Brawler's Baby: An MMA Mob Romance (Mob City Book 1) (11 page)

C
onor

You can tell a lot about a town from its strip clubs, and holy hell, Alexandria has a few. It's not so much a red light district as a red light town… You'd think that would make a man's life easy, right?

Wrong.

It took me the better part of half an hour to find an establishment whose door wasn't staffed by a brute called Alexey, Sergei or Boris. The way I saw it, Mikhail Antonov was costing me enough already – I wasn't going to put any more dollars in that psychopath's pocket, even if that meant giving up on the high class joints.

The Russians had the center of town locked up tight, and they'd thrown away the key. The rest of the city's criminal underworld was left to fight for scraps on the edges – so that's exactly where I was forced to go. The geeky, pale kid who ran the reception at the Sunset Motel wasn’t going to give any five-star concierge a run for their money, that was for damn sure, but he gave me a few tips.

I couldn’t help suspect that his knowledge of the city's criminal layout was more theoretical than practical, though…

Like I'd suspected, all the decent clubs were under Mikhail's thumb. If you didn't come from the old country, then you were paying him protection. And even if you did speak the mother tongue, had a daughter named Natalia and drank bath tub vodka, you still ended up paying him, you just called it a ‘gift’, and hoped to hell the boss decided you’d been generous enough that month.

The African-American gangs had the ghettos in the north of the city, up around Edmonton Avenue, but that seemed like a long way to go to drink bad, overpriced whiskey and watch a few cheap strippers. The Eastern Europeans had the suburbs sewn up, but they were just Russian-lite, so that was out too. Apparently the Hispanic gangs were making inroads, as well.

Things were looking desperate until he mentioned the Italians. Apparently they had a place not far away where the strippers were still on the right side of thirty. Still, Alexandria was crying out for a good, honest, old-fashioned Irish gang to knock a few heads together…

I gave the kid a few tips as well: stop jacking off behind the counter when he thought no-one was watching, hit the gym and get some sun.

Anyway, that's how I ended up at the Blue Moon, because it sure wouldn't have been my club of choice. It was a seedy joint that looked two decades past its best – and I doubted whether it's best had been up to much.

The bouncer on the door sized me up as I approached him. "Ten bucks."

"You're taking me for a mug, mate." I said, pointing at a notice pinned up above his left shoulder. "That sign up there says five!"

"Can't read." He replied, deadpan. "It's ten bucks – you don't like it, go somewhere else."

I grumbled, but I paid anyway. Ten bucks in was cheap, and we both knew it. And besides, I didn't have many other options. The Blue Moon was the shortlist, the runner-up
and
the winner.

I walked through the door and entered another world: a world whose soundtrack was crap European techno, and where days faded into night without anyone paying the slightest bit of notice. The windows were covered, and the only illumination came from the neon stage-lighting.

It was perfect.

"Hey," a waitress crooned into my ear. I could barely make her voice out above the heavy beat of the music. "How ya doing today? Can I getcha anything to drink?"

"Four fingers of Jamesons. My fingers, not yours." I replied curtly. She got the message – I wasn't here for conversation.

I didn't know why I was here at all. Strip clubs weren't normally my thing – they were sad, depressing places, populated by men stuck in depressing, sexless marriages and losers who couldn't even get that far.

Guys like me? We didn't need to end up in places like this. I could have a different girl in my bed every night, and the world would never run out of women willing to sacrifice their morals for a night in bed with Conor Regan.

And yet, for all my talk, I couldn't deny that I
was
in this tawdry club, rubbing elbows with the kind of men I despised. What the hell did that say about me? What the hell was this girl doing to me that I'd ended up in this mess?

"Here ya go, sir," the waitress said, startling me out of my reverie and clinking a dirty glass tumbler full of whiskey down in front of me. I thought about sending it back, but decided against it – I suspected that every piece of glassware this place owned would be in exactly the same state.

"How much?" I growled.

"Twenty-two bucks," she replied. "Want to start a tab?"

I fished a crisp green note with Franklin's face on it out of my pocket and handed it to the girl. "I don't do credit cards."

"Uh," she stammered. "Okay. You want change for that?"

I looked at the girl like she was stupid. "You think I'm giving you a seventy-eight dollar tip for carrying me a drink?"

Her face fell. "Oh, no – I guess not."

I might have felt bad, but I was in no mood for self-reflection. I made my money, more honestly than most men, by putting my body on the line, so it figured that I should get to spend it how I wanted. I wasn’t a charity. Hell, it was hard to believe that someone could fail to understand that just by looking at me.

And yet, for all that, I relented.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Uh, Alice."

"Okay Alice. Stick it behind the bar for now, okay?"

