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Chapter 1
HUNTER
One year earlier
Losing Sean was harder than anything I'd been through. He was my older brother and the one I always looked up to. One day he was in my life and I took him for granted. The next, he was dead and I realized I'd never see him again.
At first, the pain felt like it would never end.
Sean's dead… He's dead…
I felt as though a dark shroud covered me and was going to smother me with despair.
But the sun rose the next day like it had the day before. Life went on despite everything. My pain didn't matter to the universe.
A month passed. Then two. We began to find our way back to some kind of new normal without Sean around, cleaning the gym in his slow deliberate way and making us smile with his wit. My Uncle Donny was still in custody awaiting trial on several racketeering charges.
We all began to emerge from that darkness. My father began to spend more time with the new fighters who came to train at the gym. Donny's boys—my cousins—talked less and less about their father's case and more about the usual material—which fights they bet on, which women they were fucking, and other mundane topics.
As for me, I felt almost normal being back in Boston. I spent weekends at the cottage, lying in the sun and drinking myself to sleep at night.
Donny wasn't there to take the helm, so I ran the business, gradually assuming management of Donny's properties and the work my father couldn't handle. Since I was no longer in the service and had fallen out of my usual routine of rigorous training to keep in top shape for special operations forces, I lost the hard cut of my muscles and top fitness levels from when I was in the service. My hair grew out of the trademark Marine whitewalls I'd worn for the past four years.
One afternoon, when Conor had some time off from his rigorous fight schedule, he was back in Boston showing a new gym member the ropes while Dad and I looked on. I watched as Conor landed a soft punch on the flabby young man's abdomen. Not hard. Just enough to make him pay attention.
"Keep your guard up," Conor said, pushing the young man's gloved hands up higher. "Like this." Then Conor demonstrated how to guard his face and the flabby young man followed suit.
My father turned to me. "Why are you slumming around? I thought you were in meetings all day."
I shrugged. "Meeting's cancelled for the afternoon so I thought I'd come down and visit my favorite old man." I put my arm around his shoulder and squeezed affectionately. Since Sean's death, I found myself spending more time with my dad, showing him more affection that was perhaps my usual. Losing Sean made me realize how quickly everything could go wrong. I didn’t want to waste any more time not showing him or Conor how I felt.
My father grimaced at that, no doubt thinking about my stepfather down in Florida, who married my mother after they divorced.
"Your only old man. He's no father," he said, and I knew exactly what he meant. He had an intense dislike of my stepfather and liked to show it as often as possible.
"He's all right, Dad," I said, thinking of the man my mother had chosen to marry after she and my father divorced a dozen years earlier. "He's a lightweight, unlike you. Mom knows she could never find another you. He's the best substitute."
"Yeah, right. Tell me about it."
My father found someone new almost right away—in fact, I suspect his girlfriend and now second wife, Cathy, had been waiting in the wings. None of us boys had known about her, but a few months after the divorce was final, he brought her home for dinner one night and she never left. That was that.
"Since you're free and easy, how about taking the bank deposit down for Cath?" he suggested and turned to me. "She's got a bitch of a cold and would rather go up to bed. I could take it, but I've got a meeting about the fight on Saturday."
"Sure," I said, having made the deposit dozens of times over the years, before I stopped working for my dad and joined the Marines.
"Are you coming to the fight?" he asked, his expression hopeful. "We'd love to see you."
I shrugged, not sure I would. I'd stopped fighting when my mom and dad divorced and I went to live with her for a few years. Her new husband was a lawyer who had tried to get me to focus on academics instead of sports for a change. Still, Conor would be fighting, and I knew it would please my dad if I was there.
"Sure," I said and smiled at him when I saw how pleased he was. "I'll come for Conor's fight."
"Bring a date." He punched my arm playfully. "It's about time you started to get serious about someone."
"I'm doing fine," I said, waving him off.
"Seriously, Hunter. Don't get too used to being a bachelor. You should find someone before you get too old and ugly."
