Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRISTAN

R affie leans against the wall, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He’s got an unlit cigarette hanging from between his lips. As a kid, he was lean and had a full head of black hair. Now, he has a pot belly and a receding hairline he covers with a bad combover, which he distracts from with a lot of jewelry.

A perk of being a Mobbed-up Trentini insider is nobody gives him crap about any of that, I guess.

“You look good, brother,” he says. “Strong.”

I throw out a couple of jabs, the announcer’s voice booming through the walls.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Raffie scowls. “Can’t you at least try to have fun?”

“You ever been in a real fight—the sort of fight without backup? In a cage? It’s just me and him. I don’t know how old he is. I don’t know his background.”

“Are you scared?”

“Only an idiot isn’t scared before a fight,” I growl, “but I know one thing. I’m going to put my fist through his head.”

Raffie grins, and I turn away. I don’t like that smile. It’s like he thinks I’ve said this for his benefit. It’s simply the mindset a man needs before a fight.

“I mean it,” I growl, feeling the beast come out in me, the demon it takes to win a war. That’s what people have forgotten. Regular people, even Raffie, with his Mob shit … It takes a competent, aggressive, and beautifully violent man to make something happen. A man must love violence— fair violence, which means he might get hit, too.

It’s all well and good, “ooh-rahing” when the close air support is coming in, but when the enemy fires an RPG, and the cobra has to swerve suddenly, that buzz-cutting machine gun emerges. I had a friend who used to joke about the enemy, giving him another buzzcut.

Raffie looks lost. I snap back to the present. Something lately has got me feeling more, just feeling more, that’s it. I don’t get it. I need to focus on the fight—the beautiful violence.

“I mean a real fight,” I tell him. “One on one, or maybe there’s five of them and two of you, but you’ve got the better gear. Fine, but they don’t want to die, either. A fight , Raffie.” I walk right up to him, my chest pounding.

He looks offended for a second. Then he does a witness check as if he needs to make sure none of his Mafia buddies see this moment. I almost laugh. Raffie smiles, and the boy pushes through the lines and alcohol acne on his face. He’s the same kid who was cheering when I cleared my bike over Death Valley.

“You got this, man!”

He offers me his knuckles. I know he’s probably coked- and boozed-up, but for a second, it doesn’t matter. We bump knuckles so hard. It’s a miracle I don’t break something, but he grins and gestures with his cigarette.

“Light it,” I say, shrugging, as I go back to pacing the room and rolling my shoulders. “If a smoke’s worth of secondhand smoke is the difference maker here, I’m a dead man anyway.”

Raffie laughs, and, with my back turned, I hear the tsk of his lighter. I make the same noise. Tsk, tsk, tsk, throwing quick jabs.

Part of me wishes I had something to fight for or somebody, but I tried that. I can’t be thinking that now . I punch myself across the mouth, tensing my jaw. I need to forget. I need to be a monster. Whoever they put me against, they’re dead.