Page 5 of Four Cards Exposed

James

The punch connected with his jaw, causing his head to spin around. James felt his brain bounce off the inside of his skull.

Fuck.

One more like that, and it’ll be lights out for the evening.

He couldn’t afford to lose this fight. Each fight he won served to further cement his position in the group.

James jumped back quickly, out of his opponent’s reach, feeling the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He tasted blood, probably from his split lip. He didn’t think anything was broken, but that had been close.

He didn’t look at the small crowd of around thirty people forming a circle around him and the other guy—he knew he wouldn’t be getting any help there. These people were here to be entertained. Most of them would be happy to find blood splatters on their shirt by the time they left the bar.

The bloodier, the better.

Several men in the crowd began chanting his name. “Jay! Jay! Jay!”

His opponent, a ruddy, muscular man with a distinctly shaped square head, chose that moment to press his advantage. James saw him coming from a mile away. The man was a slugger, the kind of fighter who relied on a single, well-placed power punch to knock out his opponent.

He’s not getting another chance tonight.

James let his opponent get close to him. Feigning discomfort, he lowered his left arm a few inches, opening up his side to attack.

He didn’t have to wait long. His opponent fell for it hook, line and sinker, putting everything he had into a single punch designed to obliterate James’s ribs.

At the last instant, James shifted sideways. He watched his opponent power on beyond his body, unable to stop the huge momentum he’d created, exposing the right side of his head.

James didn’t hesitate. If there was one thing he knew how to do, that was to fight dirty.

He punched the side of his opponent’s meaty neck. He hit hard, holding his hand vertically to protect his knuckles. He didn’t want to end up with a broken hand. At the very end, he held his punch. His objective was to incapacitate the man, rather than cause him real damage.

His opponent slammed onto the ground hard—hard enough that the floor shook. James let the referee, a small man dressed in black so any blood spatters wouldn’t show on his clothes, push him back to another corner. He watched as the referee kneeled beside the fallen man.

“Six.”

Stay the fuck down.

“Seven.”

Please.

“Eight.”

Don’t get up.

“Nine. Ten.”

The man’s fingers and feet moved, but he didn’t attempt to get up. The referee grabbed James’s arm and raised it high. “We have a winner!”

The crowd roared.

James looked over at his opponent, hoping he hadn’t hurt him too badly. The man he’d come in with, most likely his manager, had rolled him onto his side, and was talking to him quietly. James took that as a good sign.

James’s attention was pulled away as the circle opened up to let a large, red-haired man through. His name was Sean Moore, and he was the leader of the organization James—Jay, as he was known here—had been tasked with infiltrating.

James lowered his eyes as a sign of respect, and so the other man wouldn’t be able to read the disgust in his eyes. Over the last three months, James had gotten more and more comfortable in the role he was playing, but hiding his feelings from Moore was by far the hardest part of the job.

“Jay, my boy,” Sean boomed. Though they were both in their thirties, the man loved to throw his weight around by referring to James as a boy. “Good fight. Good fight.”