Chapter 1
Breathe in, breathe out. Focus. Those fights, that ring, that chain link cage, it was often kill or be killed. Not only was he a fighter. He was a survivor.
He’d been through hell. Every single moment he’d lived through had prepared him for this. The blue of his mother’s eyes, so like his own icy irises, flashed through his mind. He saw them cold, unstaring, at the bottom of the stairwell after his father pushed her… he’d watched his mother die. Survived in the system, lived on the streets, made a way, provided for himself. He’d waded through the muck and shit of life and come out the other side. This was his chance. This was his break. He was ready.
One look at his hands, hands that were scarred with the rough passage of time, aged past his twenty-eight years, assured him that they were the hands of a fighter. He’d always been good at it. The only thing he was ever good at.
I was built for this.
He already knew who his opponent was. Daniel Anderson. The guy was an animal. Nearly seven feet tall. Sheer muscle. Shiny bald head with a snake tattoo winding around it. His lust for the ring was famous in their circle, an underground world he’d entered into, not quite understanding what it meant. He knew now. He knew, from the minute he started training, that there was no getting out.
I’ll make it. I’ve always made it.
His hands rested on his bare knees. They never shook or trembled. Some guys liked to wrap them. He didn’t. He liked feeling his own skin, feeling the blows he was landing on his opponent. The split skin, the bruises, the pain, that would all come later. In the ring, in the heat of a fight, he knew it would only get the adrenaline coursing and adrenaline was what kept you alive.
He was only going on what his trainers said and the fights he’d seen, but he’d been in his fair share on the streets. He knew all too well the thrill that raced through the blood, fired up the nerves, heightened the senses, turned a man into an animal. He swore he’d never become that. In that ring out there, with the crowds screaming for blood, for torment, for death even, he could be killed, but he promised himself that he’d never be a killer.
A pair of shiny black shoes scuffed into the small, dingy locker room. For the amount of money the fights brought in, it sure as hell wasn’t invested into the scene, but then again, that was the point. It was underground, cage fighting. It was supposed to look like the end of the world. Like a last ditch stop for desperate men, modern day gladiators.
Dallas looked up, past the dingy, grimy concrete floors, wooden benches and row of metal lockers that were never used by anyone. No, men sat in that room to be kept from tearing each other apart before a fight, or after. It kept the crowds away, those gathered outside the thick metal door. There was a locker room on each side and a common space in the middle. One cage fight a few nights a week. Betting in another room and around the cage. Most of the deals were done before fight night ever arrived. Millions of dollars exchanged hands over those fights. A damn ticket, if you could call it that since that was the last thing that gained a man admittance into the concrete world of sweet pain, blood and greed, was ten thousand. Ten thousand per person per fight. No wonder Roman Ricci dressed in thousand dollar suits.
“You ready son?” Roman’s trainer, Del Sarcona, one of many, was the guy who had prepped him for months in a high end facility across town.
The second he signed up for it, gave his word, he was ushered into a new world. He no longer slept in a roach infested apartment with holes in the walls, leaky roofs, used needles littering the halls and the screams and blows of his neighbors echoing through the walls.
He had a nice penthouse condo. All glassed on top, a view of the city. Roman Ricci had taken one look at Dallas and he knew his value. He knew he could fight. It had been only the best after that. It was all part of what Dallas had come to suspect was a trap. He was promised money if he fought and won. He didn’t doubt he’d see some, but how much? The only thing he knew past the endless trainers, dietitians and stream of those working for Roman Ricci, a guy who ran countless fighters and made his money off the backs of their blood, crushed lives and sometimes deaths, was that he knew he had to survive. He had to make it through to the other side. He’d done this to finally get ahead, to give himself a shot at the kind of life fate never had in store for him.
He wanted this, the lifestyle where you didn’t have to scrape by, didn’t have to work twelve hours shifts just to survive, a chance to actually be something. He wanted it so bad he could taste it. It was bitter, acrid, sharp and tangy like the iron of his blood.
“I’m not your son,” Dallas answered roughly. He met Del Sarcona’s shrewd, dark eyes.
The guy didn’t blink. He was a monster of a man himself, though he was in his late fifties. He’d been a boxer and a damn good one at that. Had his bell rung a few too many times though and it made him damn vicious. He was a pitbull in practice. He’d laid Dallas out more times than he cared to remember over the last few months.
Del shrugged. He wasn’t a bad man. He had no family that Dallas knew of, but then again, they’d never exactly exchanged pleasantries. The ring was his home, the crowd his family. He’d been at the top of the world at one time. Once a champion, always a champion. If it was a lonely life, Del didn’t let on. He was all granite, right down to those dark eyes, square jaw, thin lips and crushed, crooked nose.
“You’re my son now. You mean something to us out there. You represent Roman Ricci and he’s the kind of man that people know not to disappoint. Catch my drift?”
Dallas didn’t give an actual shit about Roman Ricci and his fucking disappointment or praise. All he cared about was getting ahead. He’d done this to give himself a damn shot at life and he wasn’t going to fail. He wasn’t going out in some black body bag. People would know his name. They would fear him and then, when he’d made his money, he would escape. Disappear and live a quiet, peaceful existence.
Peace. He didn’t even know the meaning of the word.
“So you ready? You going to take down that animal out there? That guy is hungry for your blood.”
“I know. He won’t get it. He won’t get a single punch in before I finish him.”
“Overconfident then?”
Dallas narrowed his eyes. He stood slowly. Though Del was a mountain of a man, they stood eye to eye. “You think you’ve trained me for a few months and got me ready for that cage? You think it was you who taught me all that I know?”
Del snorted. “Course not. I know that you’re all raw anger and the purest, most natural fighter that I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. None of that will do you an ounce of good if you don’t keep your head on your shoulders. That guy takes it off, it’s game over.”
“He won’t get a punch in.”
“And that’s not overconfidence?” Del sneered, his thin upper lip lifting to reveal a gap toothed smile that was anything but cheerful.
“No. It’s what’s going to happen. I didn’t come here to get taken out. I’m going to be on top. Starting tonight. My first fight. On top is where I’m going to be. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“Other men have said the same thing. Some have been carried out the back door, if you catch my drift.”
“I catch it.”
Dallas slammed his hands together. Already he was disappearing inside himself, the adrenaline pumping. He saw his father’s face, the drunk fucking bastard. He felt those blows raining down, bruising him, making him bleed, even as a small child. He saw his mother’s sightless blue eyes, watched her tumble down the stairs backwards until she came to a sickening halt at the bottom, those eyes forever open and unseeing, the man who had bred him, father too good a word, standing over her, face a contorted mask of drunken disbelief.
It was a damn good thing they sent him to prison. Dallas would have killed him if he had the chance and then where would he be?