Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(5)
But there was a world of hurt none of them knew about. Even the ones who lived out in our neck of the grubby outlying desert would have been shocked to see now we hunted ground squirrels to fend off the hunger pangs. It was a rare cloudy day in the desert when our mother emerged from her fog of addiction long enough to notice she had children. Our father, Benton Gentry, was the lousiest piece of filth who ever walked. In a long life filled with heinous acts the worst thing he ever did was beat his pregnant wife to a pulp, throwing her into premature labor. She almost bled out in surgery, taking the three of us with her. Her jaw still pained her and she was never able to have any more children, although that might have been a blessing. Benton could have killed us all and sometimes I thought he would. Although he wasn’t much nicer once we were on the outside, eventually we learned to fight back.
Chase, Creed and I were always surrounded by a shifting collection of motley relatives. Family lore said that Gentrys found themselves out Emblem’s way in the 1930s. A pack of forsaken Okies who chugged west in their jalopies en route to the golden country of California, one of them glimpsed the wide irrigation canals and figured they must be closing in on the Pacific Ocean. And so they stayed. Most of their descendants were shells of something less than humanity, strung out and useless. It was best to keep wide of them. But when Uncle Chrome visited for a stretch we clung to him like a life preserver. He’d done time for some of the worst things a man could do to another man, but he knew shit. He knew how to hit and where a body was softest. He would spent tireless afternoons with the three of us under the brutal sun. He had scars everywhere and most of them he didn’t like to talk about. He met a bad end, Uncle Chrome did, spread out all over the road three years ago when his bike took a drunken tailspin on a freeway outside Flagstaff. I still grieved over that. Uncle Chrome was one of the only adults who ever seemed to really care in a way that was honest.
The surface of the roof was hot under my back. I removed my shirt and lay flat, letting the day’s heat soak through my skin while I stared up at the sky. I always looked for the Three Kings even though they were harder to find out here amid the city lights. They comforted me, a reminder of my brothers and the unbreakable entity we made together.
Creed was right; it had been a good fight. My challenger was just another frat boy but quicker than most. Stakes were higher this time. For us, it might mean the difference between eating well for a few months or scraping together lousy pennies for backbreaking labor under the summer sun. He’d gotten me good in the ribs twice. I fingered the firm, muscled skin covering my ribcage and pressed. Yeah, I’d be feeling that tomorrow.
Frat Boy backed away after he’d gotten in those shots and I circled, taking shallow breathes to fend off the pain and gauging my opponent more carefully. The way he kept glancing back at his cheering fraternity brothers told me a lot about him. Almost as much as the scuffed combat boots he must have scored from an army surplus store.
Creed had set things up with this crowd before. They were wealthy, arrogant, as were most of the boys who gravitated to this sport around here. But anything they’d learned had been taught to them in sterile safety. They couldn’t fight for crap. This dude was different though. He wasn’t really one of them, no matter how desperately he wanted to be. The frat probably pledged him for this purpose, so they could throw him out here and test what value he had. If he failed they would probably toss him away like a bony fish.
The venue was an abandoned warehouse on the other side of the Salt River. It was adjacent to an old bread factory which hadn’t operated in decades, yet somehow the yeasty smell of the dough lingered. The only light was from a few old camping lanterns. The only noise was the bloodthirsty yells of men who had money riding on the fight’s outcome.
My opponent had gotten cocky pretty quick under the hooting praise of his buddies. He parried and feinted in a show which began to irritate me. Some of these guys were f*cking dancers. I wasn’t. This was about beating the man in front of you. It didn’t need to look pretty.
The guy’s crooked-tooth smile was centered on me but I could tell he wasn’t really focusing. I could feel the rising fire in my blood, the pulsing rush which would end his night. I didn’t need to glance back to know that Creed and Chase were there. My brothers were always there.
I continued to circle, slowly, ever so slowly. The frat boy took mistook it for fear and decided to talk trash.
“You had enough?” he mocked. He had one of those naturally pinched faces which gave him a beaten look no matter what expression he wore. I kept quiet.
“Yo boys,” he yelled. “I think this little poodle needs to be taken for a walk. What do you think?”
He’d looked away, just briefly enough. When he returned his gaze to the ring his beady eyes registered alarm as I advanced. I got him in the jaw and he stumbled, spitting a line of bloody saliva. When he righted himself I saw he was no longer unfocused. I also saw hate in his narrowed eyes. I was standing between him and whatever reward he’d been promised by those fraternity shits.
Gabe Hernandez watched us on the sidelines, his hand at his chin, a mild look on his face as if he were watching something no more compelling than a dull sitcom. He was a major player, the guy to deal with when the stakes got into the four figures and beyond. Of course, that was still small potatoes in the world of underground fighting. Creed had told me that even in the dusty belly of Phoenix there were six figure fights. But the higher the payout, the more brutal the action. At least that was the word.