next to him. Vinny felt the man’s knife go in before he could register what it was. He let out a yell as his back arched from the pain. He wheeled himself around to face the man who had stabbed him. The blade was still stuck in his side. He pulled it out and used it and his butcher’s knife to swipe at the man. He made contact with his face and hands, causing him to fall off the table and down to the floor in a pile of his own blood.

  Vinny’s laughter was interrupted when he was struck on the back with a large baseball bat. He fell down, stomach first, on the center of the table. Two men were there to punch at him. He instinctively curved his body, protecting his chest and ribs from their blows. His feet thrashed as another man attempted to pull him off.

  A second knife went in to him, this time near his collarbone. It was a failed attempt to get to his throat. It set Vinny on fire as he kicked even harder, delivering a hit so hard he knocked the tooth out of the man leaping at his feet. Vinny pounced down from the table, landing on one of the fist fighters. Straddling over him, he began to deliver punch after punch until blood pooled at his fists. The man’s friend had ran off seeing the scene.

  Vinny’s arm reached up to finish the job, but it was pulled backwards as another of the larger men grabbed his face and jabbed a dull switchblade into his back. It barely pierced through his leather jacket, but it still stung and caused his reflexes to go nuts. He could feel his right arm weaken as his muscles fell apart from the broken nerve endings.

  “That’s for Carl, you son of a bitch!” Another faceless man had rammed his own knife in between Vinny’s shoulder blades leaving a second bleeding hole in his backside.

  Vinny had to get up. He had to keep going. If he thought these hits and stabs were painful now, he could only imagine what the Devils had planned to do with him when he was nearer to death and could not fight back. And he certainly was not about to go down without a fight.

  He made it to his feet, his body trembling as blood ran down his arms, back, and hips. He glanced around at the four men left standing. In between their rank and file line, Vinny could spot the door he had come in from. It was still propped open from when the kitchen staff had left. And the familiar voices of his own gang, who had been outside dealing with Devils’ security, were growing louder as they got closer to him.

  Vinny charged his way towards the sounds of his own men, falling into the arms of the Devils. One knocked his face hard with another baseball bat, forcing him back into the center of their circle. As the man leaned down to drag Vinny to his feet by his collar, Vinny swung his feet and legs under him, taking him down with a circular kick to his ankles. The bat rolled towards him as he clutched it in his hand.

  Vinny swung the bat wildly as he struggled to focus. The loss of blood had slowed everything down and had made the room begin to spin. Faces became blurred as he was unsure where he needed to go next. But he waited. He knew that if he could hold on to the bat as tightly as he could, he could take another one or two out. A horrible thud came as he knocked another man to his feet, hitting him on the head with a direct smack. Vinny kicked at his unmoving body as it fell to the floor.

  The final two men had obviously done this before. While the others flailed and fought helplessly and without a plan, they had waited it out and had studied their opponent. They knew he was hurting and hobbled.

  The leader, the man who had shouted at Vinny earlier, had grabbed a piece of rope from the storage unit while he was fighting his underlings. He used it to lasso Vinny causing him to drop to the ground while the other man, the number two in charge, took his axe and began swinging it towards him. The first attempt caught Vinny’s bicep. It ripped through the fabric of his jacket and shirt and went as far down as the bone.

  The axe pinned Vinny in place making it impossible for him to move. The lasso around his waist and hands only further prevented him from fighting back. He watched in horror as the leader reached out his burly hands and placed it around his neck. The air instantly began to escape him as he struggled to turn his head for any sort of relief. His body constricted and struggled and everything around him went into a lazy haze. He fell back onto the tile, his head hitting the floor with a thump.

  The man in charge released Vinny and stood next to his friend. Vinny’s skin had turned blue, his chest caved inwards, and the pool of blood he was laying in had become thick and muddy.

  “Go get Calvin and tell him its all clear. I’m gonna call Hal and the boys and tell them to head back to the lair.” The leader reached into his pocket and began dialing the number into the keyboard. He watched as the underling walked away towards the restaurant’s dining room.

