Page 59 of Hot Irish Halloween

For that reason, she wasn’t so shocked when she walked into the gym and saw a man holding a camera and filming or another holding an equipment pack and a light on a stick. Grinning, she quietly slipped in. But the second she saw the chaos inside, she lost the smile.

Derek La Roque was there, talking shit at Jack’s back with a smirking white-haired man by his side. Jack was at ringside, his back ramrod steel, looking up at his students who had sparring gear on but were trading insults with La Roque. Charlie was cursing loudly at La Roque, too. Everyone else in the gym was looking back and forth like they were watching contestants lobbying grenades in a dangerous tennis match.

What. The. Fuck?

20

DONNIE DARKO

JACK

“What the hell areyoudoing in here?”

Everybody froze at the pissed-off, feminine voice that rang through the air. They turned in unison, including Jack, who was immediately stricken. Goddammit. It was Penny, and she looked angry as fuck.

She looked like he felt. Absolutely furious. And that only made all of this that much worse.

“It’s your pretty old man over here,” La Roque said. Despite the neat dark suit and clean white shirt with his hair pulled back in a man bun, nothing could make him look like a gentleman as he glared at Penny while pointing at Jack. “Did you teach him how to give head? He must have sucked some good dick at league HQ because I got suspended. He got me fuckingsuspended!”

Penny audibly gasped. Everything inside Jack urged him to pound this bastard into dust right then and there, but he held back, held onto his control with vicious determination.

“No,yougot you suspended for going on television and spewing pure foolishness,” Charlie said in a querulous voice. “There is such a thing as unsportsmanlike conduct, ya stupid geebag, whether you’re in or out of the cage. If that jabbering gobshite over there had taught you not to hit your opponents after they were already down or taught you not to act the maggot in public, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

The “gobshite” Charlie was referring to was Quinn, who was with the camera crew smiling.

“Aw, now, Charlie. You always think the worst of me. It’s like we were never friends.” It seemed impossible that Quinn’s grin could get any bigger, but it did.

It was all Jack could do not to grab him by the lapels of his leather coat and push him out the door. He’d been seething since the two had shown up with their filming crew, asking for a match then and there, but he’d refused to play along. Kiss his endorsement contracts and his public reputation good-bye for a brawl that would be on every social media platform and every sports broadcast? He knew that’s exactly what they hoped to achieve with those insults and that camera.

There they went again, underestimating his intelligence.

“I don’t give a fuck about any of that shit,” La Roque spat out. “It should only matter that I’m the best fighter in the league…in theworld!” Now he was practically shouting with his arms flung out dramatically.

The camera was eating up the performance. With every breath, Jack detested him more and more.

La Roque went on. “And now with this suspension, I can’t fight for six months.Six fucking monthswhile somebody else snatches the title from under my feet. All because this old pussy is too scared to face me and answer for what his family did to mine.”

Whether the onlooking crowd understood his incoherent accusations or not, it didn’t matter a bit to Jack. He needed to get Penny out of there before La Roque pushed him off the slim tightrope he was walking.

Jack grimaced, heading toward her. “It’s nothing, love. Let’s go.”

“Yeah, look at him go. The big man, running away from another fight to go hide under mommy’s skirt,” La Roque jeered.

Penny’s eyes widened. “You need to shut your fucking mouth.”

“Let’s go,” Jack said quickly before he could explode. This wasn’t good for the baby or her. “We’re going.”

“No,he’sgoing,” Penny said, pointing at La Roque. Then she addressed the creep directly. “You need to take your little camera crew and go find some attention somewhere else. Maybe fromyour mother.”

La Roque was already heading for the door. He stood with his back to it, blocking it before they could leave. He ran his tongue over his teeth, looking Penny up and down.

“I can see why you like her,” La Roque said with a lusty grin. “She’s tougher than you. Maybe she should get in the cage. I’m sure she’d put up agoodfight.”

Jack stopped when he reached Penny, a dull tinge of red at the corners of his eyes beginning to shade his vision. All he had to do was take three steps closer…

“Move,” Jack gritted through his teeth.

“Move me, motherfucker,” La Roque said. The camera’s blinking red light beamed in Jack’s eye like a beacon. “You and your bitch aren’t going anywhere until you tell the world that you’re a —”

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