Chapter 2 - The Fighter Who Was Supposed to Disappear
By sunrise, Dominic Castellano knew more about Clara Hayes than most people who had worked beside her for two years.
The problem was that almost none of it was true.
There was a Social Security number. A rental agreement for a modest apartment in Uptown. Tax records from the Cobalt Lounge. A driver’s license issued four years earlier.
Everything appeared legitimate.
Too legitimate.
Dominic sat behind the enormous desk in his Gold Coast office while his security chief, Marco Bellini, placed a folder before him.
“Clara Hayes technically exists,” Marco said.
“Technically?”
“Before four years ago, she doesn’t.”
Dominic opened the folder.
“Explain.”
“No school records. No childhood address. No social media. No credit history. Nothing.”
“Family?”
“One brother. Ethan Hayes. Twenty-one. Hospitalized for several months.”
Dominic remembered the money.
“How much did she owe?”
Marco looked surprised.
“You already know?”
“I guessed.”
“Forty-seven thousand and change. Paid in cash last night.”
Dominic leaned back.
So that was it.
The money had never been for Clara.
“Anything else?”
Marco placed another photograph on the desk.
It showed a younger Clara entering a grimy Philadelphia boxing venue.
Her hair was shorter.
Her face bruised.
But the eyes were unmistakable.
“Scarlet,” Marco said.
Dominic picked up the picture.
“Leo was right.”
“Apparently.”
“What happened?”
Marco sat opposite him.
“The fights were run by an organization called the Keystone Athletic Association.”
“That sounds harmless.”
“It wasn’t.”
Marco explained that the KAA had used underground boxing as the visible edge of a much larger gambling operation. Fighters accumulated fabricated debts for housing, trainers, medical care and protection. Once indebted, they were forced to fight when ordered and lose when instructed.
Clara had become their most profitable female fighter.
Twenty-seven consecutive victories.
Then came fight twenty-eight.
“She was supposed to lose,” Marco said.
“But she didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“The opponent was seventeen.”
Dominic looked up.
Marco continued.
“The girl was talented, but apparently terrified. KAA wanted Clara to make the kid look legitimate before going down in the fourth.”
“And Clara refused?”
“She discovered they planned to own the kid afterward.”
Dominic’s expression darkened.
“So she won.”
“She knocked her out in the second.”
“What did that cost them?”
“Approximately eight million dollars.”
Dominic whistled softly.
“Now I understand the disappearing act.”
“That’s not everything.”
Marco slid another page across the desk.
“The promoter responsible for Clara was Vincent Rourke.”
Dominic knew the name.
Everyone in organized crime did.
Rourke had moved west over the last several years, building legitimate fronts around sports betting and private security.
And recently, he had begun attempting to enter Chicago.
Dominic’s territory.
“This gets interesting,” Dominic murmured.
Marco nodded.
“Rourke has been trying to arrange a meeting with us for six months.”
“And I keep refusing.”
“Yes.”
Dominic studied Clara’s photograph.
“Does Rourke know she’s here?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic’s phone rang.
The Cobalt Lounge.
He answered.
“What?”
The manager sounded terrified.
“Mr. Castellano, there’s been an incident.”
Twenty minutes later Dominic entered the lounge.
A chair lay broken.
A table had been overturned.
Clara stood behind the bar wearing her waitress uniform, calmly cleaning blood from her lower lip.
Three men sat against the wall.
One clutched his shoulder.
Another held his nose.
The third appeared unconscious.
Dominic stopped.
“What happened?”
The manager rushed forward.
“They came asking for Clara.”
Dominic looked at her.
“Friends?”
“No.”
“Clearly.”
Clara continued wiping her lip.
Dominic approached.
“Rourke?”
Her hand stopped.
That was answer enough.
“How do you know that name?” she asked.
“I ask questions.”
“You should stop.”
“People usually tell me the opposite.”
She looked at the injured men.
“They’ll send more.”
“Good.”
“Dominic.”
It was the first time she had used his first name.
Something about it changed the air.
“These people aren’t drunk businessmen you can scare,” she said. “They don’t care who you are.”
Dominic smiled faintly.
“Everyone cares who I am eventually.”
“That arrogance is going to get someone killed.”
“You?”
“My brother.”
That erased his smile.
Clara stepped closer.