She hid a nervous half-smile. "Yes, sir."

I'm no sir. I don't know what I am, but I know I'm no sir
.

The waitress wandered off, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I kinda wished she hadn't. She seemed two raisins short of a fruitcake, but maybe that was me talking. She was a sweet enough young thing. Maybe a bit naive. This place would soon knock that out of her.

I knew the drill. Some guy would see her walking down the street, tell her how beautiful she was, and promise her she could make all the money in the world. She'd start as a waitress – because
girl, you're too good to be a stripper
. But that's a lie. Once you're in, you're in.

A little short on rent one month? It's fine, just do a couple of spins on the pole. The regulars love fresh meat, you'll make a killing.
Just this once.

I'd never really thought about it, but the more I did, the more I realized that places like this were no less a punishing school of hard knocks than the mean streets of Dublin.

Hell, maybe they were even worse. At least back home it was honest thieving, and if you could hold your own, then people respected you. This place, though, was manipulative. Exploitative.

I'd always worn the hardships of my youth as a badge of honor – the scrapes and bruises and cuts and scars acquired through dozens of fights forming a protective armor that had carried me safe for years.

I had men ink designs onto my skin, not because I particularly cared for them, but because they too protected me, made me appear bigger, more intimidating –
other
.

They set me apart from society, made it so that I could walk down any dark alleyway and know nobody would dare start a fight with me.

But these women? The ones milling around, some busing drinks to tables, some contorting their bodies around metal poles, and still others waiting their turn – they had it worse. They had to take off their clothes,
their
armor, and parade for men who'd never know them as people, as women with real lives, real dreams and real problems. I could only imagine what a job like this must do to their psyche.

Nothing good.

What the hell are you doing, Conor?

Faint bars of music broke through my daydream, but the gyrating lyrics only made the experience feel more tawdry, and cheaper. If that was even possible. I couldn't help but compare these women's predicaments to Maya's situation. They weren't the same – but it was close enough.

That
was why I was miserable. Because coming to a place like this meant that I was every bit as terrible, in my own little way, as Maya's father.

I looked down and wished I hadn't. The carpeted floor was dark, and stained by years of neglect and spilled beer, and told a story all of its own. I took a hefty swig of my whiskey, too much – it burned the whole way down, and left my throat scoured raw. It was time to leave.

"Hey, mister. You mind if I sit here?"

I turned to my left, and saw a petite blonde in suggestive underwear leaning against a barstool. She looked young, too young. She couldn't have been much beyond her eighteenth birthday. Her face wasn't yet scarred by this line of work. Her eyes weren't dead, and her soul wasn't yet tarnished.

"Sorry honey. I don't buy dances." It was a lie. I had in the past. But not tonight – and not from her. She was young enough to be my sister, if I had one. Still young enough to get out of a place like this. I almost felt disgust that she was
here
, a girl that beautiful in place this foul.

"Good thing I'm on break, then…" She grinned, planting herself on the barstool and kicking off her six-inch heels. It made her look even younger, more innocent – if that was even possible.

She smiled shyly at me. "What should I call you, then?"

C
onor

I looked at the disappearing amber liquid in my glass and wished that she'd just leave me alone. I hadn't gone looking for a seedy strip club so that I could have an existential crisis about how goddamn fucked up the world is – I'd just wanted to drink myself silly and do something stupid.

"Conor, it's Conor," I muttered.

"You having a good night then, Conor?"

I answered her curtly. "Not really."

"Too bad," she smiled wanly. "Me neither."

I felt like I couldn't leave, not now. Maybe it was an excuse, maybe it wasn't. The truth was, I don't know why I didn't just leave. I felt…
different
. On any other night, and in any other bar, this girl would have been going home with me, but tonight? Tonight I felt like I was more likely to adopt her than sleep with her.

A couple of minutes passed in silence before she she finally cracked. "So do you want to know who I am?"

It would have been easy enough to kill the conversation then and there. I'd done it before. "
No, not really
," I could have said. It would have been a lie – but I could have said it. But I couldn’t do it. The poor girl was crying out for help, and I was the only person around to give it. I didn’t know what was happening to me.

I turned to her and smiled. "Shoot."

"Megan," she grinned happily, extending her hand. "Pleased to meetcha."

I shook it, and fell silent for a couple more seconds as I considered what I was going to say, and whether I should say it at all.

I decided to go for it. I'd never been shy about sharing my mind, and just because I was in the middle of an attack of conscience didn't mean that my entire outlook on life changed. "What are you doing here, Megan?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean here," I gestured. "In a place like this?"

Her face fell. I could tell that was the last thing she wanted to talk about – anything except why she'd ended up there. "I could ask you the same thing." She replied.

"You could." I agreed. "But I asked first."

