“How’s this going to be fair? It’s still five to one,” Warren said, glancing around the circle. He wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth.
“You worried about fair?” Deacon asked him. “You think knockin’ around a twenty-four-year-old girl was fair? Ambushin’ my woman in a dark parkin’ lot was fair? Didn’t think you gave a shit about fair.”
“Let me do it,” Shade murmured next to him. His request was soft but chilling.
“Fuck no. He’s mine.”
Shade would slice Warren’s throat in under a second flat and it would be over way too easily. That wasn’t what this was about.
Deacon’s job was to take Warren alive and in one piece to Bianchi. Collect his scratch for delivering the piece of shit.
But he no longer gave a fuck about this job. It was no longer about money.
Fuck no.
It hadn’t been about the money for a while now.
“He got anything else on him?” he asked no one in particular.
“No,” Whip called out from near the door. “Took a pocket knife off him but besides the bat, that was it. He didn’t expect much of a fight from a woman.”
Right. He didn’t expect to go face to face with a brotherhood.
Deacon reached into his cut and pulled his Ruger from his holster. Without taking his eyes off Warren, he held it out grip-first to Shade, who took it.
Now it was fair.
Warren widened his stance and raised his fists.
Deacon smiled and left his hands down by his sides. “I’ll give you the first shot. A fuckin’ freebie.”
Warren’s eyes narrowed, distrust plain as day in his face.
Rightly so.
The man took a wide swing and Deacon ducked, feeling the wind from Warren’s arm over his head. As Deacon popped back up, so did his steel-toed boot, with a solid shot dead center between Warren’s legs.
All the breath rushed out of Warren and, as he bent over due to his nuts being relocated, Deacon grabbed his head and kneed him in the face.
Warren went from bending forward to grab his junk to flying backward from the impact of Deacon’s knee, his arms flailing and blood exploding from the fucker’s broken nose.
Warren landed hard on his ass in the dirt, stunned but still conscious.
Good. Deacon had a few things to say.
“Sorry about that. Forgot about makin’ this a fair fight.” Deacon dove forward, using his chest to knock Warren completely onto his back. He straddled the motherfucker’s waist, settling all his weight on Warren’s gut.
“Wanna apologize for the shit you did to those women? We can pass along the message.”
Warren blinked up at him in a daze, the blood coming from his mouth no longer a trickle but now a steady stream. His nose looked bent out of place, dark blood pooling in each nostril.
Deacon hoped he choked on all that blood.
“You still look better than Reilly did when you put her in the hospital. And I don’t think that’s fair, either. Do you?”
Warren tried to spit some of the blood out of his mouth but with Deacon crushing his stomach, he couldn’t pull in a big enough breath to do so. Instead, he gurgled.
Deacon turned his head, giving Warren his ear. “Didn’t hear that. Was that a fuckin’ apology?”
Warren shoved weakly at Deacon’s chest.
“What?” Deacon leaned closer. “Didn’t quite catch that, either.”
“I’ll... fucking... kill those... cunts... right after... I... kill you.” Each word came out on a wet wheeze.
Deacon sat up and smiled. “Yeah, fuckin’ doubt that.”
With a sudden burst of desperate energy, Warren surged up and began swinging wildly. One fist made contact with Deacon’s temple, making his brain wobble from the strike.
Warren bucked underneath him, trying to knock off Deacon’s weight, and he almost succeeded.
It was time to end this bullshit.
It was time to use the method Warren used on women to “teach them obedience.”
He curled his fingers into fists and held up his right one. “This one’s for Reese.” He lifted his left. “This one’s for Reilly.”
He put all his weight behind the right hook as it made contact with Warren’s cheek. As if in slow motion, Warren’s head snapped violently to the right. Deacon waited for it to rebound before striking it with his left.
Then he let the training kick in that Slade had showed him when the Dirty Angels MC member came up to Manning Grove. The boxer had taught them all how to use the punching bags and MMA equipment set up in a shed at the farm. He’d been asked to help Sig and Trip find a way to work out their tempers. Everyone else who was interested got the chance to work with him, too.
Deacon couldn’t walk into a ring without getting his ass kicked by even an amateur fighter with proper training, but he’d learned enough techniques in the week Slade spent with them to know how to throw an effective punch.