Page 71 of Uppercut Princess

The guard smirks. “Nothing I want. Just wondering what the big fuss is about.”

“Appearances aren’t everything,” I say. “Your ugly ass should know.”

The guy’s jaw ticks, but I smile up at him.What did he expect me to do? Stand quietly?Then again, Magnum did warn me to keep my mouth shut.

He waves the wand over me, and when he bends down to start at my feet, Johnny smirks at me. He winks, and I smile back. The wand goes off on my back pocket. He reaches inside to grab my phone, but that’s not all he grabs. He takes a fistful of my ass in his palm.

I don’t think. I react.

Fuck this asshole.

I wind my arm around his until I’m gripping his upper shoulder, then I pull him toward me, connecting his gut with my knee. He groans, his breath leaving him as I whisper into his ear. “You shouldn’t touch something that isn’t yours.”

“Bitch!”

Before he can lunge at me, Magnum puts his hand on his other shoulder, gripping him hard. “I wouldn’t if I were you. I’m sure your boss wouldn’t like the fact that you took your liberties with one of ours. You want to die on that sword? You fuck with her, you fuck with the rest of us.”

My mouth dries. To the side of Magnum, Johnny is fucking furious, and I don’t even think he knows why I did what I did. Magnum either for that matter.

“Just get the bitch away from me,” the guard seethes.

Magnum pulls the guy up and looks at me, telling me to remove my hold on him. When I don’t do it right away, his expression becomes stonier, the look telling me I better fucking comply right now.

I ease up on the pressure, and the guy pulls his hand from my back pocket and steps back. Johnny throws him to the side so he can come to me, and all the guy can do is sneer at us.

“Is there a problem?” another guard asks, peeking his head out from the mouth of the room at the end of the hall.

We all wait for what the guy’s going to say. I doubt he’ll say anything because if he does, he’ll have to admit I bested him with a knee to the gut, which never fucking feels good.

“You okay?” Johnny whispers into my ear.

I nod. “He grabbed my ass,” I say, feeling like I need to explain myself to them since I’ve completely went against everything Magnum told me not to do while we were in the car.

Johnny growls under his breath, eyeing the fucker like he would take his head off if he could.

I swallow, knowing I’m still playing with fire. If Johnny finds out about Brawler and Oscar, I can imagine what he’ll do since he won’t be worried about starting a gang war then. He’ll relish in taking them out for disobeying him.

Especially Oscar. Brawler doesn’t have the ties Oscar does. Oscar would get decimated. He could kiss his football career goodbye even though he doesn’t think he has one anyway. If he’s alive to worry about it, he’ll have to go back to the life he had when he got back from Spring Hill.

Johnny leans over to feather a kiss across my cheek as we follow Magnum and Fonz’s guard to the end of the hall. The space opens up to a room with floor to ceiling windows. The building we’re in is one of the tallest in this shitty city, and from this height, you can’t see all the disadvantage below. The dirty streets are farther away. The drug dealers on every corner are just people having friendly conversation with others. The room itself is dark though. The furniture, the adornments are all black with the walls a light gray color.

When we walk in, I notice Big Daddy K first, sitting stiffly on a black leather couch, one of our guards behind him. I vaguely recognize him from K’s house the other day, but the major thing that sets him off as one of ours is the fact that he’s dressed exactly like Magnum. I wonder how many guards Big Daddy K has.

Fonz’s guard stops next to her side while Johnny escorts me to stand next to his father. My stomach revolts standing this close to him, and I wonder which person in this room I should fear most. The man who killed my parents? Or the woman across from us, pulling on a cigar, embers blazing on the end?

Roza Fonz’s hair is done up in hundreds of braids that fall well past her shoulders. She has ebony skin, contrasted by a red slash of lipstick across her lips. She has on a red pantsuit that hugs her curves while she sits cross-legged on a couch that matches Big Daddy K’s.

“This is her?” she asks. She blows out a plume of smoke that wafts toward the ceiling in a haze. I can tell from her inspection and the telling twinkling in her eye that she has the same assumption of me as the guard who cupped my ass did. “This does not seem like a fair fight,” she says, finally turning her gaze over to Big Daddy.

“You let her worry about that,” he says. His voice is edgy, as is the barely tethered tension stiffening his body. He looks nothing like the guy I met earlier in the comfort of his own home. He’s on high alert though he’s doing a good job of masking it. If I hadn’t met him before I wouldn’t have noticed anything was amiss.

“It seems like any of my fighters I put her up against would throttle her. How much experience does she have?”

Big Daddy K chuckles. “What does it matter? Now that you’ve seen her, are you taking the deal or not?”

Roza sets her cigar down in an ashtray. “You may be willing to sacrifice young women, K, but I’m not. Women aren’t allowed to fight in my rings. I help them get off the street, not help them stay there.”

Big Daddy K glances over at me. The whole side of my face burns. He grabs my hand, and I flinch. He places it on the arm of the sofa, covering it with his own. My face loses all emotion. It drains, and I have no doubt the pallor of a ghost stares back at Roza. He chuckles, patting my hand. “Kyla wants to fight. I hear she’s been named Uppercut Princess to my clients.”

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