But, even more than that, he wants to be recognized as the man who discovered Duncan, as the man who groomed him into the fighter he is today.
As the man who tamed a feral street boy.
But he’s kidding himself if he thinks he’s tamed Duncan. If anything, Dad was a handicap, and even if he won’t admit it to himself, he knows the others see it.
He’s bitter. In his twisted thoughts, he thinks that Duncan is stealing his limelight. And it gets worse with each fight won, with each two-to-five million pocketed in betting profits every week.
He comes over to me at the bar. The suit jacket he’s wearing strains at his shoulders. It was cut for him when he was a younger, slimmer man. His dimpled bald head beads with sweat, what I imagine a dinosaur egg in the early morning might have looked like.
For a moment he looks at the glass in my hand, as if weighing whether or not to ask me if it’s alcohol, but decides not to. His gaze wipes slowly over the crowd, resting on each face for sometimes seconds at a time, before eventually returning to Duncan.
Dad grunts. “Think he’s spilling our secrets? Saying things he shouldn’t be?”
“Of course not, Dad,” I say, not bothering to hide the contempt in my voice. How could he doubt Duncan now, after all the money he’s made off the fights? Duncan’s spilled red in the cage so Dad could line his pockets with green.
Dad fires an angry look at me, but I know the public setting, in front of all the other families especially, grants me precious immunity to his wrath tonight. I intend to take advantage of it.
“You should appreciate him more,” I tell him. “You push him too far, and he may just push back. You’ll lose your goose if you’re not careful.”
“What the hell would you know?” he snaps at me, before stalking back off into the fray.
Despite being used to his cruel outbursts toward me, I’m still stung by it every single time. I can’t remember the last time my father said a kind word to me, and meant it.
I return my attention to Duncan. The other mob bosses rattle off questions at him: How do you do it? What’s your secret? Will you train some of my guys? Are you taking supplements? What’s your training regimen?
Duncan sidesteps every question as though he were dodging rookie jabs in the cage, and continually, as if by magnetic force, his eyes are pulled to me.
I grin at him from the bar, offer him a quick flash of my eyebrows, and sip from my pear martini. I’m only twenty, but no bartender who knows my father is going to say ‘no’ to me.
And I actually kind of hate that.
Duncan shoots me a strained look. It says, ‘rescue me’, but I just laugh at him, shake my head. Hey, he wanted to be the best fighter, he wanted to own the cage. This is what he gets.
Mass murderers, drug suppliers, and glorified pimps competing for mere seconds of his time. Dissatisfied wives eyelashing him. Everybody wanting a piece of him, like he’s just some hunk of meat to be carved up and doled out.
Be careful what you wish for.
I sigh. At least it’s better than the hordes of girls who attend his fights and throw themselves unendingly at him.
All Duncan cares about is the fighting, not this bullshit, and I hate the politicking even more. Mob politics are about as tortuous as it gets.
I used to think it was cool, being a mobster’s daughter, having a name that ‘rang out on the streets’, as Dad likes to put it.
But I quickly realized that all it did was erect walls between me and everybody else. No friends, and until Duncan came into my life, no lovers…
“Your brother looks in over his head,” the bartender says to me. His voice is shallow and wheezy. “I know a ‘save me’ face when I see one.”
My brother.
I’ve never called Duncan that before. He’s my adoptive brother, came into my life when I was just eighteen like a tornado ripping through a barn. He carried me off with him.
I meet the old bartender’s eyes, then tilt my head to the side. He looks… familiar, but from a mental distance. I know him from somewhere.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Deidre?” he asks.
“No,” I say truthfully. “But your voice is familiar.”
“I’ve worked for your old man before. I ran the bar for him at a couple of his birthday get-ups. You were just a little girl, though. Oh, it must have been ten years ago now.”
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t remember,” I say, smiling politely. I do vaguely recall my father having birthday parties, but he stopped when I turned about ten.
“It’s no problem, honey,” he says. “You’ve grown up a lot.”
“Everybody’s been saying that to me.”