I half remember why I’m here in the first place too. I need Dillon to win, unless I want to add more problems to the ones my dad and I already have.
Going home empty handed would mean my dad taking a beating from the very people who organize this kind of fight.
It’s as if Dillon knows somehow. I don’t know if it’s just the look in my eyes or if he knows my situation somehow, but he stops long enough to give me a steely look of determination, then a sly wink and what almost looks like a grin at the corner of his mouth.
Some people at the front start to yell, threatening to come into the ring and fight themselves, but Dillon’s got the whole situation well in hand.
In two steps, he moves so quickly up to his opponent and hits him with an upper cut with such force his opposition floats backwards right out of the ring into the crowd, unconscious.
There’s a sudden and total hush over the whole arena. Dillon’s eyes are fixed on mine alone, he’s not even aware of anything else right now, and although I know I’ve just won, neither am I.
I thought there'd be some celebrating, maybe some cheering, but nobody’s really moving. The tension in the whole place is palpable.
“Shit…” mutters the bookie under his breath, slowly making a retreat backwards away from the ring and I suddenly realize I might not be getting my money after all.
I’m not stupid, but unlike just a handful of people present, I can now see the fight was rigged.
Dillon was supposed to go down, not punch the guy clean out of the ring in the first twenty seconds.
I can see Dillon’s eyes moving past me now. His body tensing up again as we both become aware of the other pair of eyes that has been watching the whole time.
The cold, calculating eyes of someone more sinister than a guy bare knuckle fighting in a ring.
I recognize the voice before I even turn around. I’ve only ever heard it once before, but that was enough.
The first time was when I had to beg for my dad’s life.
Mario Marconi.
His slow, sardonic applause makes the crowd hang their heads, all of them moving back from the arena, nobody daring to look anywhere but down. But my eyes are fixed on Dillon’s and his are fixed on mine.
I watch them narrow in hate as I feel the huge hand of Marconi on my neck from behind, making me jump.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dillon
He’s here sooner than I expected, and touching what he must know, what he must sense somehow that I want.
What belongs to me.
Mine.
“You betting with my money, Roxy?” he asks her, his greasy fucking hand on my woman’s neck, making me tense up so hard I feel like I’ll crack.
Feel like he’ll be the next one with his lights out, but I have to wait and see what he says or does next.
It wasn’t too clever knocking my opponent out in the first. I was supposed to go down in the fourth. Make it a convincing fight.
Lots of money at stake, and a lot of unhappy losers Marconi can’t afford to have leaving disappointed.
But I don’t care about that. As soon as I saw her, I knew both our lives were about to change for the better.
Roxy.
Finally, a name to this feeling, this growing ache inside that I just know is only going to be soothed when I’m with her.
When I’m finally deep inside her, filling her with my seed, making our new life together.
Soon…
Roxy doesn’t say anything, she keeps her eyes on me and I tell her with mine that all this will be over soon, I promise.
Nobody touches what belongs to me and gets away with it.
Marconi seems more interested in me for the moment, and he lets Roxy go, letting me breathe again. He steps over to the arena, everyone moving out of his way like he’s a live grenade that someone’s just pulled the pin out of.
Come to think of it, I do have something between my teeth. I’m glad to be the one who’s pissed Marconi off, and I know he’s as surprised as anyone else that I’d dare to pull a stunt like this.
“Okay, Louie? Give everyone their money back… everyone except miss thick n’ rich over there.”
The bookie looks like he’s about to have a heart attack, but then the relief on his face is shared with everyone who stood to lose a lot.
But it’s Marconi who loses.
For now, that’s what he’s thinking, I can tell.
“You,” he says, looking at me impassively, before looking back at Roxy, drawing the invisible line for himself, gauging what we’re feeling but nobody else but him can see.
“In my office.”
His bodyguard appears, helping put his coat over his shoulders, the sign he’s about to leave, but wants to see me before he goes.
It’s not a good sign when the jacket goes on, Marconi leaving as soon as he wants to see somebody usually means they’re being fitted with special shoes for the concrete swimming team they just signed up for.
But I’m too valuable for that. I know it, and Marconi knows it.
I look over to Roxy again, she’s being escorted from the building, along with everybody else. A Marconi fight not going to plan is bad publicity, and everybody important is being moved away to have their dicks sucked, figuratively speaking.
They’ll be back though. They always come back.
But I feel like I’ve lost more than my fee or the fight, as soon as I can’t see Roxy anymore, I feel restless. Her place is with me now. I can’t let her out of my sight, not for a minute, especially around these pigs.
Two of Marconi’s biggest men ‘escort’ me to his office, a nice series of rooms up some not so nice stairs, a robe thrown around me.
“So you don’t make a mess of
