Three days later I held up my right hand so Danny could tape my knuckles, while the grip of my left hand tightened on the bench. Why did the door have to be red? Of all the fucking colors a door could be, this one had to be red. Changing rooms were pretty much the same in every place I’d ever fought in. This one was practically identical to the changing room I’d had when Em was kidnapped. As my mind played over that night, I started to lose focus.
“You’ve got this fecker, Con, but don’t go soft on this guy. It might be an exhibition fight but Temple wants to hurt you. He wants a show. The cocky little fucker is top of his game and needs the world to know he’s staying there. He’s gonna treat you like a stepping-stone, so you show him you ain’t one, okay?”
I didn’t hear a word that Danny said. I couldn’t take my eyes off that fucking door. My certainty that Frank was going down had picked Em up a bit, but truthfully, Frank’s letter had properly fucked me over. He’d taken Em once on fight night, and just because he was in prison didn’t mean he couldn’t send someone else to finish the job. He’d found a way to get those photos to her hadn’t he? Once I walked out the door and into that ring, who would protect her?
The slap to my face woke me up. “Where the fuck is your head, Con? You’re fighting in fifteen minutes, and right now I wouldn’t put you in the ring with Kieran’s feckin’ grandmother,” he roared. I hung my head knowing he was right. Six months ago, I had nothing to lose. Now I had Em and I knew what losing her felt like. It made me afraid, and going into the ring like this was a bad fucking idea.
“Kier, he’s not going to hold it together.”
Kier swapped places with Danny and carried on taping. “What’s going on, Con?” he asked me.
“This place looks the same as the one where she was taken. I can’t think about anything else,” I told him. Maybe I should have made some shit up, but Kieran knew me well enough to call me on my bullshit if I lied.
“It’s not the same, Con. You know that. Frank’s in prison, and Em has more bodyguards than Justin Bieber. You can do this. Stop worrying about what will happen when you lose everything and start getting mad at the fuckers trying to take it from you. She’s right here and she yours. So what happens when someone messes with what’s yours?” he asked.
“I decimate the fuckers,” I answered. He was right. I needed to get my head out of my arse. I was hard as fucking nails and no one was fucking with my girl.
“What happens if some guy wolf whistles or tries to grab her arse tonight?” he goaded.
“I’ll decimate the fucker,” I told him more forcefully, feeling the adrenaline starting to kick in.
“And what happens,” he said finally, “if someone tried to take her?”
“I. WILL. FUCKING. DECIMATE. THEM.” I enunciated slowly, completely pumped now.
“Thatta boy,” he replied with a smile. “He’s ready,” he said to Danny, who’d swapped places with Kieran to put on my gloves. My knee was bouncing, and I was impatient to get out of there. Pumped and primed, I wanted to hurt someone. The second he was done, I jumped up from the bench and started going at the pads with Kier. Cross, cross, jab. Cross, cross, jab. I cleared my mind of everything but the pads. How to move my body to land the perfect punch was instinctive. Years of relentless training did that. There wasn’t a how or a why when I fought. The only thing that concerned me about the guy I was fighting was where to land my fist to cause the maximum pain. But this time was different. This time my opponent had a face, and it was Frank’s. It burned me that, with everything that went down, I hadn’t had the chance to lay a fist on him. I was a valve with no release, and if I didn’t vent that rage and fear soon, I was going to explode, and there’d be casualties in the wake. Danny watched me spar and didn’t look happy. As far as he was concerned, getting in the ring carrying any kind of baggage was a bad fucking idea. It was why he made us go to church before a fight. Inside those ropes I was supposed to be an emotionless machine and I hadn’t been that in a long time. One of the management team opened my door. “Con, it’s time,” he told me.
Kieran held out my robe, and I stopped bouncing just long enough to slip it on. Danny opened the door and cringed as my music pumped loudly through the speakers. Fort Minor’s “Remember the Name” didn’t do it for him at all, but Kieran had picked it years ago, and it sort of stuck. The bass was making my blood pump and I strutted out of the room like I was invincible.
“You ready?” Kieran asked.
“Hell, yeah,” I replied. I burned with the need to hurt someone, and the thought of releasing all that rage on Rico Temple got my blood pumping.