Untamed (A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance)(25)
“Pro, huh?”
“UFC, whatever. Then we go big on a national stage, international, even. The money there will be amazing. But you need a reputation first, and we’ll build it in the underground cage. Your name will echo.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, huh?”
“Damn right I do,” Glass says. “How the fuck do you think I got to where I am? How the fuck do you think I ride around in a limousine all day? Drink only the best whiskey? Own a house like the one that I do?” He gives me a big grin. “We’re going to make a lot of fucking money. I know it.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “We?”
“You’ll get your cut, boy, don’t you worry about that. Five-percent of the pot, non-negotiable. I expect the pot will climb to over ten million some fights, so you’ll be good. Don’t ever say I wasn’t a generous man. I take care of my own. Just ask Frank. Frank! Frank!”
The intercom hisses to life. “Yes, boss.” Frank’s hoarse voice is made scratchier by the static.
“Don’t I take care of my own, Frank?”
“You do, Mr. Marino.”
“See?” Glass says, looking at me.
I swallow, nod again. Promises. But maybe Glass will be good for them. There’s more to me being a good fighter than simply him making his quick buck. I’ve been a years-long investment.
There’s emotion behind this whole thing. This is more than just business, even if he claims the contrary.
“You want me to be the fighter you never were,” I tell him. “You want to live through me.”
The words silence him, still him. I call it how I see it.
“I won’t lie to you, Duncan. We’re family, and family don’t lie to each other, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ve treated you like my own son. I’ve given you a life. I want you to carry my torch.” He slaps my chest, holds his hand there.
His torch. The one he never held.
Glass continues: “You don’t know what it’s like having my body, being robbed by my body. This piece of shit!” He thumps his hand against his own chest. “This stopped me from being the best. Brittle bones and inelastic tendons. Genetics.” He scrunches up his face in disgust. “I hate my body. But you… you have it all. You were blessed. Your name may still be Malone – and I’m really fine that you kept your own – but legally you’re my son. You are Johnny Marino’s son!”
He shouts it triumphantly, like a trumpet blaring in victory.
I just nod at him.
“You’ll make me proud, won’t you?”
“If you mean that I’ll fight to the best of my ability, yes.”
“Good, good.”
“I don’t like to lose,” I tell him.
“You and I are similar,” he says, clasping me around the shoulder, pulling me into him.
No we’re not, I think to myself. But this is an opportunity, not one I’m going to turn down.
Not to mention, I’ve got another motive for being diffident toward Glass, one that I’m sure he wouldn’t like.
“We’re nearly there,” he says. “Frank, go a little faster would you?”
The speakers in the back of the limo crackle to life again. “Right, boss.”
The car speeds up, and we take the bends breezily.
“There,” Glass says, pointing out the window. “That’s your home now.”
I see a huge house, three floors high with a… I don’t know the word… layered back garden. I see trees, like a small forest, and sitting on a bench I see a lone girl.
Dee.
My heart starts to quicken, and I swallow. The last time I saw her she was just a little girl, all of fifteen, nervous, insecure.
But even then she was pretty. It was plain as day that she was going to grow up to be a beautiful young woman. Those generous lips of her small mouth that sits above a soft chin, those big, black eyes, that voluminous, wavy hair, a light shade of brown, pulled back tight into a ponytail.
I blink myself out of the past, distantly wondering if my thoughts are wrong. I’m not insecure about what I think – I think what I do and I won’t apologize for it – but sometimes I still wonder. Was she too young? Was I too old?
It doesn’t matter. We’re both adults now.
“Your room will be upstairs, next to Deidre’s,” Dad tells me. “The third floor is off-limits, though. That’s where my office and bedroom are.”
Fair enough, it’s his fucking house.
“Now, do you have any questions?”
I think about asking him if I should stop wanting to fight, then what? But he strikes me as the kind of person who would inform me that I only stop fighting when he tells me to.