Hard
By Eve Jagger
Hard
Copyright © 2015 Eve Jagger
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
To my wonderful husband....you really are the Sexiest Bastard I know. xoxo, e
RYDER
There are two smells in the world I love more than any others: a
woman right before sex and this warehouse right before a fight.
They’re different, of course. There’s nothing like a
naked, wet, waiting woman, the scent of her skin salty with sweat but
sweet at the same time, like swimming through an ocean of roses. The
warehouse’s odor is far less pleasurable, phantoms of last
round’s knocked-out teeth, bruised faces, and aching bones
making the air heavy, grimy, stifling, like the smell of fresh dirt.
But both are thrilling and unpredictable and make me want to explode.
Even
when it was me in the ring a few years ago, my ribs about to get
punched, my knuckles about to crash into someone’s cheekbone,
the smell of this place would intoxicate me. Facing off with a guy
whose sole intention for the next several minutes is to pummel you
into submission is as terrifying as it sounds. And as exhilarating.
The policy of bare-knuckles brawls is no shirt, no shoes, big problem
standing right across from you. But all I had to do to calm myself
was take a big inhale of this warehouse air, let the molecules seep
into my lungs, into my bloodstream, and I won every match.
I
always win.
So
tonight, after Crutcher beats Miller in an upset, a big win for me
for sure, when Tyler tells me that some kid is in for $10,000 and has
disappeared, I tell him he’s got to have it wrong. “I
would never have let Jamie McEntire run up that kind of tab,” I
say. “I’ve seen him around. I wouldn’t give him ten
dollars, let alone ten thousand.” When I took over running
fight night two years ago, I did a little cleanup from the mess my
predecessor left. No five- or six- figure debts to people we don’t
know, no credit to anyone who’s welched more than once. We may
be an underground operation, but there are standards. There’s
also a dress code: women in heels, men in collared shirts, and our
crowd is the type who likes to drop a lot of money on both. We have
security guards. The bartender will call you a cab if you get too
drunk. I run a tight ship. Even the police think so. That’s why
they don’t hassle me. Sometimes they even take a try in the
ring.
Tyler shrugs. “It’s been gradual. Losses on a couple
fights, loans to cover him,” he says. “I hate to be the
bearer of bad news. But I double checked the ledger, and it adds up.”
“Fuck me,” I say, and a blond woman in high heels and a
dress so tight she must not have exhaled all night turns toward us.
She raises an eyebrow at me, smiles like she might take me up on the
offer.
And with the way she wraps her mouth around the neck of that beer
bottle, keeping her eyes locked on mine as she takes a drink, I might
just let her.
Tyler’s voice yanks me back to the problem at hand. “So
what do you want to do?” he says. “He’s offered his
house as collateral.”
I
shake my head. “This isn’t a swap meet.” Sometimes
people think that just because I run an illegal fighting circuit and
betting ring, I must be dishonest or inattentive to keeping the
books, or maybe just dumb. So they try to take advantage of me
occasionally. They think I won’t notice or care if they siphon
a little cash or don’t pay in full or don’t pay at all,
that I’m just a guy who made his money beating the shit out of
strangers while debutantes and their dates made their bets. All brawn
and no brains. But they’re wrong.
In
the ring, I didn’t mind being underestimated. It helped me win.
Some spectators think when you look like me, tall, muscular,
broad-shouldered, you won’t be agile enough to dodge a right
hook. So they bet against you. They don’t realize those muscles
aren’t just for showing off to the female members of the
crowd—not that I minded when they noticed. Those hard biceps
mean you’re strong, and those washboard abs make you quick, and
it all adds up to making my bank account big.
But as the boss outside the ring, I can’t have people not take
me seriously. The Armani suits I wear on fight nights look damn good
on me but they don’t come cheap, so when I loan money I expect
to get it back when the handshake said I would. It’s only fair.
I’ve got a reputation to protect, not to mention a legitimate
business career to support, owning two of Atlanta’s most
popular nightclubs, a cocktail lounge, and Altitude, a bar some
buddies and I run together. I got to the top flying like a butterfly
in the ring, but I stay there because I sting like a bee outside it.
And Jamie McEntire’s about to feel what I mean.
“You know where this kid’s house is?” I say,
clapping Tyler on the shoulder. He nods. “Good,” I say.
“You’re driving then. Grab Valero and let him know that
as soon as this crowd clears, we’re making a visit.”
Tyler leaves, and the woman in the tight dress with the lucky beer
bottle approaches. The dip of her neckline is as low as her skirt is
short. “Someone should wash your mouth out,” she says.
“Sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities,” I say,
smiling. We’re at an underground bare-knuckles fight.
Fuck
is hardly the most offensive thing she’s been exposed to
tonight.
“Not at all,” she says. “I like a man who talks
dirty.” She takes a sip from the bottle, tipping it toward me.
“Want some?”
I don’t think she just means the beer.
Over her shoulder, behind her in the crowd, I see a guy in a
decent-looking grey suit. He’s standing with a few other
people but his attention is clearly fixed on her, watching. I tilt
the bottle back toward her with my index finger. “Who are you
here with?”
“No one special,” she says, taking a step toward me.
“Unless you want some company.”
Women. They smell good, they look good, they taste good, but they can
be so bad for you.
