On The Ropes (20 page)

Guess tears denied only multiplied.

“Hey, hey,” Fox said, coming up behind me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning into his embrace. If I’d ever needed to be held more than this, I didn’t remember it. “I’m sorry I’m crying…and I’m sorry I’m here, and I’m sorry…I have to…tell you.”

“Tell me what?” His tender strokes on my back slowed. “Is this about your sister? Is she upset? Oh God. She’s miserable. She doesn’t want it—”

“I don’t know if she’ll want it, but it’s not her choice, it’s mine. I have to make it.” I blubbered into his shirt, dampening it thoroughly. “And God, I’m not ready.”

“Why would you have to…” He trailed off and tipped up my chin. “I think you better start from the beginning, because I’m pretty sure something got lost in the translation.”

I didn’t want to say the words. I couldn’t. If I said them, they’d become true, and I’d have to stop swimming up the denial river and face the reality of my choices.

“Carly?”

I scrubbed my cheeks with the heels of my hands and cast a fearful glance at the door. I had more than the usual reasons to be concerned if word got out that I might be knocked up.

Emilia had been gunned down while pregnant. Whether her pregnancy had nothing to do with that unfortunate fact or not, I wasn’t looking to repeat history any more than it already had.

Jesus, I was a statistic. Or I might end up one, if I didn’t make sure the number of people who found out about this possible baby numbered exactly two.

The only two I would trust with my life—my sister, and Fox.

“Can you lock that door?” I asked, moving to the desk to flip on the old school radio Fox kept there. I would’ve preferred soundproofed walls and earplugs for everyone who passed by the office, but it would do.

Though Fox shot me a puzzled look, he did as I asked and flipped the lock in the doorknob.

He returned and eased a hip on the edge of the desk, staring down at me with a mixture of confusion and, somehow, fatherly concern. It made me smile in the midst of everything. “You’re going to be a great dad someday,” I said, and watched his brows snap down. “Oh crap,” I said, hitting the heel of my hand against the side of my head. “You thought I meant Mia was…Christ, I’m a moron. I’m sorry. She’s not pregnant. Or if she is, I don’t know about it.”

One unplanned Anderson baby per year, please.

“Yeah, I sort of came around to that recently. As in the last two minutes or so. Before that…” He rubbed his hand over his heart. “You gave me a scare, kiddo.”

“Sorry.” I cocked my head. “A good scare or a bad one?”

He didn’t answer right away, instead staring out into the murky haze behind the window. November in New York was a crapshoot on the best of days, and today hadn’t come up crazy eights. “For me, it’d be good. That’s the path I’d like someday. For your sister, eh, it’s hard to say if her path quite lines up with mine.”

“It does,” I said quickly. “She’s the best mother I’ve ever known. Who do you think kept me on the straight and narrow all these years?” I frowned. “Well, until I fell off it, but that wasn’t her fault. She did a damn good job with me, when she was no more than a baby herself.”

“Mia and I are fine. Our timeline is progressing just like it should.” He tucked my hair behind my ears and nearly made me bawl again. “Let’s talk about you, huh?”

“You can’t tell anyone. You have to promise me. It’s really important.”

Possibly life or death.
And that was no exaggeration.

“Clarify
anyone
. Because if this involves secret-keeping from my better half, I may have to step off the bus here.”

“Your better half scares me shitless, but yeah, I’ll tell her too.” I sucked in a breath and huffed it out. “So, ah, I may be just a little bit…um, knocked up. Possibly.”

He sat back and linked his hands in his lap.

“Well?” I demanded, scanning his expressionless face. “Say something.”

He opened his mouth, started to speak, then fell silent and shook his head.

“Really, don’t babble on so. It’s so tiring.” I shoved my hands through my hair and moved back to the window. I pressed my hand to the glass, just to feel the cool against my burning skin. “I’m so scared, Fox,” I whispered.

He came up behind me and took my shoulders in his hands, holding me that way until I could drag in enough air to say the rest. “I’m not sure yet. I haven’t taken a test.”

“Then that’s the first thing we need to do.”

The way he made it
we
when it was truly just me made me shut my eyes in gratitude. The world was shitty in so many ways, but there were still good people in it. Still good men, and my sister had found one of the best.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Sure you can.” He swiveled me to face me. “You buy one of those box deals, pee on it and you’re done. Even I know that much.”

It felt good, normal, to roll my eyes at him. “Don’t mean the actual process, Foxy, I mean I’m not ready to know.”

“So you’d rather worry needlessly without finding out for sure?”

I frowned. “Stop being so logical. You’re giving me a headache.”

He smiled and looped his arm around me, guiding me to the door. “We’ll just go to the drugstore and then go back to the apartment where you can do your business.”

