Page 45 of Carnal Wagers

I stared at her phone contact long enough to receive a new message. Levi continued to work my skin, the gun buzzing between us, but the unwelcome churning in my gut dimmed the high of the pain. For a long while, my thumb hovered over the contact options. In the end, I tapped the block icon on her latest phone number and swiped aside the message.

There was no place for a woman in my life.

Chapter 13

“You’re in Lower Roxbury.” Brody’s voice pitched so low it scraped the shell of my motorcycle helmet. The statement failed to mask his confusion, and I knew he was racking his brain for an answer. He never accepted his own ignorance. It would hit him soon enough. “Paulie’s location doesn’t match yours.”

“He’s not with me.”

My shadow, along with Big Charlie, rarely left my side, but tonight, I had them stay behind.

The motorcycle vibrated between my legs and groaned as I pulled into an open lot, half walled by the businesses standing around it.

“Why are you—” There it was. “No, no. Don’t do it. I’m calling Liam. Stay put.”

“Don’t bother.”

The bike protested with a sputter, an echo of Brody’s, as it splattered through puddles and came to a stop in a small parking area. I flicked my visor up. The wheel hub of the car to my left rested on a stack of bricks. Cracks decorated the asphalt. Dilapidated buildings stood firm between those with crisp refacing, each painted with graffiti, highlighted by the day’s last blazes of sunlight after a downpour. A few homeless people wiggled in the corners under their tents of cardboard and cloth to dodge the leftover trickle through their makeshift roofs. It smelled of old fuel, moisture, and poor choices. Piss and cigarettes. Stale dreams and a one-way ticket to hell.

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“Never said it was.”

Whatever Brody said next was cut off with a tap to the wireless connector on my helmet.

Sometimes bad ideas were exactly what was needed to clear out the mindless drivel. It was either that or lock myself in a padded room until this nagging urge to end it all swept itself back under the rug.

Trouble found me down a side street with low traffic, perfect for drug dealers. Exactly where a cluster of seven men with viper tattoos snaking around their foreheads and a rosary in its fangs—the symbol of the Urabá cartel—was spotted just this morning. They had been working O’Leary streets without our permission, and hours later, the fuckers were still there.

A trio lounged on an abandoned floral couch like they had nothing better to do. Two more leaned against the graffiti-covered red brick wall at their backs, where it met up with a chain-link fence. One stuffed his face with a burger, laughing at the others between bites.

Between the smothered yellow of two old streetlights glimmering to life, the last man completed a deal with a fidgety sort in a slap exchange, cash for one, a baggie for the other. At a glance, the contents weren’t white, more like a darkened orange or a pale red in this light. It was probably more of that pink cocaine crap I’d told that greedy shit stain, Joaquin Sosa, I wanted nothing to do with in my city.

Perfect. I rolled up my sleeves and curved my fingers into my brass knuckles that fit like a glove. Then I skulked up the sidewalk. My metaled hand clinked against the chain-link fence, making it rattle like a drumbeat to announce my presence.

The junkie didn’t notice. He tramped past me, nose buried in the baggy’s opening. With one controlled hit to the curve of his nape, he was out cold. Then I kicked the baggy into the gutter for the next bout of rain to wash it away.

“Hey, asshole, you looking for a fight?” The seller separated from his friend, hand wrapped around the grip of his gun tucked in his waistband.

A homeless man scurried away. He had the right idea.

“Once we’re through here, tell Sosa, Boston isn’t his for the taking.”

I didn’t give them more warning than that. Skin tingling with the restlessness of anticipation, I stormed the remaining three feet. His gun never made it out before my fist crunched once, then twice through his nose. His gun clacked to the ground, and I smacked it out of the way with the back of my heel. Copper tinged the air like an aphrodisiac, infusing my muscles with an ardent drive for more. I wrestled him back and grappled his neck into a headlock as his cronies finally got their acts together and came at me.

They slammed their weight against my legs. One swiped a fisted knife inches from my exposed neck, and it zoomed past in slow motion. A strike smashed into my hip. Another clumsily knocked my arm, loosening my grip around the neck of the seller. A knife tip scraped along my helmet, grating music like a mistuned violin. I sidestepped a jab and delivered one of my own. Grunts, groans, screams—it was all a chorus that dug under my skin and demanded more. More. More…

A man cracked his skull on the pavement and went still. Then another member of the Urabá cartel tumbled back, lights out.

Every hit fueled my quickening pulse. Every punch filled my reserves to the brim, begging to overflow, so much so that I bounced on my heels like a kid half my age high on testosterone. Oh yes, this was living. Nothing but this.

With every movement, I clawed my way to the surface and broke through the dam holding me prisoner. I sucked air into beaten-down lungs. I tasted the relief. I felt the pain, soreness, discomfort, delight, ecstasy, success…It was all there, zapping through my veins faster and harder than any hardcore drug I’d once tested.

Then it was like a freight train rammed into my side and ragdolled me to the ground. My head and helmet smacked and bounced as I rolled through grime, pebbles, glass, and trash that stuck to my arms and scratched furrows of deep crimson through the black ink on my arms and knuckles. The five remaining dealers piled atop me. My lip protested and cracked under a wayward ring smacking through the visor gap. My ribs argued and yelped as one threatened to give. My shirt ripped. Skin gave and stung under the clip of a knife, but I laughed through the pain.

The metal of my brass knuckles met calves and ankles. My knife slashed and cut. Blood splashed and poured onto the concrete that lapped it up. A third man fell out of play.

But my surge of adrenaline was draining. The aches registered. Each lob hit deeper and rougher. My head spun with every thundering wallop to the helmet. My arms strained under the bulk of the bodies above.