Brawler's Baby: An MMA Mob Romance (Mob City Book 1) (8 page)

I nodded.

"Good. Sergei?"

"Yes boss?" The henchmen grunted.

"Two hits. Make them hard."

"Yes boss."

Sergei was a big motherfucker, but I'd taken hits from harder men than him, and had done so for years. In his mid-forties, he might have that old man strength that makes moving a heavy old wooden cabinet across a run look no harder than tossing a pillow – but I knew I could take it. My stomach was iron, muscles molded over the course of years to resist exactly this kind of punishment.

I steeled myself for the punches, waiting for him to set down the vicious looking gun cradled between his meaty hands.

He didn't.

I gulped.

Sergei reversed the weapon, holding it like a battering ram – butt first. I forced my mind to run through scenarios, just like I did in the ring – more to take my mind off the impending pain than anything else. It only landed on one option:

I could twist, try and land a spinning kick on one of my captor's knees
.
It might knock him off-balance and buy me the time I needed to grab a weapon
.

But I knew it wouldn't work.

Sergei grinned, and I thanked my lucky stars that he, at least, had the good grace to stand far enough away from me that I couldn't smell his breath. Judging by the state of his gnarled and ragged teeth, nicotine stained and yellow with filth, his mouth was every bit as polluted a cesspit as his boss' was.

"Now, Sergei." Mikhail ordered.

The mob enforcer didn't hesitate for a second, raising the sub-machine-gun high above his shoulder; and he brought it down swinging in the same motion one might use to rock a baby to sleep. Except this baby was ten pounds of solid black steel, and moving toward my gut faster than I could see.

Even clenching my stomach as hard as I could, I couldn't resist
that
impact. No man alive could. The air burst out of my lungs and flecks of spittle flew out of my mouth. My body rocked backward with the impact, but held fast to either side, it could only go so far, and my shoulders took much of the impact, almost popping out of their sockets as the momentum of the hit carried my torso backward.

My knees went slack as my body attempted to fold me over, to get me into the fetal position – to protect me from my assailant, but the men holding me to either side prevented that from happening, and I simply hung between them, feebly gasping for air.

"Hold it there, Sergei," Mikhail grinned malevolently. "Let him suffer."

Suffer I did. I tried to avoid showing how much it really hurt, but it was pointless – the pain I was in was clear as day. I panted, my chest rising and falling at three times its normal pace to feed my lungs with air and supply my protesting body with oxygen, but it was hopeless.

When the hell did someone put pants on me
, I suddenly thought, silently thanking whoever it was. I didn’t like the idea of being butt naked in a room like this. Too many…delicate parts on show for my liking.

I was on the verge of passing out when I heard the malevolent mob boss give the order.

"Again, Sergei," Mikhail ordered.

"Dad!" Maya exclaimed, sounding distraught. "What's he done, the poor man? He's had enough!"

Dammit, Maya. You should have stayed quiet
.

I struggled to raise my head, to look at her, and to communicate that this would be alright – I'd handled worse before. I struggled against the crushing pain reverberating from my gut and the impulse to simply curl up in a ball and forget all this had ever happened. I struggled against it because I knew that if I didn't do something, Mikhail would figure out that Maya and I shared a history. He was too smart not to.

"You stay out of this, girl," Mikhail growled at his daughter. "I'll deal with you later." It wasn't a statement, it was a threat, and my blood suddenly ran cold.

I took a deep breath, exerting every ounce of control that I could manage over a body that was racked with pain and a mind that was beginning to flirt with the tender embrace of unconsciousness, and spat the contents of my mouth onto the floor. The thick globule of spittle stood out against the gray concrete. It was red.

"Is that," I choked, steadying myself. "Is that all you've got?" Mikhail's head snapped back round and he fixed me with a malicious, evil glare.

"Sergei!" He shouted, startling the man, who'd turned his head to gawp at Maya's ill-fated attempt to restrain her father's petty desire for vengeance. "I said again!"

"Yes, boss," the man grunted. "Hold him," he said to the men either side of me. "Hold his head up."

