“I owe you. Thank you.”
I get back in the car, call Seamus, and drive—my mind racing the entire time.
Seamus answers right away. “What the hell happened?”
I fill him in.
“Somebody bombed your car. We have nothing recorded. This is insanity, these random attacks once a month. Seems like clockwork.”
Yes, yes, it does.
I know exactly why. There’s someone who doesn’t want me to pay that goddamn tribute.
“Is everybody else safe?” I ask Seamus.
“Aye,” he says.
He doesn’t know that Erin was there tonight. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anybody to know yet.
“Good,” I say. “We need to up the security at the club.”
“Agreed,” he says.
All the more reason for my betrothed to be nowhere fucking near it.
I find myself taking a route I haven’t driven in goddamn years. My hands turn the wheel without conscious thought, guiding me with purpose toward the one place that’s always made sense.
The ring.
I can’t get it out of my mind. I need to get in the ring. I crave it like a man craves drink.
I park Declan’s car and send a quick message to the group chat. I’ll be back. They’ll know where I am by now.
I need to be here.
This used to be my second home, before the club became that. When I was a lad, barely tall enough to see over the ropes, Malachy brought me to the gym to train. Taught me how to fight properly, not the scrappy street brawling every kid from Ballyhock knew, but real fighting. Technique. Discipline. How to read a man’s body before he even knows what he’s going to do himself.
It always felt perfectly right, being here. More right than school ever did, more right than sitting in a pew at Mass, listening to Father O’Brien drone on about sin and redemption.
In the ring, everything made sense. There were rules, but they were simple. Hit harder. Move faster. Don’t go down.
The rest of life was complicated. This never was.
Conversations die as I pass through the crowd. I hear the whispers, feel the eyes tracking me.
“Is that?—?”
“No fucking way.”
“Cavin McCarthy.”
“Thought he was done with all that.”
“Look at him. Does he look done?”
“He hasn’t fought since?—”
I don’t acknowledge any of it. My focus narrows to a single point: the ring.