  A voice on the other end of the phone picked up, “Yeah, it’s me. It’s don
e. We got that fucker, Vinny. … Yeah man! Dead as a fuckin’ doornail. He’s laying on the kitchen floor with a knife sticking out his back and my handprints around his neck. If that ain’t gonna please the boys in charge, I don’t know what will get me—“

  The man fell forward onto the prep table. The cellphone in his hand crashed to the ground as he lost his grip. Vinny stood over him, as he pulled the bloody knife out of the man’s body and plunged it in and out two more times for good measure.

  “What the fuck happened here?” Benni had entered the kitchen. He had a black eye and blood covered hands, but he was relatively untouched compared to his man.

  Vinny turned slowly around, panting and shaking. The pain caught up to him, causing him to fall back down to his knees. He could only get out a few words before he lost consciousness once again, “Calvin is here.”

  Vinny had little memory of the rest of the day. All he is able to remember is the feeling of warmth come over him as an IV of medicine dripped into his veins. A man in white stood before him, inspecting his head and neck. Nurses circled his bed as they carried bags and bags of blood that would later be transfused into him.

  He had thought Benni was the one responsible for him getting the proper medical attention that he had needed. However, how Benni held the gun pointed directly at Vinny’s temple made him reconsider that possibility.

  Vinny looked up at Benni, this time lowering his arms slowly. He repeated his last question slowly and deliberately, “Benni, what’s goin’ on?”

  “You tell me, you dumb fuck! Did you and that whore really think you would get away with it?” Benni stepped even closer to Vinny, the gun now resting against Vinny’s tan forehead.

  Only one bit of what he had said had caught Vinny’s attention, “Gloria? What does she have to do with any of this?”

  “That bitch ratted us out. How do you think the Devils knew where we were and where we were goin’? Your girl got herself caught and then narked to get herself free.”

  “That ain’t true,” Vinny spat—though he caught himself defending her before he could think about what he truly wanted to say.

  “You trusted her. We told you to watch out for her. You failed, and you managed to get four men killed and twenty others put outta commission.” Benni temporarily put down his guard as he started to pace. He ran his hands through his hair and then again pointed the gun back at Vinny. “I shoulda killed you after I saw you puss out on Calvin in the parking lot. Now I’m gonna finish the job personally.”

  “Wait! Benni, think about this. Gloria had nothin’ to do with it. Whoever told you she narked was lying. She don’t snitch! Why would she? She knows the Devils would just kill her anyways.” Vinny had to make Benni see the reasoning behind this.

  “You’re a fuckin’ idiot! She tricked you. She was in on it the whole time. If we would have stayed at the quarry, we could have helped the guys fight off the men. But you got that mysterious email and we went right to their trap. Who do you think sent that warning to you? Who do you think wanted you to die more than anyone else?”

  Vinny fell back on his knees as he caught his breath. Benni had a point. Gloria had to have been the person who emailed him that message to head to Cattlemen’s Ranch instead of the quarry. She knew he would trust her to go wherever she told him to, and the Devils knew it, too. Gloria was with the Devils. It was the only explanation. “Fuck!” Vinny screamed as he pounded his fists into the glass as he came to terms with the inevitable. The rest of the men stared at him as he rose to his feet to stand. “I’m gonna find that bitch and kill her myself. Let me do that for you, boss.”

  “You think that’s good enough for me? You think I’m gonna release you just because you say you’re gonna kill her? I ain’t gettin’ fooled by that bullshit o’ yours again.” Benni lowered his weapon and placed it into his pocket. The rest of his men followed him. He got up close to Vinny’s face and commanded in a calm, low voice, “Not only are you gonna kill that fuckin’ whore of yours, you’re gonna bring her back here so I can see her die myself. You got me, kid?”

  Vinny nodded slowly, his head filling with anger, regret, and remorse. His fists curled at the knuckles, and he bit his lip to distract himself from the pain he was feeling in his healing wounds. All he could think to say was a simple, “I got it, Benni.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  “Now that’s what I call a dress, girly!” Max slapped Gloria’s butt as she walked past him sitting on his perch at the bar. “I knew I made the right decision givin’ you a trial. Even if you can’t sing, I know you’ll at least look good doin’ it.”