One of the men grabbed my chin, yanking it upwards, and held it tight. I knew what Sergei wanted. Just like his boss, I'd met men like him before. Sergei was a truly twisted individual. He was the kind of man who'd killed his pets as a child, and who'd stumbled into a natural career path for a man with his violent urges. But unlike Mikhail, who used violence as a means to maintain control, and expand his power, Sergei inflicted pain because he liked it. And, in my book at least, that made him far more dangerous.

Oh yes, I knew men like him. And now, he wanted me to watch him. He wanted me to see him limber up, and he wanted me to watch as he drove the weapon into my gut. And I let him. I could have closed my eyes, forced one of his men to pry them open, but I didn't want to give him the pleasure.

"Go ahead," I smiled, inviting Sergei to do his worst. God knows what I must have looked like, hanging by my arms between two gangsters, with blood dripping from my teeth and pooling beneath me on the ground. Judging by the expression of utter devastation on Maya's face, the scene was nightmarish.

He snarled with disgust, his little victory taken from him, and drove the weapon once more into my stomach as hard as he could manage. You could have heard a pin drop in that basement – the only sounds disturbing the room's quiet were the sound of my boots scrabbling for purchase against the concrete floor, and the faint noise of breath being driven out of my lungs.

My guards held onto me for a couple of seconds to let their boss revel in my discomfort, puffing out his chest and preening like a silverback gorilla that had just fought off a challenge for leadership of his pack, then unceremoniously dropped me to the ground. My body began to shake uncontrollably, almost like I was suffering a seizure.

I half expected Mikhail to beat his chest and roar to the heavens with pride. His reaction had told me a lot about him, even if I was hardly in a fit state to think it through. He was a psychopath, sure, but tellingly he was a narcissist too. He wanted the world to revolve around him – and in his city, Alexandria, it probably did.

But it would be his undoing, I was sure of it.

I couldn't speak. In fact I could barely think at all, other than to fight the crippling pain in my stomach and the driving imperative of somehow getting oxygen into my protesting lungs. The world was beginning to go black around the corners of my vision when Mikhail knelt down next to me. The sudden reappearance of a smile on the mob boss's face was almost more disconcerting than its absence had been.

"Do you know why you're here?" He asked softly, as though our conversation was private, even familial.

I could barely breathe, let alone speak, so I did the only thing I could – I blinked, twice.

"I'll take that as a no." He said. "I've brought you here today because I've got a proposition that'll make us both very rich. Well, more accurately, it'll make you rich, and me very,
very
rich. You can either work with me." He said, with a fake smile on his face. "Or you will die. The choice is yours, Mr. Regan."

Well, when you put it like that…

My eyes flickered across the room, landing on Maya's terrified face, and I thanked whoever was up in the heavens that her father and his men were too busily occupied with me to turn and see the expression on her face, because even they could have read it like a book. She was terrified – and I was finally prepared to believe that not only was the emotion genuine, but that her fear wasn't for herself – it was for
me
…

When someone puts a choice to you like that, well, then it's not really a choice at all. Saliva pooled on the floor where my cheek lay flush against the cold concrete. "What," I gasped. "What do you want from me?"

"I'm glad that you're willing to be so reasonable," Mikhail chuckled to himself, apparently pleased by his own joke. I could only close my eyes, my body still recovering from the trauma it had suffered.

"Mr. Regan, you're going to throw a fight."

M
aya

I had less than half a second to pull myself together after I heard the door crash open.

I hated it, this constant feeling of being uneasy in my own home. Home was the wrong word, anyway, because this wasn’t a
home
, not in the traditional sense of the word. This was just a house, a house where horrible things happened, and a place I wanted to escape with every fiber of my being.

My father stormed through, his bull face thunderous with anger. "What the fuck was that?" He screamed, as he strode up to me and gripped me by the shoulders.

A maid scurried past in the brief half-second before my father's raging, imposing face blotted out my view of the hallway. She shot me an apologetic, pitying look, but did nothing to intervene.

I didn't blame her. Nobody crossed my father and lived to regret it. Certainly not a cleaning lady on minimum wage. He’d order her killed as easily as other men ordered a coffee.

I winced with pain, but I knew better than to complain. My father abhorred weakness in anyone, especially family, and I was always family when he had cause to punish me. Showing weakness would just make things worse for me.

