Millie falls asleep around nine. I feel like shit for leaving her again after being gone all day, but my hope is she’ll sleep through and won’t miss me until morning. I thought about calling Ben and canceling my fight tonight, but we need the money. Desperately. If I don’t fight, I’m two grand down, and that’s our rent money for the month. That’s money I need to pay our utilities and put food on the table for Millie. It won’t be anywhere near enough to cover the bills we’ve racked up at the hospital—I’ll have to fight again next week to even come close to settling those, which makes me worried. If I don’t win, if I get injured, if Millie’s ill again and I can’t leave her…
I’m plagued by ifs.
The night air is cool as I climb into my car and head south, out of the city toward La Maison Markets. French’s, an enclosed, dusty, airless storage facility under the markets, will already be thrumming, alive with crowds of people expecting to see blood tonight. They’re bankers and stockbrokers, baggage handlers, mechanics, nannies and chefs. They’re everyone, you and me, people from all walks of life. They’re the people of Seattle unafraid to show their true colors, to cast their money hand over fist as they bay for violence and carnage. They are how I keep the devil from my door, though most of the time they somehow make me feel like I am the devil.
I park up and head down the narrow staircase that leads into the basement where the fights take place, my head still back at the hospital with Millie. I’m third on the card tonight. I haven’t lost a single fight yet, but I’m still not the main event. There are other fighters, favorites who’ve been kicking the shit out of people way longer than I have, that still claim the title fight. They’re earning upwards of twenty grand a match if they’re good negotiators, and the guy fighting tonight is that and more. Jameson Rayne. He’s notorious for his round one knock outs. His right hook is fucking terrifying. You see that thing coming and that’s it. No time for blocking. No counter on earth is good enough to prevent a serious concussion and a few missing teeth. Only the maddest of the mad take on Rayne. Only people like Ben.
My best friend greets me out the back, where a hot blonde with gigantic fake tits is stroking her hand up and down his bicep like he’s some kind of fucking demi god. When he looks up and sees me, he slaps the chick on the ass and sends her packing.
“She won’t be so eager to bounce up and down on your dick later, when you’re black and blue and humiliated, asshole,” I tell him.
Ben smirks. “So what? My dick’s chaffed raw from her bouncing up and down on it already. I need some time to recover. There’ll be another chick just like her ready to ride my cock in a couple of weeks, and I’ll still be flush from this fight.”
He’s right. Rayne may make a shit load of cash from thrashing Ben tonight, but that’s not to say Ben will be going home empty handed. Everyone knows there’s no chance they’ll win against Rayne. It requires a decent purse to entice fighters to come and take the beating of their lives, and tonight it’s Ben’s turn to get thrown around the cage. Crazy bastard.
“You given any more thought to what we talked about?” he asks, holding up his hand wraps. I take them from him and begin to wind them around his right hand.
“No. You know I can’t leave, man. If there was any way…” A few weeks ago, Ben mentioned that he’s thinking about moving to LA to train with the pros and he hasn’t fucking let up about it since.
“They have schools in California, dickwad. They have auto mechanic shops, too.”
“It’s not that simple. Millie’s settled here. She’s got friends. I’d be screwed if Wanda didn’t pick up Millie from school every day. I wouldn’t be able to work.” I don’t mention that I have a DEA agent shoved so far up my ass, she knows exactly what I ate for breakfast. If I try to leave the state, Lowell will have CPS on my doorstep quicker than I can blink.