“I don’t think we can actually trick him,” he said pensively. “He won’t be taken for a ride.”
No, I’d gotten that impression too.
Of course I’d noticed him before all this. Shay was an incredibly sexy young man, and apparently he loved extreme pain. In theory, that made him our favorite drug. But I’d written him off when I’d learned about his behavior toward Sadists. Or rather, why he might want that pain. And if that was true, he wasn’t a masochist. He was just a lost kid looking for punishment.
According to River’s brief surveillance and profiling, Shay was sharp and trusted no one. He was fearless because he’d given up on something, on life—or if he lacked direction or purpose. He was highly skilled and trained in martial arts like kung fu, Krav Maga, combat sambo, judo, and tae kwon do, and my brother didn’t hand out compliments for nothing. If someone impressed him, they’d gone far.
“We could bargain with him,” I said. “He wants something we’re capable of giving.”
Riv nodded with a dip of his chin and joined me by the shallow end.
“You’re not convinced,” I stated.
He squinted and ghosted his palms along the surface of the water. “I don’t think it’ll be enough to bring him out here for several days, no.”
We needed several days.
Shay had lost most of his family in a fire. His mother, his father, and his sister. Shay and two younger brothers had survived. That kind of pain didn’t go away, nor would changing his mind be easy or happen quickly. And if he sought out underground cage fighting instead of seeking actual help, there was no way he’d come willingly—unless we struck the right deal.
“One of us can fight him,” I noted.
River cocked his head at me, listening.
“You said he hasn’t lost a single match,” I went on.
“I said he hasn’t lost a single match fairly. I’ve seen him throw fights—presumably for money.”
“Semantics,” I replied. “He knows he’s not losing because he can’t handle the fight. I imagine he’s pretty cocky by now—or at least, at ease and confident in his skills.”
My brother got my line of thinking now. Because all we had to do was show up at one of those fights, pay the buy-in, and challenge him. One of us against him. If he lost, he had to come out here and spend a week with us. Maybe two. We’d get a better sense of him this weekend, I reckoned.
“It’s up to you to decide which one of us is better suited to take him on,” I finished.
I hadn’t seen Shay fight yet.
River glanced away and sucked his teeth, always reluctant to make quick moves. Even more so in this case when his only source of profiling came from an underground club where it’d be weird as fuck if Shay didn’t come off as sharp and guarded. But we didn’t have time to dick around, and I seriously didn’t want to ban the boy.
When someone was in trouble, we wanted to help, despite what our reputation might indicate.
“We know what it’s like to lose family,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, I know.” He raked his teeth over his bottom lip before he blew out a breath. “It’s his guilt we’re fucking with here, Reese. That’s what bothers me. For him to seek out Sadists for punishment means he feels he’s done something to deserve it.”
Of course. I assumed it had to do with the loss of his family.
The tragedy had made the papers, which River had dug up in his search. Mother and father asleep on the third floor, along with the youngest child, an eight-year-old girl. Three brothers had been asleep on the second floor. The fire had started in the basement. The eldest brother, Shay, living at home while in college, had woken up first and called 9-1-1. Then he’d yelled for his parents while dragging his brothers outside.
I hoped to get the rest of the story one day. The parents had died in the fire, and the sister had passed away in the hospital a few days later.
We had a lot of unanswered questions since River didn’t want to dig too deep, and one of them concerned another parent, namely Shay’s biological father, and whether or not he was around to give Shay support. Because the man who’d died in the fire had been multiracial, as were the younger children, so we assumed the mother had been married before.
I leaned back against the wall, resting my arms along the edge. “Before we can make him realize he probably has nothing to feel guilty about, we have to get him out here where he can’t escape. Where he has to face what we’re telling him.”
And we had the tools and knowledge to do it.
River nodded slowly, thinking, and kept his gaze glued to the water as he walked closer to me.