I’ve been Grey Suit back there. Even in the shadows of the
warehouse I can read the look on his face, the narrowed eyes,
slightly turned down mouth. He’s a guy who knows that just
because he’s the one who’s taking this girl out tonight
it doesn’t mean he’s going home with her. Back when I was
fighting, my girlfriend at the time used the hours I was knocking
guys’ blocks off to get her rocks off. She even slept with some
of my opponents, who I beat anyway, but still—I don’t
know if she was just bored or mean, didn’t love me or herself
or both, but when we broke up two years ago, I swore off
relationships. My motto is get in and get out, in all ways possible.
So Tight Dress standing in front of me, just the right size to
straddle my lap in the front seat of my Audi, would usually be the
perfect ending to a night.
But I can’t abide dishonesty, not even from a one-night stand.
Like I said: there are standards.
“Your date’s not doing it for you?” I say, nodding
at Grey Suit who’s now standing by the door where people are
starting to exit. It must be after two a.m. by now and a weeknight,
which means most of these people are six hours away from clocking in
at the office tomorrow. Thrill seekers by night, executive decision
makers by day, that’s a lot of our audience, and even though
I’ve never been able to tolerate living that kind of rigid,
conventional lifestyle for myself, their money’s just as good
as anyone else’s. They may even have a greater appreciation for
the brawls, since bare-knuckles fighting is a far cry from whatever
uptight Fortune 500 company or corporate law firm they work at.
She glances at Grey Suit, then turns back to me. “He’s
okay,” she says. That pretty mouth of hers widens. Despite the
darkness of the warehouse, her teeth gleam like white stones. “But
you’re Ryder Cole.” She runs her hand lightly over my
arm. “And I’m willing.”
My bicep belies my intention to be behave, contracting instinctively
as her fingers linger on my suit sleeve. “To do what?”
“Anything you want.”
I lean close to her. “I want you to go home with the guy that
brought you and fuck his brains out like a good girl,” I say.
“But you can think about me while you’re doing it.”
I cross to where Tyler waits by the door. Security will close up.
We’ve got business to attend to.
RYDER
“You sure this is the place?” I say as Tyler parks his
Honda Civic in the driveway of a two-story brick house. There’s
a swing on the front porch. Shaped hedges. Trimmed grass. It looks
like a house where your parents live, not some twenty-something kid
who’s too dumb to keep his word and too poor to pay his debts.
No lights on inside or outside. Maybe Jamie’s not paying the
electric company either.
“This is it,” Tyler says, zipping up his leather jacket.
“Valero confirmed it.” He thumbs behind him to Valero,
one of my all-purpose guys—security, enforcement, recon. A
Renaissance man of sorts. Valero is squeezed into the backseat, his
head brushing the car’s ceiling—Honda Civics are not
ideal cars for former Falcons linebackers—but he manages to
nod.
“Well, what are we waiting for, then?” I say. “Let’s
go introduce ourselves.”
Save the low chirp of summer crickets, the street is quiet, which
Valero interrupts with a knock at the front door as he tries to turn
the knob, just in case Jamie’s as lazy about locking up as he
is about paying what he owes. But there’s no response and the
knob doesn’t turn. Tyler walks to the side of the house,
disappearing around the corner of the wrap-around porch while Valero
pushes the front doorbell. We don’t hear a chime from inside.
Tyler reappears. “Over here,” he says. We follow him to
the side of the house, where he’s found a door. “Front
one’s probably too heavy, don’t you think?” he
says. “And there’s no dead bolt on this one.” He
cocks his head and raises his eyebrows at me. I know the follow-up
question he’s implying.
Here’s the thing: I’m a generally nice guy in a
not-so-nice business. But something you learn as a fighter is that if
someone throws one punch, there’s always more where that came
from. You have to be willing to punch back. Do what’s necessary
to defend yourself.
And as they say: the best defense is a good offense.
“The sooner we’re in, the sooner we’re out,”
I say, standing back to give Valero some room as he raises his foot.
With the grace and precision of the Falcons player he was, he kicks
the door in and it swings back into the house, the whole thing
quieter than you’d expect, like when glass bounces but doesn’t
break on a hardwood floor. The door droops to one side, two of the
three hinges busted, and we enter what appears to be the kitchen.
Our eyes adjust to the darkness. I’m hoping the kid’ll
help us do this the easy way and just come downstairs to see what all
the racket’s about, that he’s not going to make us pull
him out of his bed or throw open a shower curtain to find him trying
to hide like a character in a movie or chase him down the street in
his boxers. I don’t know exactly where the hell we are, but it
seems like a decent neighborhood, and I’m sure the families
next door would appreciate Jamie’s compliance with our
requests. I’d hate for them to wake up because he’s
escaping out a second-story window. Or being thrown out of it by
Valero.
We wait a beat in the kitchen, but no one appears. Hard way it is,
then. And it’s not a lie to say I’m unhappy it’s
come to this—breaking down doors and roughing people up reminds
me too much of my old life, the life I’ve worked so hard to put
behind me. But I can’t afford to forgive and forget. Not in
this business.
“Let’s go,” I say, heading to the foyer. I point
Valero to the living room to do ground floor recon as Tyler follows
me up the staircase, the sound of our footsteps dampened by the
carpeting that covers them.