Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(78)
“What the hell!” she exploded. “How does he know about that? How do any of them? It isn’t like a single one of them has f*cking called to check on me. Even the ones that Tommy considered his friends!”
“I didn’t think so, or else you would have mentioned it.”
“What a f*cking *. Savannah! I don’t know that clown!” She stabbed a finger at the screen, where Meyers’s ugly face was still ranting.
“Did Tommy know him? Personally, I mean?” Everyone knew of him.
“If he did he never talked about him.”
“I would think we’d know someone who’s vowing vengeance in our name.”
“Look at him, he’s just using it to get to Mike.”
“And it’s getting to him. You can see it.”
Rowan watched silently for a moment. Mike took his seat again, but the pain was readily apparent in his sullen, haunted eyes, in the tightness of his jaw. “Yeah.”
Savannah turned her back on it to look at her. “What should we do? We can’t let that go unanswered. Especially with Mike thinking I hate him or something for signing up for this to start with.”
Crossing her arms, Rowan pursed her lips for a moment, then tapped them thoughtfully with a pink-tipped finger. “I still have Tommy’s manager’s number. He was another one of those I’m here if you need anything guys who I haven’t heard from since. Well, I need something now. I need a f*cking press release.”
“That could work. We could write something up, send it to him, and he could make sure it gets out to all the news outlets. I mean, look at this, Ro.” She pointed at the number of views the video had accrued. “Hundreds of thousands of people have already heard this river of horseshit. It makes me sick to think of it.”
“And Mike even tried to tell them he did contact us. He was being drowned out. No one is pointing that out, I bet.”
“I don’t know, I’m not even going to dare look at the comments.”
“Hell, no, don’t do that. Never do that. Let me find Rick’s number. And then we’ll write something.”
They worked late into the night.
Every day, he trained until he could hardly move. Then he went to sleep and started all over again the next morning. Eat, sleep, grind. Repeat.
Mike didn’t have much time to enjoy the sights in Mexico City, a place he’d never been. Jon kept his eating clean and his workouts efficient, though adjusting to the altitude was hell on him. Some days it was a chore to lift his arms, and he felt starved of oxygen. He and Jon both hoped getting acclimated to the thinner air at seven thousand feet above sea level for a month would benefit him during the fight. Meyers hadn’t bothered; he was training at his usual camp in California. Whether it was cockiness or carelessness, Jon insisted that he was going to regret that decision.
“These guys will be dropping like flies as soon as they get that first cut,” Jon had said, “but you’ll be a machine, kid.”
He might be a machine, but right now his engine was sputtering. Sparring with one of his training partners—he had several who were alternating taking the trip down to Mexico City to work with him—he was damn near out of breath after a couple minutes of throwing combos. But so was the other guy.
Kason was a good partner because he was quick, had a large arsenal of moves, and he wasn’t easy to shake. Mike’s T-shirt was already soaked with sweat, and he was wearing Kason down with jabs and kicks to his legs while Jon shouted instructions from the sidelines. His opponent wouldn’t expect an attack using muay thai strikes, so Mike’s strategy was to catch the f*cker off guard with some brutal kicks. When he sensed the time was right to get serious, he mentally put Frank Meyers’s face on that of his partner and let those f*cking hateful words from the press conference echo through his head. It was a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart, and after a moment of reading Kase’s movements, Mike spied his opening to deliver a spinning back kick that knocked him to the ground.
“Beautiful!” Jon exclaimed. Mike, suddenly feeling a little shitty, pulled his partner to his feet and hugged it out with him.
“Do that to Meyers and he’ll be taking a little nap on the floor,” Kason commented, tugging off his headgear.
“Yeah, well, I’ll cover him up and sing him a lullaby.” He could only imagine the satisfaction of connecting heel to chin with that scumbag and watching him fall.
“Impeccable timing there,” Jon commented, strolling over to slap Kason on the back and hand him a water bottle. “You all right? Got all your teeth?”
He worked his jaw back and forth. “I think that headgear needs heavier padding. Almost feel sorry for that guy right now.”
Mike shook his head. “Don’t. He’ll get exactly what’s coming to him.”
Kason headed out for the day, jokingly calling out that he was going to go throw up now. Mike went to the floor and rested on his back for a few minutes, cooling down and staring up at the lights until he went half blind. After a while he was aware of Jon’s concerned gaze on him. “Tomorrow morning, we need to work on that kesa-gatame escape. Meyers has been using it a lot.”
“Yeah.” Mike sat up and cranked off the cap on his own bottle of water. Nothing would ever be worse than losing to Frank by submission. He’d rather lose by decision for the third f*cking time, black out, take his own nap on the floor, than have to tap. He wanted an answer for anything the guy might try to pull out of his bag of tricks.