Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(36)
A fight was already underway. Some sucker in a cowboy hat was getting his face smashed by a fleet-footed wiry guy with a giant black cross tattooed on his bald head. The crowd was mostly jeering packs of men with their gang symbols and weapons on display in case anyone looked at them sideways. A group of them noted our entrance and laughed meanly, beginning to advance as they taunted us with obscenities in Spanish. Creed tensed and balled his muscles up but one look at those dudes and their hardware and you knew we would not come out ahead.
Gabe Hernandez interrupted, slicing through the crowd and impatiently waving the men off. One of them spat in the dirt and glared but retreated nonetheless.
“Gentry Boys,” Gabe smiled. “Which one of you will do the honors?”
“That’d be me,” I spoke up, pulling my shirt off.
Gabe seemed pleased. “Wait over on the sideline. I’ll have your man out after this is done.” He gestured to the bloody wreck of a cowboy lurching around in the spotlight. Gabe moved away to converse with a clot of cleanly dressed men who watched the action with quiet eagerness. I didn’t have to be told who they were; the high rollers, the owners of those pricey engines outside, the ones who were entertained by blood and willing to pay top dollar for it.
Chase nudged me suddenly and I saw where he was pointing. At first I didn’t remember where I had seen those guys before. I could only tell that, like us, they were a little out of place. But one of them nodded to us in recognition and it clicked that they were in the crowd of frat brothers whose buddy I had bested a few weeks back, the night I accidentally tackled Saylor McCann. A few of them watched us with a look of amusement as their hands groped the asses of some scarcely dressed females.
“You okay there, boy?” Creed asked and I realized I must have grimaced over the thought of Saylor.
“I’m in focus,” I assured my brother and cracked my knuckles while we waited for the cowboy match to be called.
When the ref held up the hand of the winner and the beaten man crawled off to the sidelines, Gabe glanced over at us and nodded.
The ref was only about four foot eight but he had a voice like thunder. When he beckoned I strode calmly out to the center and waited.
“So we already got quite a few greens riding on the next battle! Not too late to toss your change in. On one side there’s one of the Gentry Boys, some of the nastiest white boys west of Texas. He’ll be taking on The Man, The Legend, Emilioooo.” The announcer let the name drag and I figured it must mean something around here. Men shouted, women looked bored and money flashed as bets were finalized.
A roar rose from the far corner and a slight guy who appeared to be little more than a kid stepped forward. As he danced obnoxiously I noted that he looked all of about fifteen and I wasn’t pleased to be charged with taking him down. It wasn’t the kind of fight I was looking for.
But then the kid grinned at me and bleated a round of howling laughter before falling back into the shadows. What came out of there next was a few shades more challenging.
The dude was bigger than Creed. He was bald and the leathery cast to his bronze skin led me to guess he had seen quite a few more summers than I had. He took his time getting out, twitching his muscles and rolling his neck back and forth. His bare chest was a cornucopia of hard fought scars and faded ink. I was betting that if he hadn’t seen the inside of the state facility in Emblem, he had done time somewhere.
Emilio smiled and the light glinted off the gold caps on his teeth. A few of his crowd shouted in Spanish. “Facil victoria!”
I kept my face passive but inside I was seething.
Easy win, they thought. Fuck, no.
Emilio thumped into the center of the clearing which passed for a fighting ring.
“Gentlemen,” hollered the announcer, “I would tell you to keep it clean but what’s the f*cking point of that?” The crowd was in a riot for blood. I’d already seen the cowboy get carried off by his pals. I damn well wasn’t going to be next.
“That’s how I remembered you. Hit first.”
It might not have been exactly what she’d said in a sad voice this afternoon but the memory pierced me in the final seconds before combat.
“That’s right, sweetheart,” I growled, putting my tight fists up.
“You talkin’ to yourself there, trailer trash?” Emilio circled me, a gruesome smile on his face. “Or prayin’ to your sorry bitch of a maker?”
I almost spat a creative suggestion for what he could do with his ugly comments. But I stopped myself. It was a distraction, and it was deliberate. I needed to keep my attention on his next move.
Emilio ran his meaty tongue over his lips and feinted, laughing when I flinched. So that was going to be his game. He was going to try to mess with my head until I got flustered enough to take a misstep. But up close I could tell that besides his scars, his arms weren’t well cut and he carried an extra twenty pounds of pure flab around his gut. That meant something. It meant there were soft spots. All I had to do was reach them.
Emilio was grinning again. He believed I was like the frat boys, a privileged white kid who got off playing on the dirty side for a while. With a quick jab he got me in ribcage and I responded with a series of lightening blows to his upper chest. He had little choice but to hold in a defensive position as I rained a storm of pent up fury with jab after jab.
His corner quieted over that and Emilio backed up a few paces when I spent that burst. His face showed that he had changed his mind. He had recognized my ferocity and realized I might be more like him than like those quietly haughty college kids who were sitting on the sidelines.