“I’m not interested in fighting for you,” I say.
Fallon sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Do we need to go over the girlfriend thing again?”
With difficulty, I force myself to calm. “You want me to fight in your own little grudge match with some Russian mafia family and his boy. The thing is, I don’t give a fuck about your cock-measuring.”
“And?”
“And I ain’t fighting for you. I don’t fight for anybody but me.”
Fallon rocks on his feet, before he claps his hands together in front of him. “Penelope Wordsworth, father Michael Wordsworth, engaged to… Isabelle Fletcher, mother of Pierce Fletcher. She may be a shitty lay, but you and I both know she’s not just some nobody.”
“Fuck you,” I growl.
“This bloke I know, he runs a travel agency. It’s a front, naturally, but he’s some kind of hacking wizard. I’ve had the equivalent of an APB out on your name in the digital world for a while, now.”
“You’ve been tapping my fucking internet?”
“You’ve got good taste in porn, mate. Surprised you need it with all the chicks you screw.”
I lick my lips. “Get to the point.”
Fallon drops his voice, and points two fingers at me. “We can get to you, mate. We can get to everyone you love, everyone you care about. Now, you said you’re not my boy. But you are my boy. I own you now, because I know you. I know everything about you. I know that this bad boy bullshit you put on isn’t you. You care. You’re a decent bloke. I can respect that. I even know about Ricky.”
I clench my fists, do everything I can to stop from breaking him in two.
“I know what you do for him and his mother. I know what you did to him. Like I said, I know everything. Like I said, you’re a decent bloke. I like that. The world needs more decent blokes. Me, though, I’m not decent. I’m not a good guy. Some might even say I was a bad guy. Maybe… you can respect that, or at least understand what it means.”
I calm my racing heart, force the anger to evaporate out of every pore on my body. They’ve got Penny in their sights… as much as I want to drop this prick right now, I can’t.
It takes every ounce of willpower I’ve got not to separate his lower jaw.
“Maybe you need a financial incentive. Two million is nothing to scoff at, but let’s say we up it to five percent of the pot. That’s at least five million, easy. That’s retirement money, Pierce. You can disappear with your girl on your arm. You can start a family, give your children good lives. You can spoil the fuck out of ’em, for all I care, turn them into fat little cunts.”
I grit my teeth together. I can hear the grinding enamel ringing in my skull.
“We’ll set up a private location, and tickets will be sold discretely. There will be a minimum bet to ensure we keep the undesirables out. This is all business.”
I’ve heard of these kinds of fights before. Rich gangsters betting on fighters like dogs. I never thought my success would make me a target…
…would make her a target.
“Attendance roughly one thousand, give or take,” Fallon continues. “Sound good?”
I grunt at him.
“You can put money in on yourself, since I know you like to do that. No limit, if you’ve got the stomach for something big.”
I glower at him. “I always win.”
“I know, my boy. That’s why I picked you.”
“I’m not your fucking boy. I want tapes, if you got any, of this Russian fighter. Anton whatever the fuck.”
Fallon clicks his fingers at Baldilocks, and the man puts a hand into his inside jacket pocket, and pulls out a brown paper envelope and hands it to me. It’s got a VCR cassette tape in it, judging by the weight and size.
Where the fuck am I going to find a player for this?
“Sorry about the tape,” Fallon says, shrugging.
“You couldn’t get a fucking DVD?”
“That’s all I could get. He’s a power fighter, uses his legs—”
I cut him off. “Don’t tell me how to analyze my opponent.”
“Just trying to help. It is in my best interest that you win this fight. And what’s in my best interest is also in your best interest.”
“Why don’t you just hop in the cage yourself with this Mogilovich cunt, you fucking wuss? Not man enough?”
Fallon blasts out a hoarse laugh. “You’ve picked up the Aussie vocabulary. You not seen Sergei Mogilovich, then?”
I shake my head.
“All of five-foot-five, and thin as a noodle. He’d never get in the ring with anybody.”
Great, I think to myself. A Chihuahua mobster with insecurities.