My mind rebelled against it.Please let him be okay, tonight,I offered up to whoever was listening.
Alec turned and his face lit up as he saw me. “Hey!” Then he frowned and jumped to his feet. He must have been able to see I’d been crying. “What happened?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Some guys shook me up.”
His face hardened into a snarl. “Who? Where?” He glanced upstairs, ready to run up there.
I pulled him into a hug. “It’s all over,” I told him. “They’re dealt with.” I squeezed him close. “Somebody came along and beat the crap out of them.”
“Who?” His voice was surly, now. I knew what it was—he felt guilty he hadn’t been there, and now he needed to know every detail.
I squeezed him harder. “It’s okay. Just some Irish guy. I think he fights here, or he used to.”
Very slowly, he stepped back so that he could see me properly. “Irish?”
I nodded, confused by how shaken he looked.
“NotAedan O’Harra?The one with the scars?”
NowIstepped back. “Yeah.”
His eyes had gone wild. “Sylvie,stay awayfrom that guy.”
“Because he used to fight here?Youfight here!”
He shook his head. “He didn’t just fight here. He fucking demolished anyone who set foot in the pit. He’s the meanest son of a bitch anyone’s ever seen. Alegend.” He lowered his voice and took my hands. “Sylvie, he’s a real bastard. I heard—“
At that moment, someone else descended the stairs. I recognized the footsteps all too well: unhurried steps in expensive leather shoes and an accompanying clang and rattle of metal. My mind had been spinning with what Alec had told me, but suddenly raw fear pushed all that aside. I felt my shoulders tense up. Alec squeezed my hands. But I could see that he was just as scared as me.
“Well,”said a voice from the doorway. “Isn’t this cute?”
Rick scared the crap out of me. Rick scared the crap out of everyone.
Once, about twenty years ago, Rick had probably been an okay kid. Then—the story goes—his dad beat him so bad his leg didn’t heal right. Little Rick got a walking stick. And maybe from the pain in his leg, maybe from his dad’s cruelty, he developed a mean streak. The sort of kid who beat stray dogs with a car aerial until, exhausted and terrified, they’d fight one another.
Twenty years on, he’d moved up to people.
He got through most days, from what I’d seen, by downing coffeeand snorting coke. It had left him thin, his eyes bulging from his skull. Not a guy who’d win in a fight. So he’d traded his wooden walking stick for an aluminum cane, vicious as a baseball bat but less conspicuous on the street. It was a gaudy thing with a crystal on top as big as my fist. He kept it polished and he didn’t use it all the time when he walked. He preferred to trail it along walls. It was the cane, banging against the metal staircase that I’d heard as he approached.
Rick’s favorite way of punishing someone was to get them down on the ground and then beat an arm or a leg with the cane until the bones were powder. And this was the man who basically owned my brother, in the kind of backroom “management” deal that involves no paper or ink, only handshakes and threats.
Alec could easily have taken him in a fight—maybe even with the cane. But Rick never went anywhere without his protection, two ex-heavyweight boxers called Al and Carl.
We turned. Rick was in his favorite gray suit with a blood-red shirt and silver tie. He always dressed classy, as if that could disguise what he was. His two bodyguards were right behind him.
“Am I interrupting something?” asked Rick. “That how it works in Holland? Brothers and sisters get....close?”He leered at us.
I wanted to kill him. Alec was the one thing I had left in the world. How could Rick take something so good and twist it into something perverted? I shook my head.
That was a mistake. With Rick, there neverwasany right answer. Whatever you did, it would end in pain or humiliation.
“I don’t mind,” said Rick. “If you want to kiss him for good luck. A good, big kiss on the lips.”
I heard Alec’s intake of breath. Normally, he tried to keep me away from Rick and I was happy to oblige. Coming down here had been a mistake.
I shook my head again.
“Rick—” started Alec. He tried to keep his voice level, but I could hear the anger there.
