Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 120240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“Right,” he says. “I instructed the guards to take Erin and her sister home and closed the club for the night.”
“I owe you. Thank you.”
I get back in the car, call Seamus, and drive—my mind racing the entire time.
Seamus answers right away. “What the hell happened?”
I fill him in.
“Somebody bombed your car. We have nothing recorded. This is insanity, these random attacks once a month. Seems like clockwork.”
Yes, yes, it does.
I know exactly why. There’s someone who doesn’t want me to pay that goddamn tribute.
“Is everybody else safe?” I ask Seamus.
“Aye,” he says.
He doesn’t know that Erin was there tonight. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anybody to know yet.
“Good,” I say. “We need to up the security at the club.”
“Agreed,” he says.
All the more reason for my betrothed to be nowhere fucking near it.
I find myself taking a route I haven’t driven in goddamn years. My hands turn the wheel without conscious thought, guiding me with purpose toward the one place that’s always made sense.
The ring.
I can’t get it out of my mind. I need to get in the ring. I crave it like a man craves drink.
I park Declan’s car and send a quick message to the group chat. I’ll be back. They’ll know where I am by now.
I need to be here.
This used to be my second home, before the club became that. When I was a lad, barely tall enough to see over the ropes, Malachy brought me to the gym to train. Taught me how to fight properly, not the scrappy street brawling every kid from Ballyhock knew, but real fighting. Technique. Discipline. How to read a man’s body before he even knows what he’s going to do himself.
It always felt perfectly right, being here. More right than school ever did, more right than sitting in a pew at Mass, listening to Father O’Brien drone on about sin and redemption.
In the ring, everything made sense. There were rules, but they were simple. Hit harder. Move faster. Don’t go down.
The rest of life was complicated. This never was.
Conversations die as I pass through the crowd. I hear the whispers, feel the eyes tracking me.
“Is that—?”
“No fucking way.”
“Cavin McCarthy.”
“Thought he was done with all that.”
“Look at him. Does he look done?”
“He hasn’t fought since—”
I don’t acknowledge any of it. My focus narrows to a single point: the ring.
It smells familiar—sweat, blood, desperation, victory. A ref sits by the bar, drinking. The bartender materializes at my elbow with a shot glass. Jameson, neat.
I take it without looking, throw it back, and slam the glass down on the nearest table. The whiskey fucking burns, but it’s not enough.
I reach the ring’s edge and grab the top rope, vaulting myself up and through. The crowd goes quiet.
The canvas is stained with old blood, some of it probably mine. My boots hit solid, and I straighten, then roll my shoulders.
I begin to unbutton my shirt, one button at a time, and the crowd falls to a whisper.
I shrug it off, grab a fistful of my undershirt, and yank it over my head.
The roar is instantaneous.
The entire fuckin’ club goes wild. The sound hits me like a physical thing—screaming, stamping, fists pounding on tables.
I toss my shirt outside the ropes, and it disappears into grasping hands.
I turn in a slow circle, bouncing on the balls of my feet to warm up. They can all see it now with the overhead lighting, the scars mapping my ribs, my back. Evidence of who I am, what I’ve done, what I’ve survived.
Prison didn’t soften me—it honed me into something sharper, meaner.
I crack my knuckles and roll my neck. The familiar pre-fight ritual settles over me like a second skin.
“Well, fuck me.”
A low growl of a voice, familiar and unwelcome, cuts through the noise. I know it before I look.
Tommy “The Butcher” O’Sullivan shoulders his way through the crowd, that ugly grin splitting his fuckin’ face. He’s thicker now, running to fat around the middle, but his hands are still the size of goddamn dinner plates.
We’ve got history, Tommy and me. Bad blood that never got properly settled.
Excellent.
“Heard you’ve gone soft inside, McCarthy,” he says, climbing into the ring and stripping off his own shirt. “Heard prison feckin’ broke ye.”
“Do I look broken?” I say to him, then wink. “Come find out, ye thick bastard. Let’s see if your fists work better than your brain.”
The spectators are losing their minds now. They know what this is—old grudges, old violence, coming home to roost.
I don’t respond beyond that. I watch him, let him run his mouth while I measure the way he’s moving. He’s favoring his left side. Knee’s probably shot.
Noted.
“Nothing to say?” Tommy spreads his arms wide, playing to the crowd. “Cat got your—”
I hit him.
No warning, no preamble. My right fist crashes into his jaw, and his head snaps back. Blood sprays from his mouth. I’ve split his lip.