“And? If it says I am, then what?”

“Then we’ll wait for your sister to get out of work, and the three of us will sit down and figure things out. Like a family.”

The tears were back, even worse than before. “God, if I’m not knocked up, I think my tear ducts are broken.”

“No shame in crying. That’s how you know it really matters.”

All the way to the drugstore and back home to take the test, I thought about what he’d said. Could I feel something for a child I hadn’t planned, and hadn’t even considered being a possibility a few hours ago? Or was I just crying for myself, and the dreams I feared were about to shatter?

More
lost dreams. I was racking them up.

Biting my nails, I studied the test lying innocuously on the sink.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. If you don’t look, you won’t know.

I could just toss it out and go out to watch TV like it was any other night. Nothing had to change. I could keep sleeping on the floor in the bedroom while Mrs. Knox looked for a new apartment, and I could still keep up my two jobs until the one at the club ended in a little over a week and a half. I could keep fighting with my sister about drinking all the milk, and using her hair ties and not putting them back.

Oh God, I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I wasn’t even ready to be an adult myself. Obviously, judging from the clusterfuck of bad choices I’d made over the last six months.

“Carly Ann, if you don’t look at that test, I’m coming in there myself,” Fox called through the door, surprising a laugh out of me.

And somehow I was able to reach for the stick with a steady hand. To read the results, and then calmly wrap up the test in about six plastic bags, so it could be buried in the trash and never unearthed again.

Calmly, I washed my hands and my face, and went out to face the music. Except there wasn’t any. The hallway was silent, and as soon as my gaze connected with Fox’s, he knew.

He moved forward and wrapped me in a hug, and I held on because it felt like the earth was tilting under my feet. I still looked the same on the outside, but I wasn’t.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

I
met
with Marco and Lorenzo and a few other lesser associates in one of the VIP rooms of the club on Wednesday, as scheduled. It wasn’t the same room that they’d brought me and Carly to, but a bigger one, more glitzed out. Today’s drink of choice was whiskey, and our lunch was catered by the usual assortment of waitresses.

But this meal was different from all the others. I could feel the subtle charge in the air, and the smiles the men flashed each other seemed particularly sly.

Today the plan was moving forward, and I was ready. Whatever they brought to me, I’d turn back around on them. The fight was nine days away, and I needed to make my move soon.

Now that I had even less to lose.

Lorenzo leaned back in his chair and smoothed his tie. “Giovanni, how is training coming?”

It was getting harder and harder to sit there and smile, to pretend as if I actually liked these people. If I didn’t resent them for ruining everything good in my life, not once but twice.

Fucking twice.

“Good. I’m putting in long hours at the gym, which is why I was surprised to get the word about a midday meeting.” I wiped my mouth with my napkin and set it aside. I didn’t have much appetite today anyway. “But Marco said it was important, and I knew it must be if you were taking time from your busy schedule.”

“Indeed.” Lorenzo leaned forward and motioned to one of the servers waiting at the ready. She hustled over to pour him a fresh whiskey, and obligingly allowed him to feel up her ass as she turned away from the table. “And winning, it is assured?”

“Of course.” That was the one thing I didn’t have to think about. I was no better than a robot, created to fight. I did it well, because I had no other purpose.

“
Buono
,
buono
. That’s what I hoped to hear.” He glanced at Marco, and a silent signal passed between them. Marco snapped his fingers, and the servers in the room scattered like cockroaches under the glare of an overhead light. The door closed behind them.

Under the table, the fingers I’d been tapping against my thigh stilled.

“Giovanni, what we’d like to discuss with you is extremely privileged information. We are entrusting you with this mission because we feel you’re capable of more. A low level man of honor position doesn’t befit you, son.” Lorenzo’s smile was kindly, but his eyes were like coal black daggers. The one that rested against my heart had a duller blade. “We’d like to see you advance, and faster than some might consider average. But then a world class fighter should be accorded certain benefits, should he not?”

Marco set his bulky forearms on the table and shifted forward, taking up the spiel. “You are full-blooded Italian, and an asset to our organization. If you are willing to show one last proof of your loyalty, and assuming you pull it off successfully, we’d like you to step up.”

I’d been waiting for this. I knew either they’d proffer some speech about how quickly I could ascend the ranks, or they’d insist I demonstrate my loyalty on a grander scale than what had happened with Carly. Either way, they’d ask me to do something that would dirty my hands to the point that there wouldn’t be a way to walk away clean.

