Brawler's Baby: An MMA Mob Romance (Mob City Book 1) (12 page)

M
aya

The bustling boxing gym was a hive of activity as I walked in. As always, these days, I was flanked on either side by my two unwanted bodyguards. Within seconds, the whole place had fallen silent. These were some of the city's hardest men – all six foot tall or more, strong enough that you could swap them in for firefighter, or marines, and no one would bat an eyelid.

And yet the moment they saw me, all five foot seven of me, the room fell so quiet you could've heard a pin drop. I knew, of course, that it wasn't me they'd gone quiet for – it was what,
who
I represented.

I hate this.

"Sorry for disturbing you," I said, my voice sounding reedy and week in a place whose very air tasted soaked with sweat and testosterone. "Don't mind me."

It was easier said than done. Within a few short seconds, the room began to empty. I made pleading eye contact with some of the fighters whose workout routines I'd disturbed, but to no avail.

"Please," I begged one, a man in his twenties, unwrapping his bandaged hands as he walked out. "You can stay. I'm not here to cause trouble."

The fighter, who had half a foot and a hundred pounds on me, didn't even look at me as he mumbled. "S'okay. I was done anyway."

It’s not okay!
I wanted to scream. But I knew I couldn't. I needed to stay in my father's good books, to do exactly as he ordered, so that he wouldn't do anything rash with Eamon. The more I obeyed him, or at least pretended to, the less he paid attention to me, and the less he paid attention to me, the less he could hurt me.

By the time the gym had emptied, fighter after fighter filing out behind one another with varying looks of irritation, intimidation and sometimes downright fear on their faces, there was only one man left. Conor. At least, I assumed it was him, because who else would have stayed?

The gym's silence was punctuated by the clinking of a fully loaded barbell rising and falling rhythmically from a man's sweat-soaked chest, where it touched the clavicle, then exploded up powerfully and locked out at the top of the movement.

The bar was loaded up with more weight than I could even fathom – it barely bore any resemblance to the, by comparison, pathetically light version my personal trainer had handed to me on the few occasions I'd managed to drag myself to the gym in the past year.

Looking at Conor, who didn't seem to have realized that I was there at all, I only had one thought on my mind.
I really should book another session
.

I walked over to him, leaving my bodyguards by the door, and admired the way his muscles shimmered with the bright overhead lighting reflecting off his sweaty sheen.
If Mohammed won't come to the mountain
…

The reason
why
Conor hadn't noticed me became abundantly clear as soon as I got close to him. The tinny sound of rap music escaping his earbuds was audible from at least ten feet away. I felt like a mother when I thought,
he should turn that down, it must be destroying his ears
.

I waved to him to get his attention, and he hissed loudly in response, expelling the air from his lungs. He completed two more repetitions, punctuating each rep with a grunt and set the bar down with a mighty crash.

"Hey." He said, looking round the room with a bemused expression on his face. "What the hell did you do with my sparring partner? Where is everyone?"

"Oh," I said, embarrassed. "About that – I think I scared them off."

"You?" He laughed out loud. "All hundred pounds of you? I don't believe it – you must've done something to frighten them off!"

I jerked my head toward the door, where my two bodyguards had adopted leaning poses, resting against the door frame, heads down and eyes locked on their phones. It was almost comical watching as their oversized thumbs did battle on the small black rectangular screens. I had to admit, they weren't exactly the most intimidating men my father could've picked, but it was who they represented that really mattered.

"Okay, maybe it was them."

Conor looked up, and seconds later the mischievous smile tickling the corners of his mouth was wiped away by a tidal wave of disappointment crossing his face. "Oh…"

"Oh?"

"I thought we might be… alone."

I shook my head, and then looked down, noticing what looked like an insulin pump strapped to Conor's waist.

"Uh, Conor?"

"Yeah?"

"Is that…" I said wordlessly, pointing at the archaic gray plastic device clipped to Conor's waist.

He looked down and grinned. "A cassette player? Sure is."

