Page 38 of Bastard Prince
I must have looked like a sad sack, because the next thing I knew, Rock was up off the couch and rifling through the closet in the corner, coming out with two gym bags. He held them up with a smile.
“I know exactly what you need,” he said with a smile, and I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my own face. There was a reason the man was my best friend.
We leftSin City, taking our separate vehicles again, my Audi easily out-pacing Rock’s 1970 Chevelle SS as we wound our way north, headed forWrath. It was still relatively early, so the place was not exceptionally full, with the staff getting ready for another busy night of customers in the sports bar. We didn’t stop as we entered the building and headed straight for the basement. It was fight night again, but right now, the entire room was empty, our steps echoing through the cavernous space like gunshots.
Rocco was absolutely right; this was exactly what I needed to clear my head. Making our way to the ring in the center, we each changed into the shorts and sparring gloves we kept in the gym bags, and after a quick stretch, faced off, the familiarity of sparring with Rock helping to wash away all the other bullshit that had been weighing me down.
We danced around each other for a little, taking pot shots here and there, and I let myself fall back into what had always been a place of peace for me.
Fighting was something I understood, something that made sense. The goal of a fight was to hit the other person, hurt them before they hurt you. It was one of the most basic parts of human biology, after feeding and fucking, I guessed. A fight was where a man was at his most primal, his most intuitive. It was where you either won or lost; there was no in between.
And I fuckin’ loved it.
Of course, Rock and I never foughtthathard, leaving just bruises, not broken bones.
Usually.
But there was nothing like a good punch to the face to really clear away the fog and get you thinking straight.
I struck first, throwing a quick jab that he easily dodged, following it up with a left hook and then a right cross, both of which also missed.
Rock chuckled. “You tryin’ to hit me or kiss me, you pansy?”
I ground my teeth and took a deep breath, watching his movements before throwing a hard left to his body, smiling at the surprised grunt he let out when I actually connected this time.
“Okay, okay,” he said, stretching one arm over his head and taking a few shallow breaths. Settling back down, he came at me with a quick combo of his own, forcing me to back up fast to avoid a punch to the face.
We went on like that for a while, both of us swinging hard and sweating like crazy. I was starting to feel better, but the longer we went on, the more aggressive Rocco’s punches seemed to become.
“You look like you have your own issues to work out today, Rock,” I said with a sarcastic grin. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“Fuck you, Argenti,” he spat, coming at me again. “You’re the one with problems backing up like bad plumbing. Me? I’m fine.” His words were strained as he kept swinging as he spoke. “Just fuckin’ fine.” This time he caught the side of my face with a left hook I was only partially able to dodge, the padding of his sparring glove sweeping across my cheekbone as I turned my head at the last minute.
“Yeah, bro. You seem really fine.”
“Whatever,” he snarled, pacing back to the other side of the ring. “You gonna tell me what your dad had to say about this shit-storm?”
Placing my hands on my hips and taking a deep breath, I accepted his change of subject as the apology he meant it to be. “Not a whole fuck of a lot, unfortunately. Apparently, they got their own clusterfuck going on in New York, so he didn’t have much to say about anything.”
“Figures, doesn’t it?” he asked. “You wait almost two decades to get into the Mob, and the minute you do, the whole thing falls apart around you.”
I gave a derisive snort. “Fucking for real, man.”
We stood there for a while, lost in our own thoughts, as our heart rates came back down. Rock was frowning into his phone screen, clearly unhappy with whatever he found there, while I turned a slow circle, surveying my club, looking, but not really seeing it.
I knew what I had to do next—talk to my wife—I just needed to get off my ass and do it.
I was about to tell Rock that I was leaving to do exactly that when we were both startled by the door to the club slamming open.
And there she stood, in all her raging glory, looking at me with nothing but fury in her eyes.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Her words were quiet, but I still felt them as though she had shouted in my face.
“Oh, shit,” Rocco muttered, and I turned to see him sliding out of the ring on the other side from Francesca, backing away slowly and circling around to head for the door.
Chickenshit.
