Trust Me(4)

Bottom line? Even if I was around Kayla James every day, I was still going to want to eat her.

Every day.

She gazed at me through determined eyes and held up a single index finger. “Let’s have one meeting. One. We talk over what you want to achieve this year, who you’d like to fight, who you wouldn’t like to fight, and then go from there.”

What an absolute shit of a Saturday. It was bad enough that I had to tie myself up with Mickey for the next year. Now he had to go and twist the knife with this little stunt. Maybe it was some sort of PR move. Like, he thought if he could get Kayla James into some meeting and on the press’s radar, she would get people interested in me as a fighter. Hell, who knew what he’d been thinking, but what I did know is that I wanted no part of it.

I eyed her long and hard, running over my limited options and came back with only one that made sense. Mickey wasn’t going to listen to me alone, but if his protégé here wanted out too, maybe there was a chance. All I had to do was make her wish she’d never met me.

That was kind of a specialty of mine, and I perked up at the thought of the challenge.

"I'll tell you right now, it's not going to work. If you insist though, let's get it over with so I can get someone else in place ASAP. Meet me at my office on Tuesday evening. Sixteen hundred Market Street, six PM."

She nodded, full lips curving into a half-smile of victory. "Sounds perfect. And you'll see. I'll be like one of the guys to you in no time."

Sure she would. If someone snuck into my room in the middle of the night and cut off my man tackle.

"See you there.” I made my way around her and shoved open the door, sucking in a deep breath of springtime air.

If I stood any chance of having something positive come out of the next year, I had to find some good fights regardless of how I’d gotten here, and I needed a manager who had pull and connections to do that. Even if Kayla James wasn’t the hottest girl in Boston—and I was pretty sure she was— she wouldn’t be my pick for the job. I felt bad in a way, because I wasn’t even sure if she knew that I was an unwilling part of this whole “Mickey goes legit” scheme. What if she was just another victim of circumstance? Guilt nipped at me hard but I shook it off.

You lay with dogs, you’re going to come out smelling like dog shit. Or something like that. If she was an innocent party here, she wouldn’t be working for a mobster. If she actually “worked” for him at all. Maybe this was some bone he’d thrown her after some other bone he’d been throwing her.

The thought of that slimy fucker touching that beautiful girl made my gut clench and I shut it down quick.

That was enough thinking about Kayla James. After Tuesday, she’d be in my rear view mirror. Then I could concentrate on the next act in the shit show.

Figuring out a way to tell my brother Bash what I’d done.





Chapter Two




Kayla



Sixteen hundred Market Street.

I glanced back down at my cell phone and read the address out loud one more time before looking back at the building in front of me. It sure as hell didn't look like any office to me. What it looked like was a bar.

I shoved open my car door and stepped onto the curb, stumbling a little as the heel of my shoe caught in a crack on the sidewalk. Son of a bitch. I'd put on a frigging business suit and high heels for this meeting. If Matthias was leading me on some wild goose chase and wasting my time, Mickey was going to be the least of his problems.

I slammed the door closed and clip-clopped toward the entrance of what a neon sign in bubble letters announced was called 1984. Judging by that and the smattering of patrons standing outside smoking electronic cigarettes, it was a retro bar that catered to hipsters who were fans of the eighties.

Scooting past the quarum of bearded guys with a wave, I stepped inside the bar and then let the door close behind me. As I scanned the room for Matthias, I still wasn’t sure whether to be pissed at him for sending me on a wild goose chase, or pissed at him for thinking we should have a meeting about our collective futures in the middle of some dive bar.

One way or another, though, I was pissed.

But the worst thing I could do was give him the upper hand and let him call the shots this early in the game. Whoever got control first was going to come out on top, and I was determined that would be me. Whether he showed up tonight didn't matter one way or the other, because I wasn’t about to play this game with him. Satisfied, I turned to walk out, only to find him standing right behind me.

I jerked back in surprise but managed to ignore the thundering of my heart to give him the dead eye.

"You're late," he said, leaning on the doorjamb, brows raised in challenge.