Thus far, I’d stayed firmly in the gray zone. I’d roughed up some guys on their command, ones that had skipped out on debts or pinched more product than they were allotted. I’d shaken down another couple guys, taking their cash and turning it over to Marco, the caporegime. Enough to send me up if I got nabbed, but not enough that I’d do more than three to five. That was about to change, if they got their way.

I was going to make sure they didn’t.

“You know I’d do whatever is asked of me. Haven’t I so far?”

“You have, but some of your tasks have been less…arduous than others.” He exchanged a smile with Lorenzo that let me know they were thinking about Carly. The other two associates at the table tittered, proving our night in the back room had been well discussed. For all I knew, the bastards had even taped it for their further amusement.

Under the table, my hands fisted.

“Whatever the task, I’ve completed it as requested,” I said tightly, fighting to calm the muscle in my jaw that always ticked when I was pissed. My emotions were one of the few things I could control.

Rash emotions led to sloppy thoughts, and sloppy thoughts led to getting blown out behind the wheel of your truck. I’d seen that happen to enough of the guys around the old neighborhood.

Not that Emilia had even been given that courtesy. Her death hadn’t been so quick.

I’d give Roberto one more bullet to the brain for that alone.

“That you have. You will make a formidable soldier for the Andrettis, and we are eager to bring you aboard in a larger capacity than you’re in now. You will be accorded everything you deserve. All of the money and women you can ever imagine. And if you choose to partake…” Marco mimed doing a line, and the other two associates chuckled and kicked back with cigars.

“Ah, but I’m not so sure the women part interests him. It seems as if he has one already. A
special
lady,” Lorenzo said with a twinkle in those dead eyes.

But it was fake, as everything else about this meeting was fake.

“Me?” I laughed and hooked an arm around the back of the circular booth. “You know I never dip into the same pool more than a few times. I like to sample the water at all the different beaches way too much.”

“You know, we had thought that, because you certainly seemed to enjoy the, shall we say, perks of your position. But that was before recently, wasn’t it? And I have to say, we’re pleased to have been matchmakers of a sort.” Marco gestured to one of the associates, who lifted an attaché case and removed a folder. Even before he opened it, I knew what it would contain.

Yet I still wasn’t prepared to see Carly’s face upturned to mine, with that stupid stuffed dog in her arms. The dog still in my living room because she’d forgotten to take it and I wouldn’t throw it out.

Stupid all the way around that I’d even taken her to that carnival. I’d known we could be followed at any time, for exactly this reason. Everything was leverage, and she was mine. I would do anything for her, still, and somehow they knew it.

She was the weakness that would bring me down.

“So?” I shrugged. “She’s a hot little piece. You saw that yourself, did you not?” The smirk I flashed made my chest hurt. I hated them with every breath, but even more because they gave me no choice but to denigrate Carly. “Pretty sure you were watching.”

Everyone laughed, as expected. Because it was all a big fucking joke to take advantage of a young, beautiful girl whose biggest crime was naively stepping into the lion’s den.

“That we were,
amico mio
. I saw how much you liked her. We all did.” Marco’s lascivious grin set my teeth on edge. “We’ve also seen you parading her through the club, guarding her like a steak from a pack of drooling dogs. And I don’t blame you. That
gattina
, she is sweet. I would love a taste myself.”

I didn’t blink, didn’t so much as take a breath. But inside, I seethed.

“You see, our women become like family. We all share in their care. But there is a problem with this one, as lovely as she is.” Marco pressed the blunt tip of his thumb over Carly’s face, captured in black and white. The photos were always black and white for some reason. “Her sister is a problem. So she is a problem.” He lifted his gaze to mine. “If she’s yours, she becomes our problem.”

Tumblers clicked like locks sliding into place in my mind. The conclusions I’d drawn that day in Mia and Fox’s office were obviously right. Carly hadn’t been idly selected that night. They were still angling to pay back Mia for her disrespect, and they would use Carly in a heartbeat.

“She’s not mine.” Saying it was like dragging razor blades over my throat. I could feel myself bleeding internally, the thick liquid clogging my airway. “She’s never been mine. She’s a piece of pussy. That’s all.”

“Good. We’re happy to hear you say that. Because women,
gumba
, they can be a distraction. Especially troublesome ones like this, who are so eager to spread their legs.” Marco nodded to the associate again, and out came another photo.

This one was of Carly with a guy in a sandwich shop that I happened to know had just opened last week. They were leaning toward each other across the booth, their heads tipped close. His hand was on her arm, his fingers curled around her wrist. She was smiling at him the way she’d smiled at me.

He certainly qualified as clean-cut. I couldn’t see a tattoo on him, and he could’ve appeared on a poster advertising the merits of the Boy Scouts. If I’d had any question that he was the guy she’d dated before, the socially acceptable one, the bright green Salad Hut shirt he wore proved it.