"I'm sorry, father, I didn't mean –."

He pushed me against the wall, cutting me off, and I fell silent. I knew there was no point in speaking, no point at all. Anything I said would only inflame his temper, and I knew the consequences. When my father fell into one of his black rages, nobody was safe. Not me, not his men, not even my late mother.

And not my son
.

That was the crux of it. It wasn't just me I had to look out for, there was something far more important – someone that mattered much more to me than just my own desperate little life.

My son.

Conor's son.

Eamon.

"I don't fucking care what you meant." He screamed, his spit soaking my face. I didn't dare reach up and dry it. I didn't even move, because long years of experience had taught me that doing anything other than standing stock still and bearing the brunt of my father's rage just made me a target for further retribution.

I didn't like doing it, hated it in fact. Being forced to stay passive, to pretend to be someone I’m not went against everything I believed in, but I knew that whatever I did, if it came to a battle with my father – I could never win.

And, of course, there was Eamon. He was nearly four years old now, and after more than three years of complete indifference toward him, when he treated my child like nothing more than an embarrassing secret, my father seemed to be waking up to his presence. And that was what terrified me – what kept me up at night.

He wants an heir…

Each time I thought that my father had stooped to a new low, that he couldn't be more inhumane, more cold-hearted, and more deliberately hurtful, he found a way. And this time, he’d surpassed himself. He’d chosen my son.

When I closed my eyes flashbacks from my childhood flickered behind my eyelids. I remembered what happened when I disobeyed him, even if it was over something so trivial as forgetting to put away a toy.

The man was an emotional terrorist – but he rarely directly targeted the subjects of his anger. No, his attacks came in forms too varied and numerous to count, or to prepare yourself for, but one thing was constant – they always came.

My mother stood in front of me in my mind's eye, a long-suffering, fearful look upon her face as she stood between Papa and I
.
Even then, I knew not to cry – I knew what happened to little girls who cried
.

"
Get away from her!" My mother begged.

"You don't tell me what to do, woman." Papa had hissed in response. "I told you, she's too fucking old to carry that teddy bear around."

"Mika," my mother said, using her nickname for him. The nickname reminded me of the happy times. Or maybe I'd simply made them up, because I remember many of them. "Mika, she's seven!"

"Look at me Maya," Papa snarled. I didn't dare look at him. I couldn’t bear to see the rage contained in his black, beady eyes.

I heard a crack. I saw my mother fall backward and cry out, holding her face.

"I told you to look at me," he said, his voice gravelly. I'd clutched the teddy bear even tighter to my chest, but I'd looked up, my lips trembling
.

"
You see what happens to girls who don't obey?" He said. He was holding my mother upright by the fabric of her sweater, and she was clutching her face, doing her best not to cry in front of me. Her face was empty of expression, save that of one of acceptance, of submission. She had a faraway look in her eyes, too – as if she was in a different place, a better place. My mother spent a lot of time there, then.

In fact, this was the first time I could remember seeing her feel anything in months.

"Did you hear me?" He screamed. I nodded, terrified, desperate to save my mother from another beating
.

"
You will put away your toys, and you won't touch them again."

I nodded. He turned back to my mother. "Drop your hands," he said. She did as he asked without a word of complaint. She wasn't there, not really. My father had looked me straight in the eye, and slapped her in the face. Her legs crumpled, but he kept her upright, only to hit her again.

And again.

And again
.

And then he dragged her to the bedroom. And that’s when the noises started.

"Are you listening to me?" My father barked.

I blinked, half-shocked at how deeply I had fallen into the memory, and half by how little things had changed, even a decade and a half later. I knew better than to tempt my father's anger like this – especially when he was in this kind of mood.

"Of course, father."

"Understand," he growled. "That if you interrupt me like that again, ever again, I
will
kill you."

He said it matter-of-factly, as though there could be no more logical response to something so small than murder. And, in my father's twisted mind, there probably wasn't.

I nodded desperately. "Yes, Papa. I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me – you don't normally have me in the room, that's all…"

He released me. "You're weak, Maya," he sighed. "Like your mother."

