CHAPTER THREE
Bones
ARIANA HAD NO goddamn clue what she did to me. I’d kept my hands off her, because she was young and fucked up, and I wasn’t the type of man who took advantage of that. But now she was twenty-one and sprawled out on her bedroom floor with her pants open and low, showing off her flat stomach and her sexy black thong.
And, she was shit-faced.
Eyes full of lust, she stared at me, tugging up her shirt ever so slightly to reveal more soft, smooth skin. I wanted it under my fingertips. I wanted to touch and caress her. I wanted to bend her over her bed and fuck her until she was screaming out my name, begging for release.
But she came with baggage and wasn’t someone I could fuck and leave, and I didn’t need any drama in my life.
I resisted. Then, I helped her up and she started grinding on me. Grinding. Against my dick. Fucking heaven and torture all in one.
Knowing I needed to sober her ass up before I gave her what she so clearly wanted, I ordered us food and made her coffee, all while thinking about the shit I wanted to do to her. About all the ways I wanted to make her moan. I could tell she wanted it almost as much as I did, but no way was I about to screw with Markie’s drunk little sister.
So, I fed her pizza and cake and tucked her into bed with a mixing bowl beside her in case she got sick. Trying not to think about the way she grabbed my shirt and begged me to fuck her, I let myself out of her condo and locked up behind me. By the time I got back to the apartment I shared with Angel (and now Markie, too), it was almost midnight, and I needed to head out soon.
Angel sat on the sofa, hovered over his laptop working. He gave me a nod as I walked in and went back to work.
“How’s Markie?” I asked, slipping into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water.
“Good. Sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb her, so I came out here to work. What are you up to?”
I was closer to Angel than either of my real brothers. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, because he knew I wouldn’t lie to him. And although Angel was neck-deep in the family business, his duties ran more toward technology, where mine encompassed anything one of the bosses told me to do. Work was on a need-to-know basis, and Angel rarely needed to know what I was doing. Unless, of course, it conflicted with guarding him. But since he’d been tied up between the hospital and the apartment for the past week, he was probably going out of his mind with boredom.
“Just got back from Ari’s,” I said, taking my water into the living room. I sat beside him on the sofa and glanced at his screen. He was working on specs for some new gadget.
“Is everything okay?”
I nodded. “For the most part. She was drunk. Apparently her twenty-first birthday was yesterday and we all missed it.”
“Shit. Markie’s been so out of it, I’m sure she has no idea what day it is. I’ll remind her next time she wakes up.”
“Or give it a few days,” I said with a shrug. “We got pizza and a cake.”
Angel gave me a lopsided grin. “Did you sing to her?”
“Fuck no, I didn’t sing to her. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
He chuckled, giving me side-eye as he went back to his laptop. “Markie says Ari’s got a thing for you, you know? Be careful with her. She’s been through some shit.”
Ariana had made her feelings toward me known multiple times tonight, although it sounded more like she wanted to fuck me than date me. She hadn’t opened up to any of us about what had happened to her in the year she’d lived in Vegas alone. Angel and I had run a background check on her, and she had nothing. The night we met her, she was jacked up on some shitty drugs and her organs were in danger of shutting down. I’d found her while looking for her chooch of an ex-boyfriend, Matt Deter.
Some people find rock bottom in Vegas. Ariana found rock bottom’s basement.
The girl was a knock-out, but she made shitty choices and half the time I didn’t know whether to scold her or comfort her. It bugged me that Angel had told me to be careful with her, like I was some asshole who couldn’t see how fucked up she was.
Like I was the kind of asshole who’d take advantage of her when she was drunk and trying to shed her clothes…
Damn, I wish I was that asshole.
“I’m aware, Angel,” I replied. My voice held a little more bite than I’d intended.
“I know.” He shrugged me off, unaffected by my tone.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, I stood. “I gotta get out of here.”
Angel looked up, his mouth open, before glancing at his bedroom door and closing it. My friend had cabin fever for sure. Markie needed someone with her twenty-four, seven, though, and he wasn’t about to pass that job on to anyone else.
We all had trust issues coming out our asses.
“What’s Carlo have you doing?” Angel asked.
I told him as much as I knew about Joey Durante before slipping out of the apartment. Angel promised to look Joey up and see if he could find anything on him while I headed to the fight club one of our informants frequented.
* * *
Fight clubs always reek of sweat, money, blood, and anxiety. Having done my time proving myself in the cage, the familiar stench welcomed me home, tensing my shoulders and filling my veins with adrenaline. It has been about a year since my name has been on the docket, but I still hungered for the high that came with dominating the cage.
I loved to fight, but I stayed away from this place because it came with risks. Sometimes people limped out of the cage, sometimes they were carried out on a stretcher, and sometimes they left in a body bag.
