Ringside (2 page)

Sloane

“But I
need
this job,” I told my boss Frank for
what must have been the hundredth time. “I know I ditched the bar when it was
busy. I know I shouldn’t have run off like that, but you can’t just fire me!”

“I can, and I
have,” he said, giving me a little shrug that told me the conversation was
going to end soon, most likely by him getting one of the bouncers to drag me
out kicking and screaming.

“But that’s
bullshit!”

“Look Sloane, you
know you did the wrong thing. You just fucking admitted it, right?”

“Yeah…”

“So where does
that leave me?” He reached out and tapped the dog-eared roster on the clipboard
hanging from a hook on the wall.

I didn’t know what
to say. I’d busted my ass for this place, worked longer hours and more
difficult shifts than anybody. I’d never asked for
anything
, not even when most of the other staff had called in
‘sick’ on extremely short notice because they wanted to head off to some
concert, leaving me to work twelve hours straight without so much as a break.

But Frank didn’t
care about that. He knew how shit it was here, and he’d never done anything to
fix it. I was crazy to think he’d be sympathetic now.

But still, I had
to give it one last try. “Frank, just listen to me. This job pays my bills. It
puts food in my mouth and clothes on my back. I’m stuck at school all day,
which means I don’t have a lot of options when it comes to employment. I admit
I screwed up, and it won’t happen again. Can’t you just give me a second
chance?”

Frank didn’t say
anything. I could see that he was considering it. Outside his office the music
banged on the wall hard enough for the pulse of it to make its way in here, and
as I waited for my boss, a man notorious amongst my coworkers for cutting
corners and talking out of both sides of his mouth to make a decision on my
fate, a sick little twist in my gut warned me about what was about to happen.

Frank had decided.
I could tell by the way he stood up that things had changed, and even as I took
an instinctive step away I realized that I was putting the door to get out of
his office even further away. He adjusted himself in his pants, and I knew
without having to look that he was hard.

For me.

I felt a rush of
hot bile threaten to swim up my throat, and I shook my head with determination.

Frank unzipped his
pants.

“No way,” I said
forcefully. “Not going to happen.”

“Come on, little
girl,” this man old enough to be my father said to me, his voice almost soft
enough to get lost in the music of the bar.

Almost, but not
quite.

“Never.”

He frowned. “Just
give it a chance, huh? You think you’re the only piece of ass around here who
said no at first? You go have a talk to a couple of your friends after and then
they’ll come clean. They’ve been polishing my knob and letting me get my dick
wet in exchange for the cherry shifts for years. Now it’s your turn, Sloane.”

I didn’t know what
to say. There weren’t words to derail this train, and if there were, I didn’t
know them. I let Frank take another step closer to me, and when he looked down
at zipper to fish out his dick, I balled up my fist and let him have it.

My Dad had hit me
so many times that I’d learned how to take a punch and how to give one, and I
gave Frank a big fat sucker punch right then and there, a solid uppercut that
connected squarely with his nose and instantly covered my fist in a hot squelch
of blood.

It staggered him,
and he forgot about getting his dick out pretty fast, covering his nose with
both hands. “You bitch,” he tried to yell, though his voice sounded strangled
in pain.

I lashed out with
my foot and caught him exactly where I needed to, his hard, skinny penis
flopping lewdly as I kicked him in the balls hard enough to drop him to his
knees.

I thought about
trying again, but escape was my goal, not kick Frank’s ass.

Besides, I knew
how this went. I’d hurt him, but surprise wasn’t on my side anymore. In a
couple of seconds a heady combination of rage and adrenaline would push the
pain Frank was feeling aside, and then he’d be on his feet and on me before I
could get away.

I rushed past him,
scrambling for the door. I reached for the doorknob, only to have a chunk of
the wall near my head seem to explode, showering me with bits of plaster and
wood.

Confused, I risked
a look back at Frank.

He was aiming a
gun at me.

“Not so fast,” he
said, his finger on the trigger taking up all of my vision. “We still have a
little negotiating to do, don’t you think? I think I owe you something.”

Angel

“Just go and find
Sloane, wherever the hell she is,” I told the bouncer, a dude I’d seen around
the block over the years. He was big enough, and maybe, just maybe if he played
his cards right he’d go somewhere. But right now, he was a nobody talking to a
somebody, and no matter how much he bitched that his boss and Sloane were
having a conversation, we both knew it.