"Conor," I stammered, flabbergasted. "You're twenty-two years old. Don't you have, like, an iPod or a smartphone or something?"

"Why the hell would I want one of those?" He smirked. "I don't want anyone texting me, or sending me one of those snap chat things –." He stopped, mid-sentence, and looked me up and down hungrily.

"Except for you, that is…" He said suggestively.

I ignored him, wary that my bodyguards could be watching. They weren't my father's best men, or I'd have seen them around the house before. The likelihood was they were just two warm bodies picked at random from one of the cafés down in the Russian quarter – spots where bar owners and mob under-bosses alike when recruiting when they needed a bouncer for the night, or a bit of muscle…

Still, there was no need to arouse their suspicions.

"Cut that out," I ordered.

"Do they speak English?" Conor asked, pointing at my father's men.

"You mean can we talk?" I grinned, speaking softly. "Quietly. I don't think they're the
most
intelligent men men my father could have sent."

"How many does he have?" Conor asked.

"Men?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, I dunno, a couple of hundred? It's hard to know really. There are probably more, but he doesn't order all of them around directly. Some of them are my uncle's men, others are controlled by my father's avtos."

"Avtos?"

"Sorry," I replied. "It's short for avtoritet. They’re kind of like…" I paused, searching for the right word. "Captains, I guess. They're responsible for fifty or sixty men and a section of the city. They report to my father, but get to keep some of the take."

Conor scratched his beard thoughtfully. "Seems like a house of cards," he said. "What's stopping a couple of them from banding together and taking your dad on?"

"Shhh," I hissed, glancing toward my bodyguards warily.

"Oh, it's fine," Conor laughed. "Either those two deserve Oscars, or they have absolutely no idea what were talking about. My money's on the latter. Not that I have much left."

"It's not your money I'm worried about," I sniped angrily under my breath.
Or mine, for that matter. I just need to get Eamon out of here without dad noticing
.

Conor raised his hands apologetically. "Sorry, your city, your rules."

I sighed, letting the tension drain out of my shoulders. "No, it's not your fault. I'm just –."

"On edge?" Conor interrupted. "What's going on? You can tell me. Who am I going to tell…"

Can I?

"Nothing, honestly," I lied. "You were talking about why it doesn't all just fall apart," I continued, trying to steer the conversation back on to safer ground. "It's because of my father. He's a killer, plain and simple. He's got eyes and ears everywhere, and the second he thinks that someone's plotting against him…"

Does dad already know my plan? Is he just waiting for the right time to close the trap around me?

Conor finished my sentence for me. "They die."

I nodded sadly. It was the dirty little secret that kept me up at night. Alexandria, officially anyway, had a completely unremarkable murder rate. If you looked at a list of American cities, it would fall right there in the boring middle. But I knew better – the statistics didn't tell the whole story.

Not even close.

I'd seen my father's captains spirited away in the night, never spoken of again after disobeying him, or even just slighting him accidentally. I'd read the stories in the Herald about dad's business rivals who went to work one morning, like they did every day, and were never heard from again.

It didn't take a genius to notice the connection between the two. And that's what dad relied on – the fear, and the whispers, the sense that even in bed late at night with the curtains drawn and the door locked, even then you weren't alone.

Was I going to be just another statistic, another obituary in the paper? Would I get a well-attended funeral where dad would get to play the grieving, loving father? Or else would my broken body just be wrapped in chains and dumped thirty miles offshore, to sleep with the fish until the end of time.

"Maya?" Conor asked curiously. "You there?"

"Yeah, sorry," I said, pulling myself back to the present. "I must have drifted off…"

"Uh huh." He replied, not looking completely convinced by my explanation. "I was saying, what are we going to do about my sparring partner?"

"Sparring partner?" I repeated back to him, vaguely remembering that he'd mentioned the term when I'd first walked into the gym.

"Yeah," he said, with the same expression on his face that a long-suffering parent might unconsciously adopt when talking to a slightly dim-witted child. "You scared him off. I'm supposed to be practicing for this fight, aren't I?"