I kept quiet and waited for her to reply. Best way to get someone to talk – just stay quiet. People hate silence, it's awkward, so they fill it. Megan was no different.

"I got a kid," she replied, looking at the floor with embarrassment. "Baby daddy ran off the moment I told him. Probably not even in Alexandria anymore. Hell, I'd be surprised if he was still in the state."

"I'm sorry. You finish high school?" I didn't know why I was asking, but I felt compelled to continue. I felt as though by prying into Megan's life, I might uncover something about my own. It was probably a forlorn hope, but it was a hope nonetheless.

Megan looked red-faced and ashamed as she replied. "No. I had to bring up a kid, couldn't do both. Didn't have no one to help me, couldn't bring the kid into school. Ma boy didn't sleep through the night for six months, so there was that, too. Yeah." Megan trailed off awkwardly.

"Your parents?" I asked.

She laughed bitterly. "What parents? Mama started smoking crack when I was fourteen. Found herself a new man. Didn't see her around much after that. Never knew my dad."

"Me neither," I murmured. "It's a tough gig, kid."

She’s you, Conor. You, except she’s got a baby, and no one ever taught her how to fight.

We fell silent for a couple of seconds. I took another swig of my whiskey, trying to burn away my disappointment in myself for my feeble response to Megan’s confession.

She spoke up. "What about you, then? What's your story? Why you in here – I don't see you staring at the girls. Why did you come to a strip club if you didn't want to get an eyeful?"

She had a point. I chose my words carefully. "Can't a man have a drink?"

Megan raised her eyebrow archly. "Sure. But here? I don't think so."

"You got me," I smiled regretfully. "I've got a problem."

She sounded wise beyond her years as she replied. "Don't we all, honey."

I started talking. Talking like I hadn't in years, since I first met Maya. From the heart. I hadn't opened up like this in years, but Megan seemed like a friendly ear. I felt as if anyone would listen without judgment, it would be her.

"There's this girl –."

It
always starts with a girl
…

"– I used to know, a long time ago. She's just come back into my life, and –," I paused, considering how much I dared give away. "– And she's the love of my life."

It sounded so simple, put like that. Why couldn't I say that to Maya? What was actually stopping me?

"That sounds nice," Megan smiled genuinely. "What's her name?"

“Mma-ry," I replied – catching myself just in time. I wasn't stupid enough to use Maya's real name in a place like this, no matter how kind Megan seemed.

"So what's the problem?" Megan asked, sounding confused.

"Her dad's a bit of… an asshole." I replied. It was the understatement of the year. "He made us split up a few years ago, and to be honest I think he's ruining her life. I get him not wanting her to be with a guy like me, but…" I broke off.

"I think you're sweet," Megan replied. "The way you talk about her, the tone, it’s…kind. I wish I could find a guy like that." She went quiet.

"Thanks, I guess."

"So you're together?" She asked after a short silence.

"Not exactly." I replied. "I just got into town. I didn't even know she lived here. I don't know, she's in a pretty shaky situation. She's got it pretty bad."

"Well if she's got someone like you, Conor, she'll be alright. You're good people."

You don't know me. I'm a wrecking ball
.

I sensed, as much as heard, something approaching from behind me, a big ball of fiery temper, and spun around as – out of nowhere, a big man grabbed the back of Megan's neck and pulled her forcefully off the stool.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He snarled. "You don't dance, you don't eat – you know that."

The girl whipped around like a flash, aghast. "Sorry Tommy, I was on break, I didn't mean –."

He cut her off. "My house, my rules. You take a break when I say so."

Tommy was a tall man with bronze Italian skin, and yet even with all the genetic luck in the world, he somehow still managed to look ugly as shit. My lip curled back with anger. "Hey, buddy," I growled. "I was speaking to this young lady here. You want to mind your business?"

The Italian looked at me with bemusement, his face wrinkling, his forehead folding. "You deaf or something? You didn't just hear me say
my house, my rules
?"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I could feel my anger building, and I knew it wouldn't take much for it to boil over. It had been a couple of days since I last fucked a girl, and I wasn't used to it. I felt celibate, monk-like, and I didn't understand how those priests managed it for their entire lives.

I sure as hell wasn't used to wanting one girl in particular – especially not a girl I couldn't have. I was tense, and wound up like an elastic band just waiting for something to set me off. Megan stared directly at me, begging me with her eyes not to start a fight.

I did my best. I stood up, spooking Tommy as he realized how much I towered over him.

He took a nervous pace backward. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Conor!" Megan begged. "Please, it's okay. I don’t want you causing no trouble."

