“What other option do I have?”
He jams his hands into his hair. “Fuck. Me. This isn’t the conversation I wanted to be having right now. Goddammit, Gabe. Swallow your pride. Ask your girlfriend. She’s got the money, and she’s a hell of a lot safer than a New York City loan shark.”
I know he’s right, but everything in me is screaming no fucking way am I asking Scarlett for the money, even though I just promised her I would swallow my pride and ask if I really needed the help. I might have to, but I’m not ready to go there yet.
“Let’s table this for now and deal with it later, okay? We’ll come up with something. I just need to let it simmer for a few more days.”
Q shakes his head. “This shit is going to age me before my fucking time. Whatever you do, please swear to me that you’ll tell me first, before it happens, so I can be prepared for the fallout.”
“I fucking swear.”
After scanning a few hours of video, I spot Moses. Bold as brass, he walked right into my fucking club and ordered a drink before he left . . . only to show up again in my office and hold Bump at gunpoint.
I have to take him out. That’s my only option. But I’ve got no fucking clue where to find him.
As I’m leaving the club, Q sends a second text to Eduardo, the crazy PI, and I pray he’ll help us on good faith alone. It’s the only chance we have, because I can’t lose this fight. It’s not in me to take a dive.
After I’m forced to park a few blocks away from the gym, I sit in the truck for a few minutes to get my head right. This workout might not be with my fancy new coach, but it’s the first one where battle needs to be at the forefront of my mind. I’m preparing for the fight of my life, the odds are stacked against me, and I have no choice but to win—despite Moses’s threats or the fact that I don’t have a signed contract in hand making the event official.
The fight will happen.
I close my eyes and picture the signed contracts on my desk and Q nodding in approval. The fight is happening, and I’m going to win.
I have no fucking clue how I’m going to pull all of this off, but I have to believe I can. If I don’t, there’s no reason to walk into the gym.
“I got this. All of it. I can do this.” I say the words out loud to myself, psyching myself up until I can speak it with such confidence that I believe it.
It’s a trick I picked up early in my fighting career, the first time I was going up against a nasty opponent who’d killed a guy in the ring earlier in the year. I pictured myself standing over his body as the ref raised my hand in victory. I lived that vision over and over and over until I was certain of exactly how the fight would end.
I took him out with a brutal TKO from a ground-and-pound finish, and he was still on the canvas when the ref raised my hand in victory.
This is how winners think, I realized.
Two years later, I’d earned enough to start Urban Legend. From the goddamned day I was born, the odds have been stacked against me. It’s nothing new. I haven’t let it stop me yet, and I’m sure as hell not starting now.
“Let’s do this.” I hop out of the Bronco, shoulder my bag, and head inside. I walk differently, with more purpose.
I barely see the other people in the gym as I go to the lockers and get ready to train. It’s like tunnel vision, but different and hard to explain. Regardless, when I finish my warm-up and start working the bag, I’m in the zone. My muscles remember every damn move and combination that’s been drilled into my head since the first time I put on gloves. I savage the bag, switch to jumping rope until I can barely breathe, and chug some water before doing it all over again and again and again.
It’s as familiar to me as breathing. Hell, sometimes I think this is what I was meant to do with my life. Train, fight, and overcome battle after battle. I understand this world. I know how to win. But for so many years, I’ve had Jorie’s dreams in my head, and those are what drove me to open my underground club, and then Legend.
Is that really what I want? I push the question away and return my focus to the bag.
I’m drenched with sweat and grinding out one last combination when I sense someone behind me. I finish and grab the bag to steady it and myself.
“What do you want?” I ask before I haul in a deep breath of oxygen, hoping to make the black spots dotting my vision disappear.
“Damn, man. I haven’t seen you train like that in . . . a long fucking time.”
Hearing Rolo’s familiar voice makes me stand upright and turn to face him. “Seems like one hell of a coincidence I keep seeing you here, what with the odd training hours I’ve been keeping and all.”
Rolo crosses his arms. “We could pretend it’s a coincidence, but we both know it’s not. I got people. They let me know you were here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
The last thing I want to do right now is have this conversation, but just like I thought before I got out of the car—if you don’t deal with shit, it keeps coming back until you do. And it always returns bigger, meaner, and more prepared to take you out.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask him.
The older man sighs and shakes his head, his chin dipping close to the gold chains around his neck. “You and me both come a long, long way, boss. We’ve always been a damn good team.”
I know where he’s going with this. No doubt he’s heard the rumors about the fight that are apparently already all over the city. I wait, and he continues.
“We both made a lot of money together too.”
“I know,” I reply.
“I’m the one who came to you about the rematch with Black, so imagine my surprise when I hear my boy, my partner, is cutting me out of the action and making that fight happen without me, after everything I did for you. That’s some cold shit, man. Really fucking cold shit.”
I expected Rolo to be pissed—really fucking pissed—but the betrayal in his tone takes me by surprise.
Other than Q and his family, Rolo did more for me than any other person in New York or Jersey. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. He got me fights that people thought were insane, because he believed I could win.
Now, don’t get me wrong—he was in it for the money, and if I hadn’t been as good as I was, he wouldn’t have done all he did. But back in the day, it was more than that. We were friends.
When I was broke and needed help getting Bump into a doctor because he was sick, Rolo fronted me cash, knowing he’d make it back from the next purse I won. I’m not the kind of guy who turns his back on the people who helped him get where he is, and from Rolo’s viewpoint, that’s exactly what he thinks I did.
“I’m sorry you didn’t hear it from me first, man. That was shitty of me, but in my defense, nothing is for sure yet. Until I have a signed contract in my hand, I don’t have much room to talk about what is or isn’t going down.”
Rolo’s entire posture seems to hunch forward like he just absorbed a blow. “But it is true that it’s in the works. You and Black. Sanctioned fight. At your club.”
I bounce on my toes and smack my gloves together to keep my muscles warm. “I’m in a tough spot, Rolo. This is my way out. If you were in my shoes, you’d do the same thing.”