CHAPTER 1
I NEVER WANTED to kill a motherfucker in my life as badly as I wanted to end that prick Marcus Mecken. Luckily for him, that would’ve been a pleasure for me, and this was all about business. My throat tickled and burned raw, as if I’d swallowed a cup full of sawdust, courtesy of being nearly choked to death by that pissed-off ex-marine. The man was better than advertised; his animal rose to the surface quicker than I expected or had been prepared for.
I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Teeth bared and chomping at the bit to inflict as much damage as possible, he struck without fear of consequences, fast, and without mercy. I admired that in a man, one who took without asking. He would’ve made an excellent underground champion, unmatched in wits and cunning, reminiscent of a time when men fought for something greater than money. He was also the luckiest motherfucker to ever wear a uniform. Not because he survived a war, but because he was one of a few men to ever lay a hand on me and lived to talk about it. I’ve killed people for less. Didn’t mean he got a pass, though.
His time would come, and timing was everything.
I savored a sip of Jameson. The amber liquid cooled my raging temper and gave me something less lethal to concentrate on to keep from acting rashly, an emotion I couldn’t afford given the state of affairs. The last few days had not gone as planned, and I’d been forced to make a few critical moves in the process. What should have been a simple collection turned into a full-fledged fucking shootout with my side catching all the spray. My circuit headliner took two bullets to the leg, rendering him useless for the foreseeable future. Not that it mattered; he wasn’t that good. A paper champion ideal for the boondocks, but not for a killer like Akiko Tanaka. He wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds in a bare-knuckle brawl with that homicidal maniac. I needed something more, something better than the run-of-the-mill muscle head hopped up on steroids. That man would also need a damn good reason to accept a last-minute fight, give it his all, and come away as the victor in my private little battleground. Marcus Mecken fit that bill, and I splendidly acquired his motivation.
The marker was owned by some two-bit gambling junkie who’d gotten in way over his head when he tried to test the limits of his tiny cock. Too stupid to quit while he was ahead, thought he could take the entire gate and went all in with the last fight of the evening and lost it all. Dumb fuck. Didn’t he know the first rule of gambling? The odds were always on the house. He racked up a tab of two hundred and fifty thousand in a span of fifteen minutes when all he had to do was cash out and walk. When it came time to pay up, the bastard put all the weight on his girlfriend’s shoulders and slunk away like a new made pussy. Typical. Idiots like him made my business a booming commodity and ensured a steady stream of revenue even for a Podunk town like Remington.
According to the two assholes I sent to collect my money, none of what happened during the pickup made a lick of sense, no matter how hard I turned it over in my head. The girlfriend was the daughter of a prestigious doctor but was somehow working as a waitress at a greasy dive on the outskirts of town. Bitch played dumb, claimed not to know anything about her boyfriend’s gambling or the whereabouts of my fucking cash. Before they could press her further, a mystery man showed up out of nowhere, shot the shit outta one prick and threated to do the same thing to the other. The most I got from the jumbled retelling was the man was dressed in black leather and was exceptionally skilled with a firearm.
In other words, I got jack shit.
It wasn’t until I ordered Ferdi, my right hand, to run a background check on Ms. Maribel Laine that I discovered an old connection who my father did business with back in the day. Marcus Mecken was one of Buck Calhoun’s boys and dated the tiny waitress in high school before joining the Marine Special Forces. For reasons unknown, the old biker had taken on four troubled pre-teen boys and made it clear to the underworld that they were under his protection. He was out of the game but still carried enough weight to back it up if necessary. Once all the dots were connected, I knew it was a job I had to see to, personally. Call it the perfect storm of good fortune and dumb luck, necessity and practicality. Marcus Mecken was a force, greater than I ever imagined, and just the type of person I needed to play a pivotal role in my strategy.
A unique window of opportunity presented itself at the same time my main act was taking two shots of lead to his upper thighs. The Tokyo bare-knuckle champion in the underground circuit was traveling to America, a first for the legendary recluse, and he chose my outfit to make his debut. He’d previously thought us foreigners unworthy of his caliber of combat and never ventured across the water. That alone was monumental, unprecedented even. The massive payout would set me up tremendously for the foreseeable future and fortify my plans for a ten-city expansion. Two mill buy-in mixed with back door side bets, and the take would be enormous. I accepted their terms quicker than a rabbit gets fucked.
My father had been ready to give up on our piece of the underground circuit, a losing endeavor, he called it, better suited for one of the lower ranking rival capos looking to rake in a few pennies a week if he was lucky. I saw it as something different. An untapped resource that lacked the proper vision and knowhow to really turn a profit with its short-sighted management. My brothers didn’t want it; they sought a different path within the organization. They were older and carried a much heavier burden than I did. Blood ties mixed with tradition meant everything in the underworld—to break with it meant death in most, if not all, circumstances. I had no desire to go against established protocols. As the youngest, I had little to no power within the ranks. A sad fact I intended to change and secure my place at that table. It took five years to build my empire and garner a certain reputation towards ruthlessness as it pertained to matters of business. Make no mistake, the underground fights were all mine. I had the money, the power. All that was left was the glory.
But first, I had to take out the trash.
Incompetence. It stood before me while appearing remorseful from their poor judgment and general fuckedupness. All of this was the fault of my well-intentioned father and his so-called dire emergency. He sent these two slobs down from Boston to cover for my right hand, whom he ordered away on “delicate” business. Ferdinand Magellan O’Leary—or Ferdi, as he was called—was in charge of my security, among other things, and would’ve never been caught dead slipping like these two jackoffs in my line of sight. Two overgrown idiots with arrows sticking from their person while bleeding all over my fucking carpet. Men like this were expendable and easily replaced. It was the second time in one night they failed to do their jobs.
Their ineptitude made me appear weak.
They would pay for their mistake.
An hour ago, they’d arrived back at the penthouse, one of them carrying a lifeless body across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. I’d thought she was dead until I moved her mop of long blond hair and placed a finger to her pulse. A snap of my finger was enough to get their asses moving towards the adjoining room, where they laid her gently across the bed. She looked like a beautiful sleeping angel dressed in all white, albeit a dirty-ass diner uniform. Her smooth blemish-free skin held a sheen of grease along her cheeks, yet that didn’t detract from her splendor. She was a magnificent morsel ripe for the taking. My semi-hard cock appreciated the visual. Unfortunately, my perusal was cut short along with my need for answers when Mecken and his boys showed up.