PUSH: Ultra Alpha MMA Badboy Mafia Romance (Southside Brotherhood Book 2) (28 page)

Gideon let out a grotesque chuckle as Lilly smiled back with her sweetest grin.

“Yes, you are so right. Thank you for your insight. And I can’t wait to be your loving stepmother.”

“Ha! Yeah, whatever that was between you and my brother. Let me tell you a little secret about Flynn. He doesn’t like it easy. He likes a challenge. So, you were the challenge. Now, he’s done with you. Trust me. He’s got no interest in you except fucking with my father. That would be his only goal. He’s a black-hearted fuck. Never think different. It will come out, whatever it was between you two. My lips are sealed. I don’t give a shit where he sticks his dick, and really, I just can’t wait to see the shit show when Dad finds out. Flynn’s planning on telling him. Trust me. He’s just waiting for the time when it will have the most impact.”

Lilly’s felt like someone just stuck her with a cattle prod.

“So, well. This has been a good bonding experience for us. Don’t you think? But, alas, I have my own duties to tend to. Oh, and by the way, all the Jameson disappeared from the bar pantry. So, you either have a nice stash somewhere, or you may need to take yourself down to the corner store and get yourself a bottle. I don’t blame you; I think you may need more than Scotch in the years to come. I know my mother did.”

One last grin and Lilly watched his arrogant, lanky form stride out the dining room archway whistling.

***

“Jesus, kid. You’re gonna kill someone.” Roger limped into the cage and waved over a couple other guys to tend to the lump of sweat and blood that lay crumpled against the chain link.

Flynn bit down on his lip until he tasted his blood.

For four days, all he’d done was fight. He lived here, fighting anyone who volunteered, even a couple who didn’t.

“Listen. I don’t know what you have up your Irish ass, but knock it the fuck off.” Roger poked his cane into Flynn’s gut with each word.

Flynn’s chest rose and fell like a tidal surge. The ink that covered his arm down to the wrist gleamed and dripped. He’d barely spoken a word in days, only growled.

The gym was quiet after 9:30 pm, only Roger, Flynn and the other three guys around. The lump in the corner was sitting up now, his buddies holding a towel that was now turning cherry red against his forehead where Flynn almost punched straight through his skull.

“Come on. Get your ass down here.” Roger tapped his cane with each step.

Flynn sniffed and gave the poor dude in the corner a nod.

“Sorry, man.”

“It’s cool.” The kid who had volunteered to fight Flynn was doing his best to piece together his pride as his eyes fought to focus.

“Sit the fuck down.” Roger pointed to a dented, metal folding chair next to the front desk.

Outside the gym windows, only a few street lights were still functioning in this shitty part of Detroit, but Flynn felt like he was right where he needed to be.

“So, you’ve been here open-to-close for four days, beating the shit out of anything you can find. Now, I told you; I had a fight for you — I wanted you to prove to me you were up to the challenge, but this is going to get someone hurt. You’ve got to rein this in, whatever it is, ‘cause it’s not going to get you a contract. It’s going to get you a felony.”

A flash of thunder cracked overhead, and the lights flickered.

Flynn’s legs bounced, and his hands pounded on his knees.

“Yeah. Okay.” He grimaced as he spoke the first words he could remember in days to another human.

“Yeah, I might understand now why you have that little war wound across there.” Roger pointed to his chest with a shaking finger. “You got some anger issues, kid. Now take a shower, don’t take a shower, I don’t give a shit. Just get the fuck out and come back with your head outta your damn ass. I’m puttin’ you in that fight, but you show up like this, I'ma lose any credibility I have left, which ain’t much.”

“Yeah, well. Whatever.”

“Don’t be an ass. You’re going in that fight, and you’re going to win. I can see that. But you pull shit — what you just did — that will get you thrown out and then — no win. Got it?”

“Got it.” Flynn popped to his feet with more energy than a man who had battled bags, weights, three sparring rounds and a few demons should.

It’s not fucking working, man. You’re losing it. You’re going to need a fucking lobotomy to clear your head, but that’s not what you fucking need. You need to quit being a pussy, get your plan together and forget what she said. That was drunk ass bullshit, and you know it. Stress. Don’t let her marry him, even if she hates you forever. Blow this shit up. Tell Colin about you and her. He may kill you, but he won’t hurt her.

Flynn stared at the brass key he’d hung from a shoestring around the Bronco’s rearview mirror. He’d lost most of his mind that night, but the last thing he did was grab that key.

More than anything, he wanted to keep her safe, to turn her over and give her smartass mouth what it needed. He snapped and left her there, smiling in the shower. Only, whoever that was, wasn’t Lilly.

His fists looked like raw meat after so many days of torture. His knuckles were broken open on more fingers than not, gaping red when he clutched the wheel and brought his forehead down in a slam.

“FUUUCCCKKKKK!”

He tried to tear the steering wheel from the column and the entire vehicle shook in the black parking lot behind the gym.

His foot met the floor and the smell of rubber shocked his nose as he bounced over the curb and headed toward hell.

Chapter Twenty-three

Thirty six hours later, Flynn was ready to kill.

There is a stink that is distinctive to a fight. It’s a fetid brew of testosterone, sweat, confidence and fury.

“Don’t ball up. Defense, remember? You can’t always be the hammer, sometimes the nail has to try to get the fuck away, okay? This guy will turn that pretty mick face of yours into ground beef, so keep your fucking arms up and your feet moving. You don’t move, you die. Got it?”

Roger rubbed his face one final time and made his way out of the cage in a huff.

It wasn’t so much that the machine across from him was drooling and looked like a steroid-pumped tweaker or the fact that Simon Reed was in the audience, here to keep an eye on what he hoped would be his next rising star.

Nope, it was about the blood. About the fight.