I bit my lip, hard enough to draw blood, but I don't know why I bothered. If I was going to say anything, I'd have said it years ago. He was right – just not the way he thought he was. I wasn't weak because I couldn't stomach the sight of a man being beaten half to death, and my mother hadn't been weak, either.

But I
was
weak. I was weak because day after day, I failed to stand up for what I knew was right. Weak because I failed to stand in my father's way, to stand up for his victims and--

And most of all, I was weak because I was failing in my sole duty as a mother – I couldn't protect Eamon. My father was aging, and he'd long ago despaired of any prospect of my replacing him as head of the family. He thought I didn't have the stomach for it – and he was right. But now, desperate for an heir, his eye had fallen upon my son.

"But I need to punish you, you understand that – don't you?" He continued. It was a technique, like everything with my father and his constant need to control and shape every aspect of the lives of those around him.

"Yes –," I stumbled as I signed my own warrant. I didn't have another choice. "Yes, father."

He smiled – a thin-lipped, vulpine smirk of victory. He'd won. He always did. "And I need to toughen you up. You know that too, don't you?"

"Do –, do you?" I stumbled.

"I need you to raise me a fighter, a warrior. And if you can't – I'll find someone who will."

"No, father, please! You can't take Eamon away from me. He's all I have."

My father shot me with an affronted glare. "You have the family, Maya."

I knew what he meant. He didn't mean himself – he couldn't have cared less that we were related by blood, other than for the fact that it meant he had a legitimate successor. No, he meant
the family
: his soldiers, and his brothers – the gangsters, all cogs in a criminal empire that spanned the entire city of Alexandria, and had tendrils that extended much further.

I lowered my head, cowed. "Yes, father."

"And besides, it's not your place to tell me what I can and cannot do…" He said, leaving the comment trailing in the air. It hung heavy between us, and I realized that I was walking a very fine line.

I nodded.

"No – he will head the family one day, and I can't have him weak like you. But then," he said, stroking his chin, "if I take you from him, will he resent me?"

I've never seen him like this. He’s letting me see how he controls, how he manipulates. What does that mean?

He doesn’t see me as a threat. I’m nothing to him.

"Dad, he's four! He's not a gangster, he's just a child. He's only just learned to tie his own laces."

My father shot me and irritated glare. "Don't be ridiculous, Maya – I'm not going to put a gun in his hand. Not yet, anyway. You're just like your mother." He said it without feeling – as though he could simply ignore the emotional baggage a comment like that carried with it. I couldn't. Wouldn't even if I could.

"I've had twenty years to mold you into something more than you are – and I failed. Perhaps I need to start earlier with the boy."

"Eamon," I corrected automatically.

"Eamon," he mocked. "What kind of name is that for a man, anyway?"

It's Irish
, I wanted to scream. I knew I never could. I'd said I didn't know who the father was, but that had been a lie. The truth was, I wasn't the slut my father thought I was – I'd only ever given myself to one man. Conor.

"So here's how this is going to go." He continued, without waiting for an answer. "You're going to deal with this Irish fighter. You're going to spend every waking minute with him, if that's what it takes, but you're going to get him into tiptop shape. The next fight's in one month, and I'm going to put him in the octagon with a fighter he could beat in his sleep. And he's going to throw it."

"Why me?" I gasped.

"Because," he grinned. "Once he's made me my money, I'll have Sergei drive him to the outskirts of town and put a bullet in the back of his head. If you'd just kept your mouth shut in that room I'd have let him live. Hell, I'd have thrown him a hundred thousand bucks just to keep his lips sealed. But this works, too."

"I don't get it!" I croaked.

He leaned in so his face was pushed up against mine, the pungent aroma of his breath assaulting me. "I want you to live with your mistake, Maya. I want you to see what it means to have killed someone. I can't have Eamon growing up soft."

"Yes, father."

I turned to leave, my skin already crawling from having to spend so long in my father's presence. I despised him, and everything he stood for. I despised the fact that he corrupted everything he touched, and I despised that he still thought he could corrupt me as well.

"And Maya?"

I looked back to see my father's prideful, smirking face staring back at me.

"If you try to warn him, or if he doesn’t fight – whatever the reason, I'll take your boy."