But the cage made men out of boys.
At least, that’s what Carlo said when he’d signed me up for my first fight. I was fifteen and danced around the cage for the first round. I got cocky in the second round and had my ass handed to me. I’d left a lot of blood in the cage over the years, and then last year Carlo told me to stop. He said I was too valuable to waste in the cage, and if I needed to fight, he’d find me an opponent.
Now, I was back with his blessing.
Carlo considered Joey a threat that he had very little intel on. Despite the way the Marianis had the city wired, Carlo hadn’t been able to provide me with much. Just a few recent pictures of Joey and some dark-haired girl he was with. Carlo hadn’t even been able to tell me their relationship, but he wanted them both dead.
I had a bad feeling about the whole situation, and I never went in blind, so came to the shadiest fight club in Vegas, figuring I’d turn over some rocks and see what secrets came scurrying out.
The place was packed. Greed and desperation danced around the cage on the backs of two fighters. The one in blue shorts was beating the ever-living shit out of the one in the gold shorts. I’d been in both positions, familiar with both the high of kicking ass and the humiliation of getting my ass kicked so publicly. The cage had taught me that training can only take a fighter so far. It takes determination and resolve to dominate your opponent. Thankfully, I had both.
Scanning the room, I found the informant I’d been looking for. Christian Pruitt was a sleazy little man with graying blond hair and a round stomach that hid his thighs and covered the arm rests of his sturdy metal chair. One of the few seated spectators, he sat ringside, watching the fight with a tight expression and a container of heartburn medicine in hand. No doubt Gold Shorts was his fighter, and he’d bet too much money on the kid.
I’d never been much of a gambler and didn’t understand the draw. I worked too hard to throw my money away, especially in a city where most everything was rigged. I knew, because the Marianis rigged it. The fights were one of the few industries we didn’t touch, but that didn’t mean that some other family wasn’t paying off fighters or officials.
Keeping one eye on the fight, I crossed the room to stand beside Christian.
“Bones,” Christian said, his gaze locked on the cage. Gold Shorts took a right hook to the jaw and Christian winced. “What brings you to the Pit?”
No doubt he already knew. Christian’s bread and butter was information—it’s how he paid his gambling debts—and since the Mariani family had been busy with our recent house cleaning, he probably knew more than we did about what was going on around town. I was counting on it, in fact.
“Heard a rumor Joey Durante’s back in town. Thought you might know where he’s holed up and what the fuck he’s doing here.”
Christian leaned back in his chair, his smile greasy. “I might know something about that, but it sounds like valuable information. Wonder what the Marianis would be willing to pay?”
“You know we have deep pockets, Christian.”
The fight in the ring was winding down. Blue Shorts shoved Gold Shorts’s face into the metal wire of the cage and did a number on his back and kidneys. Finally, Gold Shorts bounced off the grate and fell to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head and blood dribbling from crisscross patterns dug into his cheeks by the wire. His nose looked broken and his jaw was already darkening with a massive bruise. It might have been broken. The announcer stepped into the cage and announced the victor. The crowd went wild and I braced against people pressing forward to place their next bets.
Gold Shorts’s chest rose and fell, but he wasn’t moving as the medics hurried in and looked him over. They loaded him on a stretcher and carried him out.
Christian swore, shaking his head. “That’s a damn shame. Thought for sure he’d get further than one round. I didn’t peg him to win, but I thought he’d at least make a goddamn round. It’s almost impossible to get a good fighter around here anymore.”
I nodded, anticipating what was coming. Christian had seen me in the cage and knew I could hold my own. It was just a matter of time before—
“When was the last time you were in the cage?” Christian asked, staring up at me.
I fought a smile. Some people were so damn predictable it was almost too easy. “Over a year.”
“A year? Lots of new faces around here.”
Again, I nodded. “Even if the old-timers recognized me, they’d probably think I lost my edge.”
“You’d be going against Crusher.” Christian nodded at some big, hairy motherfucker pacing the side of the cage. Looked like he could do some damage, but his movements were slow. I’d have to get in and out before he swung.
“What’s my cut?” I asked.
“Information.”
I chuckled. “Not enough.” I’d be putting my life and body at risk. “You know the family won’t risk me without something more than that to show for it.”
“Twenty-five percent.”
“Bullshit. We both know you’ll make a killing off this.”
He eyed me. “Only if you win.”
Since Christian knew what I was capable of, the asshole was just busting my balls. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t like the risk,” I pointed out. “Seventy-five percent.”
He snorted. “Thirty.”
Not in the mood to haggle with the dirtbag, I said, “Fifty percent and all the information you have on Joey Durante, his associates, and anything related. Take it, or I walk, Christian.”
He gave me another greasy smile. “Sounds like you better go put your name on the docket.”