Didn’t take you long to move on, now did it? Or go back to where you started.

I shrugged again. The pain inside me didn’t have borders, and couldn’t be defined. It filled me so entirely that it was a miracle I could still speak. “She’s free to do as she wishes.”

“As are you. We will make sure you’re not alone for long.” Marco leaned forward and smiled, friend to friend. Or that was the image he wanted to portray. “You do this for us, and you’re in. No more loyalty tests. No more questions.” He exchanged a look with Lorenzo and chuckled. “Not for a good long while.”

“Tell me what you want me to do,” I said woodenly, and for once, I wasn’t thinking of Emilia or revenge.

I was thinking of red-gold curls, and guileless eyes that had torn me apart.

“Well, now, this is a hard subject. It’s always difficult when a friend harms us. We treasure loyalty. Value it above all else. Which is what makes it so upsetting when one of our own takes advantage of our loyalty, and twists it. Don’t you agree, Giovanni?”

Some part of me understood the conversation had ventured into a dangerous, boggy place. The rest of me was envisioning that sandwich shop.

Had she let him touch her, only hours after I had? Had she called out his name like she’d called mine? Ripped welts in his skin, like the ones I still had on my arms and back?

I couldn’t blame her. I’d driven the knife into what we had when she’d asked me those questions, and the guilt behind the answer I’d given her didn’t matter. We were finished. But between dealing with Marco and Lorenzo and those photos, I was on the verge of upending the motherfucking table and saying to hell with all of it.

Emilia was dead. Our child was dead.

Your turn
.

“Yes,” I replied. “Loyalty is all that matters.” My response was by rote.

Though right now, it sure as hell sounded like truth. Carly’s loyalty to me hadn’t lasted long. If it had lasted at all. For all I knew, she’d still been sleeping with that guy while she was with me. I hadn’t demanded her to be faithful. But such a demand was worth less than the breath it required.

What did you expect? You lied to her from day one. Yet she was supposed to pledge undying commitment to you?

No
. She just wasn’t supposed to divert my focus, fracture my concentration when my very life depended on it. She wasn’t supposed to matter as much as the need for revenge that had ruled me for over two years.

More. Fucking
more
.

“Z took advantage of our trust, and siphoned resources that were not his. He’s taken money, and now, just last week, we heard that he’s trying to cultivate his own organization, using some of our people. You can imagine how painful it is when your belief in someone has been slaughtered.”

I said nothing. My beliefs hadn’t been slaughtered, mainly because I hadn’t had any for years. I’d been living on borrowed time. Merely existing. Just waiting for the day that was almost here.

The closer I got, the more hollow that goal became. Emilia was dead. Nothing I did could bring her or our child back. But I still pursued that end game, because there was nothing else.

“It’s unfortunate we need to take this step, but we feel you’re the right man to accomplish this for us. You can do this for us, Giovanni.” The smile Lorenzo flashed bordered on genuine, but never quite made the circuit.

I waited.

“Next Friday night, Z will be at your fight.”

Only then did the name Z sink in. Holy fuck, they were talking about snuffing out Z? Because that had to be where this was leading. There was no displeasure followed by a rap on the knuckles with these people. When they became displeased, people died.

“After it, once you’ve won, we want you to take advantage of the crowd and the distraction to take care of the problem. We don’t care how you do it, only that it isn’t traced back to us. If you have fighter friends who’d like a handy target for their frustrations, that would work as well.” Marco glanced at his watch. Clearly he wanted to move this along. “The messier the better. We don’t want this to look like a hit. He’s been involved in enough unsavory activities that it’s entirely plausible he’d get his face smashed in.” Marco smiled. “I trust that’s up your alley?”

I nodded. Sure, why not? Might as well take the trip to complete thug without any redeemable qualities whatsoever. And if Roberto came to the fight as had been rumored, then it would all be worth it.

That’s what I’d been telling myself all this time. No matter what I went though, it would all be worth it.

“
Buono
.” Marco rose and held out a hand. “Always a pleasure, Giovanni.”

Rising, I shook with Marco, and tipped my head at Lorenzo. I didn’t spare a glance at the other two assfucks who’d delighted in doing recon.

I didn’t speak to anyone on my way out. I drove straight to The Cage, and headed right for the treadmill. I’d warm up with a several mile run, then I’d hit the machines. Hard. I wouldn’t stop until my muscles burned and my mind was empty.

If it took all night, so be it. Not like I had any other plans.

During mile three, someone hopped on the machine beside me. With my headphones blasting Jay-Z, I was barely aware of them.

Until Fox got off his machine, slapped a hand on my controls, and brought my treadmill to a standstill.