Deception (Infidelity #3)

The MMA establishment was on my side. The organizers of the fight club in Jersey had made a fortune on me.

The thing about MMA was that it was a crapshoot. I never knew who’d step into the octagon with me. I was listed as the headliner—but not in public record. It wasn’t like the fight club had a banner flying behind a plane on the Jersey shore or even a lighted placard outside the gym that was more of a warehouse.

Word of mouth was the means of broadcast.

Nox Demetri, undefeated MMA champion. It drew the best opponents.

Cocksuckers lined up, begging and pleading with the organizers for a chance to take me down. That was what I did—NYU during the day and then I’d cross the bridge to Newark and fight at night. My parents were done raising me. They were done with one another. Oren was busy screwing everything in a skirt and making backroom deals to better the Demetri name. And my mother spent her time in Rye finally coming out of the oppression of twenty years wasted on him. I was happy for her. Him, I didn’t give a shit.

MMA started as a pastime and grew into my own rebellion. I knew what I was doing. I knew who I was making money for. It was my own version of Oren Demetri’s deals.

I’d heard my parents’ warnings. I knew about the neighborhoods and my mother’s family name. But I’d never been a part of it. Especially after we moved. That didn’t mean I didn’t know.

By doing what I was doing, where I was doing it, I was accomplishing two things: I was making the Demetri name known for me, not Oren, and I was screwing Oren’s backroom deals at the same time. The underground world of MMA included families and cartels and all kinds of people who my father would rather me not know.

Fuck him.

At twenty I thought I was immune. That was until I saw Luca and Vincent and I knew.

I’d been making my name known and bringing a fortune to the wrong people.

I understood…

Instead of being in college like I was, Luca worked his father’s crews, running some and second-in-command on others. At barely twenty, being the son of the head of the family, Luca had a reputation for following orders. I’d heard the rumors and seen the news. Luca was proficient at eliminating problems. Guns, knives, or his hands were all options. He’d already beaten one murder charge and had another one pending.

My cousin had willingly done what I hadn’t wanted to do—follow in his father’s footsteps.

Vincent, Luca’s father, wanted my involvement in the MMA enterprise to stop. That night he was present, ringside, to be sure it came to an end. I just wasn’t sure if he was there to watch a warning or a hit.

My father’s admonition came back to me, his anger at my pastime. His insistence that I do something else, that I have more respect for my name and where I came from. I hadn’t listened.

The moment Luca’s eyes met mine a sense of dread washed over me like I’d never before felt—especially, in the octagon. When I turned back to Vincent, I knew there was going to be a beat-down and that Luca had been sent to teach me a lesson.

I was good at fighting, the best at mixed martial arts, but death wasn’t my goal.

The hit they had planned wasn’t a clean shot from a gun.

What they had planned wouldn’t be fast and painless.

Instantly I understood that what I’d done as a purposeful disgrace to my father had farther-reaching repercussions. I was a Demetri, but I was also a Costello. I wasn’t sure if Vincent had planned this solely for me, or if it was meant to hurt Oren, too. All I knew with some certainty was that I was about to be bludgeoned to death before hundreds of witnesses.

Three rounds, five minutes per round.

Normally the fight was stopped when the injuries got to be too much. Still, I knew in the pit of my stomach as Vincent stared at the organizer that no one would step in. No one would stop what was about to happen.

Back in my hotel suite, over ten years later, I closed my eyes and pushed away the memory of the blood and gore. The sound of bones crunching beneath my fists, the crumbling as my fist contacted bone and cartilage. The eerie realization that my bones were breaking too.

In a sadistic way, it was addicting to be the perpetrator.

Crunch.

The sound a person made as he expelled the breath he needed to continue his involuntary functions. Somewhere between a ‘whoof’ and a ‘sigh.’ During my time in the octagon, I’d become hooked on the pain and anguish.

Receiving it in greater measure wasn’t as exhilarating.

I survived. Luca survived.

Oren had appeared sometime during the fight. My memory wasn’t clear. But as I recovered, I wisely decided to heed his warnings.

Vincent gave me a choice: I could continue to do what I’d grown to love, the carnage and destruction, but instead of doing it for my own name, I would do it as Luca did it—for family. Or I could disappear from that world and have my freedom.

Everything came with a price.

Though I hated to admit it, I knew that somehow I owed that freedom to my father. I still don’t know the price he paid, but in order to maintain it, my duty was to step away from MMA and never look back, and to do my part to make Demetri Enterprises a success—a reputable success.

That incident helped me understand that not everything Oren had told me were lies. I never wanted to admit that he’d actually worked hard to get where he was, but he had. My father had worked both sides of the business world and made Demetri as legitimate as he could. As I healed I vowed that I’d be the one to take it further, seeing for the first time how, in many ways, his hands had been tied.

I pushed the thoughts of my young adulthood away as I made my way back to my computer in my hotel suite. The pristine furnishings in the suite were all part of the life I’d helped to create, the life Oren had begun but I’d continued.

Was today’s incident in the park another warning? Or was it intended as more?

Questions still loomed. Could I blame today’s incident on Davis and the hearing at hand, or were there old ghosts from past dealings who still believed I should pay?

Was that freedom that I’d been granted years ago still mine to enjoy?

A voice in my head told me to do what I’d done last time and heed the warning. I knew what happened when I didn’t listen. The consequences were devastating.

The transcript from today’s earlier proceedings sat before me as I tried to concentrate. The dinner that Isaac had brought me sat untouched. I needed to learn what I’d missed while dodging bullets and getting lost in Charli.

Today the hearing had been mostly dominated by testimony from those in favor of the bill’s current wording. To listen to the so-called experts, this bill would do everything from saving baby seals to curing childhood cancer—literally. The revenue they claimed would come from the increase in tax was already appropriated to specific destinations, yet the testimony made it sound as if it would be sitting in the form of a great big check, waiting for appropriation into everyone’s favorite pork-barrel project.

I dialed Senator Carroll’s private cell phone.

“Doyle,” I said after he answered. “I’m very concerned about the whales.”

“Whales?”

“Seals will benefit from this bill but who’s looking out for the whales?”

“Lennox, I’m more concerned about you and that pretty little girlfriend of yours. I’ve been completely distraught over what you told me following today’s testimony.”

“We’re both safe,” I answered, bristling at Senator Carroll’s description of Charli.