Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“And ye have no good reason for keeping me out of the ring tonight. I’ve made you a boat load of cash over the last two weeks.”
“Aye,” Crow agrees. “And you’ve also done your shoulder in and your leg is banjaxed as well. Have a look at yourself.”
He gestures to the mirror, but I ignore it.
“Just needs a bit of ice and I’ll be sorted.”
“What ye need is some time off,” he says. “And that’s not a request, but an order.”
I slam my fist into the bag, and Crow walks off.
“Would you like to have a go at me instead?”
I turn around and catch sight of what can only be considered the dumbest prick on the planet.
“Do ye have a death wish?” I ask him. “Coming in here?”
“No,” he answers. “But I do have another request. And it’s been a while since I’ve sparred with anyone.”
“This isn’t an open gym,” I tell him. “Piss off.”
“It’s about Scarlett.”
I ignore him and go about fixing the wraps on my hands, even though all I really want to do is thrash his face until he stops talking altogether.
The bloke takes his shirt off and makes himself at home, stepping up into the ring. My fucking ring in my fucking gym.
“I’m only looking for a fair fight,” he says. “So full disclosure.”
I glance up at him, and he rolls up his pant leg, revealing a prosthetic.
Again, the bloke is obviously short of a few brain cells.
“I know you’re a man of honor,” he tells me. “So how about it?”
“You don’t know jack shit about me.”
I’m in the ring with him now. I have no objections to loafing him in the head a few times before I send him on his way with his tail between his legs. He can run back to Scarlett and show her what a twat he is.
“I’m Booker,” he tells me.
“And I don’t give a fuck.”
I head straight at him, throwing out a lead hook, which I expect to smash his head halfway around his shoulder.
Instead, he dodges it, and socks me with an unexpected punch to the gut.
And well what do ye know. The fucker knows how to fight.
He shrugs, and then we go back to circling each other like sharks.
I am a man of honor, and I don’t need shady tactics to win, so we keep it strictly to punches. After a few minutes, I have it sorted that he’s not so comfortable with the uppercuts.
I smash him with a whole load of them from that point on.
But he gives as good as he gets.
Mostly with hooks, which has never been my weakness, but he’s fast. And well trained. He tells me that he was former military as if it wasn’t obvious already.
Eventually, we call it a draw. And I still don’t like the fucker, but at least I can respect him now.
He takes a seat on one of the benches and drinks the bottle of water I tossed him while I clean up with a towel.
I know what comes next.
He’s got something to say about Scarlett.
But I don’t want to hear it.
“You should go,” I tell him.
He’s quiet for a while, and then, “I’m not her boyfriend.”
I shovel all my gear into my bag.
“I’m an FBI agent.”
This time, he’s got my fucking attention, and he bloody knows it. Every muscle in my back has gone rigid, and betrayal slices through me all over again.
“It isn’t what you think,” he says.
“Then what the fuck is it?” I scowl. “Every bloody word out of her mouth is a lie.”
“You know why,” he says. “She does it to protect herself.”
“It’s not my concern anymore,” I tell him. “So get to whatever ye came here to say.”
“I fucked up.”
He’s staring at the floor now, and I don’t like the sound of that, even less than I liked him telling me he’s a bleeding fed.
“I was trying to help her. I was trying to do the right thing. But I was also being selfish.”
“Is she in trouble?” I ask, because it’s the only thing that matters at this point.
“She was supposed to testify against Royce Carrington,” he says. “And the others too. But the case fell through.”
“Who the fuck is Royce Carrington?”
He shakes his head.
“One of the five.”
I pull up a chair and sit down across from him.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because she didn’t want to drag you into it. She knew she was going to be under scrutiny. I told her that if she cared about you, she would need to let you go.”
I look up at him, and there are no secrets between us. He knows what I do. Who I am. And I have a hard time believing that a federal agent- who isn’t on our payroll- would do something like that.
For most of these guys, it’s black and white. We’re the bad guys, and that’s it. For others, money talks. They know who the real criminals are, and often it’s their very own elected officials. Corruption is everywhere if you look close enough.