“When one of us can’t stand anymore.”
He rolls his eyes. “And you’re concerned about limiting each other.”
“Less talk, more action.”
With that, we start.
At first, it’s like we’re back in the dojo again, being trained by Tito’s top enforcers. We pace around each other, sizing each other up, before either one of us moves close enough to be a threat.
Matt strikes first, faking a right jab to hide the windup for his left hook. His fist lands square on my jaw, and my head whips to the side. My cheek stings, inside and out, and I spit out blood.
“Nice one,” I say, but Matt doesn’t let up. He’s already rounding on me for a second hit, and I realize he’s taking my words to heart.
This is about to get violent.
Since my left arm is hampered by the still-healing gunshot wound, I’m limited in the punches I can throw. That means I’ll have to either keep Matt at a distance or draw him in, where we can grapple.
He throws several hits back-to-back, striking my chest, shoulder—the injured one—and face. I barely spot the opening in time to grab his hair and bring his face down to my raised knee. Matt grunts, and when we separate for a moment, blood gushes from his nose. It doesn’t look broken at first glance, but I’ll have to apply some ice for him after this.
Matt wipes his upper lip with the back of his hand and grins wickedly when he sees the blood. “Fighting dirty, I see. Even Tito wouldn’t harm my face.”
“Javier would.”
He shrugs, and we’re back at it.
We trade blows for over an hour, working up quite a sweat. By the time Matt calls it done, we’re both drenched and covered in smeared blood. My stitches have popped again, Matt’s cuts from Tito’s beating have opened up, and both of us have bloody noses and various new wounds all over our bodies. We haven’t reached the point where one of us is on the ground, but we’re damn close.
“Okay,” he huffs out, his chest heaving, “that’s enough for today.”
“You need ice,” I say, grabbing a towel from a nearby rack and blotting the sweat on my face. “I got your nose pretty good there.”
“Your lip could use some TLC as well,” he says, reaching for his own towel.
I touch the spot and wince as a lance of pain shoots through my lip. “Ooh, yeah. So much for your stellar stitching.”
To my surprise, Matt breaks out in a grin. “We’re going to have a hard time explaining this to the men when we all meet up. They’ll assume we got attacked by rivals, when it was just the two of us dicking around.”
“Training,” I correct him. “Not dicking around.”
“You’re right,” he says, pulling me close for a kiss—blood and all. “Dicking around comes later.”
“Here?” I ask, hoping for some roughhousing of a different sort.
“No. Let’s not confuse things. Besides, we’ve still got work to do.”
“I suppose. Off to find a new safehouse, then?”
Matt nods. “For a start. The locations that were hit housed our best men. We’ll need to find some new recruits. This really set us back.”
Ooh, Matt’s got a point. With our remaining associates scattered and licking their wounds, we’ll need to start recruiting new blood. That means weeding out the wannabes and upstarts, finding new members with the kind of skillsets we need—if our rivals haven’t scooped them up and recruited them first, that is. “How do you propose we find these recruits?”
“I’ve got a few ideas, actually.”
Chapter 14
Matt
For our first safehouse after the attack, I use some of the remaining Syndicate funds to purchase a sprawling mansion outside the city. A bit opulent and conspicuous, but necessary. It’s the only location that has enough rooms to accommodate our needs, and it’s easy enough to guard. Prebuilt wrought iron fencing helps, along with the included high-end security system. It also came fully furnished, which saved us a few bucks.