The sheer violence of it. Flynn flared his nostrils as he pulled in the stinking, sweat-filled air in the cage, waiting for the ref to unleash him into where he loved to be most.

“Gentleman! I want a clean fight. Obey my rules at all times; protect yourselves at all times.”

The smallish, ruddy-faced man in the neat black polo and black pants gave each fighter a nod and expected one in return.

“Okay. You ready?” He pointed at the frothing dog in the opposite corner who gave a single nod. The dude was clearly running on something other than adrenaline and Flynn took note of the twitch in his eye, the way he stood with more weight on his left leg than his right.

“You ready?”

Flynn tipped his head up and down.

“
Go to war
!”

The clap of the boards set Flynn free. Nothing existed besides the fight.

He was the underdog — the gorilla across from him favored to win
—
but Flynn already centered his focus on his weakness. He came out of his corner off balance, the weight on his left leg more than unequal, and Flynn spun under his first haymaker, sending him turning in his own orbit with a roar like a grizzly.

The scar across his chest still felt tight. Just more of a reminder why he was here.

They grappled, slamming with a grunt into the chain link, the screaming of the crowd calling for blood.

Flynn worked around the beast as he hammered into the meat of his abdominals a few times, taking away some of his breath and sending him stumbling back.

They weren’t here to dance, and Flynn could see the way his opponent pulled his lips back, grunting with each slam of Flynn’s fist into the meat of his face.

Steve the Steam Engine came back with a swipe of his right leg, low. Flynn popped up and over the swish of his leg, landing with one foot on either side before falling atop his prone opponent.

It only took another six seconds for Flynn to wrap his legs around the behemoth’s sore right leg. Their bodies were slick and slipping against each other as Flynn fought for the perfect position to apply the most pressure to hyperflex Steve’s knee.

The grunts and punches of fist on meat turned into background noise. Steve was pounding into the side of Flynn’s skull, desperately trying to throw him off.

Each smack of fist on face sent a jolt of light behind Flynn’s eyes, but he blocked out the sensation as he contorted his body around the wild animal in his grasp. Finally getting his legs curved and into position, he tightened down and pushed his opponent’s knee in an unnatural direction.

“Arrrrr!!! Fuck!!!” The mammoth on the floor growled in muffled pain through his yellow mouth guard as Flynn’s face drew back in the effort.

The veins on his neck turned to branches, standing out beneath his skin until it looked like they would come through the surface.

“Don’t fucking let go, don’t let go! You got him! Just don’t let go! Hips up and pull!” Roger screamed from outside the cage.

Flynn roared as Steve pounded into his kidneys from behind. They slipped on their sweat, sliding across the mat a few inches with each punch to his lower back.

“Fuck!”
Flynn yanked back another inch, and he felt the pressure build, any more force and he would hear tendons snap.

Fucking tap, you motherfucker! Tap, don’t you make me do it! Don’t make me do it…

Flynn’s heart pounded like a sledge against his chest wall as the broken beast under him writhed and sent another two slams into his head, and then he wrapped his fist around and managed a knuckle shot against his upper teeth, breaking open his lip and sending a stream of jet fuel over Flynn’s tongue.

The fight ended with a scream as Flynn adjusted for a split second, then snapped Steve’s knee backward just as he felt the first tap hit his shoulder.

Fuck you, motherfucker. You should have tapped sooner.

***

The ring whores stood at the ready as Flynn strode down the hall to the locker room with blood still streaming into his eyes and sweat stinging the wide gash over his nose and another across his left brow.

“Hey.” A sultry female voice greeted him.

Inside the locker room a bottle-blonde with tits on her shoulders and lips that looked like she was stung by a bee eyed Flynn up and down as he came around the corner.

“Hey.” He gave her a nod, and she took a step toward him.

“Great fight. Who you fight for? You should be signed, ‘cause that was incredible out there. Made me hot.”

She twisted a strand of something that used to be hair but now looked like dry off-white tinder.

“Yeah,” Flynn grunted.

All the fury still bubbled right at the surface, he knew what she wanted and six months ago, he would already have her on her knees or against the wall without any pleasantries.

But, it was a different world now.

Or was it?

Lilly had made her choice; there’s only so much gasoline you can throw on a fire before it burns itself out, and that was exactly what she did.

So why not? Fuck this thing in the cheap acrylic stripper heels and seal the end of what was obviously a big, fucking mistake. Guys like Flynn knew better that to hope for more. They weren’t cut from the cloth that let them have feelings and plan for a future.

No. For him, he felt most at home like this. In pain — or what most people would call pain — throbbing in his head and his body. Blood ran in his mouth, and he sucked it in and reveled in its flavor. This was who he was. Black hearted, his own sadist and masochist. He felt at home in pain, but he also felt damn good giving it out.

Lilly was a momentary lapse.

A tempting sojourn thrown in his path to test him for weakness, to steady his resolve. His wasn’t a life born of love, and how he thought he would have any frame of reference for what that would be, had been folly.

So, here stood his official key to the re-entry to who he really was. A bleached blonde gateway back to his comfortable hell. All he needed to do was spin her around, get his dick ready and make the break from any and all things Lilly.

“You’re still bleeding.” Trailer-trash Tracy took another step closer, dipping her toe in to see how warm the water was.

Flynn felt nothing; he was back where he belonged, where he understood things.

“Bend over; put your hands on that locker.”

***

He was going nowhere when the Bronco hit I-75.

All around him empty lots and burned out houses, shadowed figures dotted the streets as he hit the ramp at ninety.

Seven fucking days. Seven days since you left her in that shower. Why the fuck are you still here? Tomorrow, Boston. Out of this fucking shit hole, and I can’t see her again. Like fucking ever. It was get the fuck out of that room or kill her or me. Right? I had no choice. She gave me no choice.