“Sorry man,” he
told me. “It don’t work like that.”

I nodded, even
though I wasn’t agreeing. “It’s Jai, right?”

He looked surprised
that I knew his name, but you don’t get to where I am by forgetting the people
around you, especially when you might be squaring off against them some night,
be it sanctioned or otherwise.

I grinned. “Jai,
cut me some slack, huh? I told this Sloane chick to hang on to my keys so I
didn’t drive drunk. She’s a nice enough girl, yeah?”

Jai nodded.

“So she did me a
favor. But now my fucking cab’s here, and I need to get my keys back. I’m not
asking for her number or her address or anything like that. I want you to take
me to her. That’s it.”

He gave it some
thought.

I jumped in to
sweeten the deal. “You looking for a spot on the circuit? Maybe hoping to bust
your knuckles against some heads, make a name for yourself? I can help with
that. Help me out here and I’ll throw your name around at Cut.”

Just the mention
of Cut made his eyes light up, and I knew I had him. It was the best boxing gym
in Brooklyn, and if you weren’t training there, you weren’t worth a mention.
“Yeah?”

“Hell yeah.
Somebody will bite. Man, I heard Jamel’s looking for a new sparring partner.
Imagine that, bro.”

Jai’s big, white
grin spit his black face. “Man, that sounds dope.”

I pointed past
him, back at the bar. “So get me to my girl, huh? My cab’s not going to wait
around forever, and I don’t think either one of us want to see me go from
offering opportunities to making threat, yeah?”

That did it. Jai
did the smart thing and motioned for me to follow him as he shouldered through
the crowd.

I gave myself a
mental pat on the back. Talking my way to Sloane had been easier than I’d
thought, but then again things are often easy when you have something somebody
wants. Jai wanted to box, and I could put him in a place to do it.

Enough said.

He lifted the
hinged section of bar that separated customers from staff and then led me down
a hallway to an office. “One of the girls said she was in here with Frank,” Jai
told me.

“Cool.” I opened
the door without knocking or asking permission. I could tell by the look on his
face that I’d taken Jai by surprise with my boldness, but he didn’t try and
stop me.

I have to admit, I
was still buzzed, but the instant I opened that door, it was as if a cold wave
had broken over my head, washing all of the fuzz along with it. My senses were
on high enough alert now that they let me do what I’d been unable to do all
night, ignore Sloane. She was right in the doorway, and I looked past her and
saw a guy that could only be Frank on the other side of the little room. His
nose was bleeding and his dick was hanging out.

I smelled
gunpowder, and an instant later I spotted the gun, a little cheap Chinese piece
of shit that Frank was frantically trying to stash, now that he’d been
interrupted.

“Boss, I didn’t-”
Jai said from behind me, but I held up my hand at him without looking to cut
him off.

“Let’s go,” I told
Sloane.

She didn’t argue.
I let her walk past me and felt her hover there, unwilling to go too far.

“Frank?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“You know who the
fuck I am?”

He nodded slowly.

“Did you touch
her?”

Frank shook his
head so hard I thought it may just fall of and roll under his desk. “No! She
hit me, Angel, then kicked me while I was down!”

“And the gun?”

He looked away,
refusing to meet my gaze. “I was just trying to scare her. I’ve got a business
to run. I can’t have my employees walking all over me. If she went out there
and bragged, God knows what kind of a mutiny I’d have in this place…”

“Frank, do you
know why they call me Angel?”

He paused,
suddenly afraid that he didn’t. It was the grown up version of that moment when
you walk in to class and the teacher announces a test you haven’t studied for.
“Because… Because of your last name?”

I shook my head.
“You think my Dad gets called Angel, just because he’s an Angelino too? What
about me Mom, or my baby sister. You think they get called Angel, just because
people are too fucking lazy to say all the syllables of our last name?”

“No!” he
practically shouted. “No!”

“They call me
Angel because I’m hard to hit. I’m pretty, you see? Even if you do connect a
couple of times, you can’t knock an Angel down, you know?”

He nodded, though
I wasn’t sure he was getting it.

“I’m telling you
this Frank as a favor to you. Sloane doesn’t work for you anymore. You won’t be
bothering her again, because if you do you’re going to be answering to me. You
got it?”

I left without
letting him answer, turning my back on his pathetic dick and his shitty
peashooter and taking Sloane by the arm to guide her out.

