in front of the mirror for a few moments, then pulled the hood up and lifted his hands, lightly curled into fists. Yeah, like a Lonsdale ad.
He lowered his hands when the doctor came in for a quick check, asking him if he felt all right, not dizzy, and peering into his eyes with a penlight. All routine. Health check before and after the fight, and constant monitoring in between.
“Car’s waiting,” Les said, opening the door. “You ready?”
“Got something to eat?”
Les offered him a protein bar and led him out, hand between his shoulder blades.
“What about Cash?”
“Schmoozing the contacts, arranging the next fights.”
Which tended to involve expensive clubs and lots of booze. Being a promoter certainly had its perks. “Tell me he’s talking to the editor-in-chief of Boxing Weekly.”
Les laughed. “I’ll mention it to him. Thought you didn’t like the media?”
“They can suck my dick, but they can also help me get a title fight,” Brooklyn said as they were passing Curtis, who joined them. Sadistic bastard wore his wraparound sunglasses even indoors. Brooklyn had once mentioned it made him look like a twat and received Curtis’s tonfa to both kidneys, hard enough that he’d pissed blood for five days, but not hard enough to incapacitate him. Taught him not to “flirt with the guard,” as Les had called it.
He got in the car between Les and Curtis and peered out the window as they zipped through the streets, going east.
“So what’s my gig?”
Les hesitated, and Brooklyn wondered if it was because he disapproved. But they both knew the realities—without these side jobs, he’d never dig himself out from under International Stewardships United, plc.
“She’s one of those who likes it really rough.”
“Just rape the bitch.” Curtis turned his face, and his lips barely moved as he spoke. “Rip her clothes, tie her up, fuck her in every hole, call her whore, and she’ll get off on it.”
Brooklyn glanced at Les. His trainer shrugged. “That’s about the extent of it.”
Thug kink, indeed. He could do that. After a fight, he was capable of just about anything. Rough sex would definitely scratch his itch.
It didn’t even matter if she was attractive. His standards, never the most refined, had adjusted to the new realities. Alcohol used to get him in trouble during his misspent youth, when any warm body would do, but these days he did what he had to.
The car stopped outside a dingy hotel in East London. Not quite an area of burning rubbish bins, but close enough. There were no women out, and the few men cast furtive glances at the traffic, like they were keeping watch minutes before trouble went down. It made Brooklyn’s fingers itch.
Curtis opened the door and followed Brooklyn into the hotel. Les stayed in the car. A huge guy behind the desk merely glanced up as they walked into the foyer.
“We’re on honeymoon,” Brooklyn began, to get a rise out of Curtis, but the big guy behind the counter merely said, “Room 202,” and turned his head back towards the TV.
They headed down the corridor. “You gonna watch?”
“Want me to?” Curtis asked, blank-faced. “Can’t get it up otherwise?”
“If she’s into that?”
“My dick’s not for sale.” Curtis knocked on a door marked 2 2. “Ma’am. Your delivery. Call me if you need anything else.”
The door opened. The woman behind was pretty, maybe in her late thirties, statuesque in high heels, a knee-length grey skirt, and a silk blouse. She looked up into Brooklyn’s eyes and, with a smoky voice, said, “He’ll do nicely.”
BROOKLYN PICKED up the pace once they were farther into Hyde Park and out of the throng of Japanese tourists. God alone knew what they were looking for. The statues? Or just to tick a box on their “I Was Here” list before they hit Bond Street? Yes, by all means, but at seven in the morning on a Sunday?
Les’s steps were synchronised with his, but Les carried a good thirty pounds less weight. However, Les was almost twenty years older. That had to count for something too.
“You going to talk about it or not?” Les matched his new speed without any problems. Racing ahead was not a good idea. Brooklyn had tested his limits thoroughly when he’d signed up with ISU—that was what people called it: “signing up.”
While ISU tried to avoid public displays of brutality, and corporate stewardship was for all intents and purposes pretty much invisible, its chains bound tightly and with almost no slack. Curtis or any of the other