  Gloria gritted her teeth. This wasn’t her first time dealing with the bar owner. Just last week, she had walked into his bar with nothing but a backpack and a turned up smile. She asked him if he had a stage, a microphone, and one night a week she could perform. Gloria was new to town. She had just arrived from Florida and was residing in the rundown shack of a hotel called the Arch View. The woman at the front desk had written her out a list of bars she knew had live bands play.

  But although Max was desperate to liven up his dive bar with some entertainment, he hadn’t exactly taken her seriously. She was just another pretty face looking for some five minutes of fame. Nothing about her came across as an experienced and skilled performer. She was timid and coy, and she didn’t talk enough for his liking.

  But he liked the way she looked when he talked to her. She had that glean in her eye like she knew way more than he could ever. And when he spoke, she leaned in like he was telling her all the secrets of the universe. Max had never met a woman like her, and without even bothering to listen to her or try her out, he offered her a spot on his bar’s stage that Friday evening.

  After dealing with Max, Gloria returned to her hotel tired and worn down. She quickly walked to her bag and counted her bills. No matter how she counted it, she was coming up short. Her last blackmail had gotten her just enough cash to make it out of Florida and up through the southern states.

  But the road was not kind to her. Her beat down car drew its last breath somewhere along the Georgia border. She had no choice but to drop a thousand on a new vehicle. As she waited at the local hotel for the call her new car was ready to be picked up, she caught the glimpse of the same men who were checked in at her old Florida stay.

  The men and a gang of motorcyclists followed her from state to state, town to town. Wherever she checked in, they checked in. If she dared to pull over to grab a bite to eat at a diner, they were almost always there, as well. Danger was stalking her. She could feel it breathing down her neck. And sleeping with the chair propped up against the doorknob was just not working for her anymore.

  Gloria resigned that she needed to set down roots and hope that her seeming to resign her life away from the action would appease the Devils. But in order to do that, she had to figure out a way to make a living. Singing was her only skill outside of blackmailing, and she was lucky she was so damn good at it.

  Tonight, she walked to the stage with a guitar strapped to her back. She had spent her last two hundred dollars on an old brown Fender from a pawnshop a few blocks down. It was a bit beat up with stickers still stamped on its side from the previous owner, but the old guitar would have to serve her well tonight.

  She hooked it in to the small speaker Max had provided her and strung some chords as a quick sound check. The ten or so men who had showed up turned their bodies slowly to face her. One by one, she could see their eyes looking her up and down in quiet suspicion. Her blue and silver mini-dress, the only one of her stage clothes she had managed to grab when she made her leave from her townhome, looked so out of place against the red velvet décor and the smoke in the air.

  “Thank you all for comin’. I’m…” Gloria paused unsure if she was willing to share her identity. “I’m Delilah from Florida. I hope you enjoy this.”

  The room grew silent as she played her first few chords rapidly. She launched into an old blues song about a woman looking for l
ove and finding it in all the wrong places. It was a song she never sang at her old gig at the Jackman’s Tavern. She had previously refused to sing anything about love and romance, but now that she was here, as Delilah from Florida, she was free to play what she wanted to play and sing what she wanted to sing.

  And, tonight, she wanted nothing more than to sing about love lost. After all, the last time she was on stage, her bodyguard, Vinny, accompanied her. He had watched her eagerly from her favorite back corner booth – the first time she could feel a member of her audience understanding her through the notes she sang and the lyrics she had wrote.

  But, tonight, she was singing to a faceless crowd. There was no one there to know who she was or what she had done. Gloria had killed a man with her own hands. She had watched a woman get dragged down to a basement of torture as she sat concealed in a closet. She, herself, had been stabbed and beaten. But that didn’t matter when she was on stage at Max’s Pub. She didn’t know anyone. No one knew her.

  That was until Gloria watched the back door slowly open a crack. The light from the street lamp shone through as a shadow of a large body passed through the entrance. And then another. The men walked slowly through the rows of tables and chairs as they took their place at the third row of seating.