I could tell from the way Conor's demeanor shifted as he mentioned the fight that he was still angry about what my father was planning on making him do. And even with that knowledge, I still managed to insert my foot so deeply into my mouth that I needed a tractor to get it out. "Well," I said dumbly. "Will missing a practice fight just for today be so bad? I mean –."

"You mean," Conor repeated bitterly. "That I'm throwing the fight anyway, so why the hell do I need to train?"

That was exactly what I'd meant.

"No! I didn't mean it like that." I lied, aghast. I could tell just how much my callous dismissal of his training had hurt him.

Conor punched the weight bench in frustration and sighed aggressively, letting his head hang back. "You did," he groaned. "It's not your fault. I'm just –," he paused. "I'm just pissed off about this whole thing. I'm going to throw away my career, and for what? To make your dad a few hundred grand?"

"More than that," I replied. "He'll make millions. But yeah, that's about it."

"Millions?" Conor said interestedly. There was another expression on his face, too that I couldn't decipher. "It'll be that big?"

"You kidding? He's already promoting it all over town, and it's only been a couple of weeks. By the time this fight rolls around, the arena will be packed – and you've got the title fight. Trust me, he's going to make millions."

"How, exactly? Conor asked curiously. "From the gambling, right?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Alcohol and merchandise sales as well, but you're right, it's mainly the gambling. How it's not been shut down by the gaming authority I have no idea – you should see how much cash goes through the counting room in that place on fight night." That wasn't
exactly
true – I had a very good idea. Dad had paid someone to turn a blind eye, and they were doing their job
very
well.

Conor's eyes glinted. "Can I?"

I glanced nervously at my bodyguards, not liking the sound of where this conversation was going. "Can you what?"

"See it," he said. "You can get me in the arena, right? We can say it's just so I can check the place out before the fight."

"Why?" I asked nervously. "Why do you want to get in there?"

"Why do you think?" He said. "We're going to rob the place."

My stomach did three kinds of somersaults – and not the good ones, either. Everything I'd ever said about my father, about how he had eyes and ears everywhere, and about what he did to people he even suspected of trying to rip him off – Conor hadn't listened to any of it.

And worse, he was actually trying to get on my father's radar. There was only one explanation – he was crazy.

He's going to get himself killed
.

Before I had a second to respond, Conor jumped to his feet as though he'd had a brainwave. "Hey, Boris," he yelled. "Or whatever the fuck your name is. Yeah, you," he said, pointing at the guy on the right.

"What you want?" My bodyguard grunted.

"You're going to get in the ring with me," Conor grinned, as though it was the best idea he'd ever had. "We're going to have some fun, you and me."

The bodyguard turned and stared at me pleadingly. I could tell the last thing he wanted to do was fight a guy the size of Conor. "I'm not sure this is a good idea," I said doubtfully.

"What are you talking about?" Conor laughed. "I think it's a great idea – and besides, you owe me."

"What are
you
talking about?" I shot back quickly. "How'd you figure that one?"

Conor dropped his hands to his sides theatrically and looked around the room. "Oh," he spluttered with laughter, "I don't know. Maybe because you scared everyone else off?"

"Is not good idea." My bodyguard said, backing away nervously. "Nobody said I had to fight." He looked at me, as though desperately hoping I would step in Conor's way – but I said nothing. It might not have been fair to the guy, who as far as I knew wasn't exactly a dyed in the wool gangster, but I couldn't have cared less.

I was fed up of my two guardians following me around everywhere I went, and besides, I thought,
maybe it'll make him think twice about exactly what kind of business he’s getting into by working for my father
.

Conor clapped the man on the shoulder. "Ah, don't be a girl, now. Don't worry, I won’t rough you up." He turned to face me. "Hey, Miss Antonov – you mind holding onto this?"

My mind was still trying to process why exactly he was addressing me so formally when he tossed his Walkman at me. My hands flailed wildly in the air, and luckily the cord tangled around my left arm as I brought it haphazardly into my chest.

"Thanks," he smirked. "I'm glad you didn't break it, it's an antique."