Sloane

“How did you know
I was in there with him?” I asked, once we were outside in the cold.

“The bouncer’s a
friend,” he said, tossing the big black guy that had escorted us to the exit a
nod and then pointing down the street. “You going to let me drive you home?”

I shrugged. I
couldn’t really refuse, not after what he’d just saved me from. There was every
chance Frank had just been trying to scare me, to reinforce his role as the big
bad boss of the bar, but…

But that was
bullshit, and I knew it. If I was honest, Angel had come in at exactly the
right time. There was no telling what would have happened if he’d been even a
minute later than he’d arrived.

“Well?” he asked,
pointing at a shiny new Jaguar that probably cost as much as the four years of
college I was currently trying to wade through.

“There’s no way you’re
driving. You’re drunk, Angel. It isn’t safe.”

He thought for a
moment, and I was sure he was going to argue with me. I wondered how I’d get
his keys away from him, if push came to shove, but Angel surprised me by simply
reaching into the pocket of his jeans and handing them to me.

“You drive, then,”
he said.

“What? It’s New
York, Angel. I don’t even have a license!”

He shrugged. “If a
cop pulls you over, they won’t give you any shit once you tell them you’re
doing me a favor.”

I took a step back
and crossed my arms across my chest. “You really do think you’re hot stuff,
don’t you? A modern day Untouchable…”

“Just telling you
the truth. There isn’t an officer out there who wants that kind of trouble, not
if all they get out of it is giving some poor girl a ticket for driving without
a license.”

“Poor girl?” I
almost threw his stupid car keys back in his face. “Listen, just because your
Daddy has money or whatever doesn’t give you the right to be a jackass. I may
be poor, but that doesn’t make you better than me. Not by a long shot.”

“I didn’t mean it
like that,” he said. “I’m drunk. Cut me some slack, huh?”

I shut up. He had
a point. I knew I was sensitive about my upbringing, but I could tell that I’d
jumped to a conclusion just now and crucified him for using a harmless little
word ‘wrong’.

I looked down at
the keys in my hand. The Jaguar was a big, powerful machine. I wasn’t even sure
I
could
drive it whether I wanted to
or not. The last time I’d gotten behind the wheel of a car it had been a little
hatchback Corolla almost ten years ago.

I sighed. If I
didn’t drive, I knew Angel would. The guy may have been a pushy jerk for most
of the night, but he’d saved me from Frank.

I owed him. I’d
just have to drive slow and be careful not to hit anything, all the while
crossing my fingers that we didn’t stumble across a cop.

“Get in,” I told
him reluctantly.

He did as I asked,
going around to the other side and climbing into the passenger seat.

I got in too.
Fortunately it was easy to adjust the seat and the steering wheel to suit me,
though when I turned the key in the ignition the throaty growl of the engine
intimidated me.

“You’re sure about
this?” I asked.

No answer.

I turned to Angel,
only to find that he’d managed to pass out in the midst of buckling his seat
belt.

“Shit…,” I
muttered, leaning across him and fumbling for the belt. This close, it was
impossible not to admire his incredible physique. Even unconscious like this,
snoring like a drugged mule, the broad muscles of his chest and his chiseled
abs were as hard as rocks.

I bit my lip, instinctively
inhaling his scent. Sure, there was liquor on his breath, but under that was
the clean, honest bite of aftershave and a hint of sweat.

I felt myself
bushing again, and found my hands lingering on his body as I secured the
seatbelt.

Then I fished his
registration out of the glove compartment and scanned it for an address. If it
was nearby, I was going to assume it was where he lived.

I guess I
shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw that the Jag was registered to the
Ritz hotel, though whether that meant they’d loaned it to him or he was using
the expensive hotel as a permanent address I didn’t know.

Whatever. At least
I knew where I was going…

Once finished, I
turned back to the wheel, remembering to take off the parking brake before
checking my mirrors, signaling, and pulling tentatively out into the
nonexistent traffic.

For a moment,
driving down the streets of New York in a car I could never afford with a man
far too handsome for my taste and far too aggressive for my comfort level, I
wondered who I was.

I’d always prided
myself on not needing any of this crap, but I could tell how seductive it was
to have your needs met, to have the respect or fear or whatever these people
felt toward him.

I let myself
pretend I belonged for as long as it felt right, and by the time I got to the
Ritz and left Angel with the doorman and the doorman with the keys, I was done
with the fantasy.