I took a step toward him, and he flinched. I reached my hand into my back pocket and Tommy's eyes almost disappeared with fear. I knew what he was thinking – that I was reaching for a knife, or a gun, and I almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. How could a man as cowardly as Tommy end up owning a strip club next up with the Italian mob?

I pulled my hand back around my body. "Chill, Tommy," I grinned, slapping another hundred down on the stage in front of me. "No need to freak out."

The bar owner visibly crumpled with stress before pulling himself back up to his full height to defend his injured pride. He wasn't fooling anyone – least of all me. "A hundred bucks?" He sneered. "You think I care about a hundred bucks? You think you're a big man, coming in here and slamming that down on the stage?"

I sighed and pointed around the half-empty room. "Who do you think you're fooling, Tommy? This place is done, you know it as much as I do. It's just a matter of time before this joint closes, if this is all you’re getting in on a Friday."

"You want me to kick you out? I'll get the bouncer…"

I laughed in his face. "That guy? I could beat the shit out of him with one hand tied behind my back, and he knows it. If you think he's going to kick me out here, you're mad."

Tommy went crimson with impotent rage, but the more he realized I wasn't going to back down, the more he seemed to crumple in on himself in front of my very eyes. "Fine," he muttered. "A hundred bucks. You got half an hour."

I leaned in menacingly, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. I noticed that the buzz of conversation around us, and even the music, had hushed as every eye in the place was now trained on us. "No, Tommy" I growled. "I
got
as long as I goddamn want."

I could have left him his pride. Perhaps should have, in hindsight.

"Okay, okay," he muttered. "You've got as long as you want."

"Perfect," I agreed. "Time for you to run off, then."

I sat back down, but Megan stayed standing. She was shaking. "I wish you hadn't said that," she groaned. "You know how hard it is for a single mom to get a job in the city? Let alone a job that lets me work the hours I need to take care of Katie."

I shouldn’t have done that. That wasn’t laying low, that was you spoiling for a fight. And now this poor girl’s gone and got herself caught in the middle.

I'd fucked up. Fucked up big. I'd let my temper get the better of me, and Megan was going to suffer for it. For all I knew, I might too. "You shouldn't be working in a place like this, Megan," I said lamely. "It'll fuck you up."

Don't try and
moralize to her, not now
.
You fucked up. Now own it
.

She slumped back down onto the bar stool and cradled her head in her hands. I could barely see her face through her blonde hair, but I saw tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. "Tommy's gonna kill me," she moaned.

I made a decision, right then and there. Megan wasn't going to be another one of the girls I'd hurt in my life. I was going to make it right, no matter what it cost. She'd given me a gift – even if I didn't fully understand it yet: the gift of accepting myself, the curves as well as the edges.

"No," I said slowly. "He's not."

"How do ya know?" She stammered through tears. "You don't know him. He's hurt girls before, why not me?"

"He's not going to hurt you," I said gently. "Because if he does, I'll fuck him up. Trust me on that. I'm a bad person, Megan. Real bad. And besides, even if he tries, you're not going to be in town."

"Where the hell do you think I'm going to go?" She asked. "I get by paycheck to paycheck, you think I've got enough cash to skip town? With a baby?"

I could have thought long and hard about it, but I didn't need to. I'd already made my decision. "You see the bag by my feet?" I asked, swinging down the dregs of my, now warm, whiskey.

"The backpack? Yeah. So?" She sniffed.

"There's forty thousand dollars in that bag. Give or take a few. You're going to take it. You're going to get out of Alexandria, and never come back. Understand?"

She looked at me like I was crazy, make up running and eyes wild with tears. "What the hell are you talking about? Who brings that much money to a strip club?"

I could tell she didn't believe me, so I leaned down and picked up the rucksack. I glanced round quickly, making sure no one was looking, and opened it up. "I don't like banks," I grunted.

"You –." She said, her mouth grinding to a halt, then opening and closing like a goldfish as she saw the neat stacks of twenty dollar bills bound up inside.

"Don't like banks," I repeated. I zipped up the bag, careful to make sure that no one had seen the contents and dropped it back to the floor.

"Listen," I said. "I'm sorry I screwed this up for you. But you're better than this. You're going to leave this town, and get far away from here. You're going to go get your diploma, and you're going to go to college, and so is your boy. You're going to live – you understand?"

"You're crazy," she said slowly, almost in shock. "You can't give me that."

I shrugged. "I can, and I'm going to. I'll make it back." I stood up, ready to leave.

"Where are you going?" She asked, sounding half-panicked. “What am I –. How am I supposed to do this?"

"I've got faith in you," I said. "You're a smart girl – you'll figure it out."

I started walking away, but Megan called after me. "Conor?"

I turned back. "Yeah?"

"You're a good person."

I wasn't so sure about that. "Maybe."