“You wanted to know why I disappeared? Fine. I’ll tell you enough to make you understand.”
She described the fights.
The debts.
The seventeen-year-old opponent.
The order to lose.
And what happened afterward.
Rourke’s men had dragged Clara into a locker room and told her she owed them eight million dollars.
They threatened Ethan.
Clara fought her way out.
A sympathetic trainer helped her escape Philadelphia.
She changed her name and vanished.
“Four years,” Clara said. “Four years without throwing a punch where anyone could recognize me.”
“Until last night.”
“Yes.”
Dominic understood.
His challenge had exposed her.
For the first time since meeting Clara, guilt replaced curiosity.
“I caused this.”
“You didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t change the result.”
She looked surprised.
Perhaps men like Dominic rarely admitted responsibility.
“Where’s Ethan?”
“Hospital.”
“We move him.”
“No.”
“Clara—”
“No.”
“Rourke already knows you’re in Chicago.”
“I can protect him.”
“Three men found your workplace before breakfast.”
Her eyes hardened.
Dominic lowered his voice.
“This isn’t about proving who’s stronger.”
She looked away.
He continued.
“I have a secure medical property outside the city. Doctors. Guards. Nobody gets through the gate without my permission.”
“I don’t want to owe you.”
“You don’t.”
“Men like you always collect.”
Dominic stared at her.
“Maybe you don’t know as much about men like me as you think.”
“I know enough.”
Before Dominic could answer, the unconscious man against the wall groaned.
Clara turned.
His jacket shifted.
A photograph slipped onto the floor.
Dominic picked it up.
Ethan.
Taken through the hospital window.
On the back was written:
MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.
BRING SCARLET.
OR THE BOY PAYS HER DEBT.
Dominic’s face changed.
The warmth disappeared completely.
He handed the photograph to Marco.
“Move the brother.”
Clara opened her mouth.
Dominic looked at her.
This time there was no arrogance in him.
Only certainty.
“They threatened someone under my protection.”
“I’m not under your protection.”
“You walked into my ring. You fought under my roof. Rourke used my property to find you.”
His voice became quiet.
“That makes this my problem.”
Clara stared at him.
“And if I say no?”
Dominic glanced at the photograph of Ethan.
“Then I protect him anyway.”
For once, Clara Hayes had no answer.
That afternoon Ethan was moved under medical supervision.
Clara traveled with him.
The Castellano safe property stood behind stone walls north of Chicago, surrounded by trees and cameras.
Ethan looked through the vehicle window.
“Who exactly did you fight?”
Clara sighed.
“A complicated man.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
She nearly choked.
“No.”
From the front seat Dominic glanced into the mirror.
Ethan noticed.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Dominic hid a smile.
Clara saw it.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
For one strange moment, despite the danger, Ethan laughed.
Clara hadn’t heard that sound in months.
It affected her more than she expected.
That evening, after Ethan was settled with doctors, Clara found Dominic alone on a terrace.
Chicago’s distant glow colored the horizon.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she said.
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Dominic considered lying.
Instead he said, “Because I started something I didn’t understand.”
Clara leaned against the railing.
“You’re different outside the lounge.”
“So are you.”
“Fair.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then Dominic asked, “Why boxing?”
“My father taught me.”
“Professional?”
“No. Cop.”
Dominic glanced at her.
“That must make me his favorite person.”
“He died when I was sixteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He taught me that fighting isn’t about hurting somebody.”
“What is it about?”
“Knowing when you don’t have to.”
Dominic remembered the glove stopping an inch from his face.
He understood.
His phone rang.
Marco.
Dominic answered.
His expression changed almost immediately.
“What?”
Clara straightened.
Dominic listened.
Then hung up.
“What happened?”
He turned toward her.
“The men from the lounge weren’t sent to take you.”
“What?”
“They were sent to make noise.”
“Why?”
“To distract us.”
A cold sensation moved through Clara.
“From what?”
Dominic held up his phone.
A security photograph showed a man leaving the Cobalt Lounge through the rear service entrance.
He carried a small black device.
Dominic said, “Someone planted a transmitter inside my private office.”
Clara stared at the image.
“Rourke?”
“Maybe.”
Then Marco sent another photograph.
Dominic enlarged it.
The man’s face was visible.
Clara stopped breathing.
“No.”
“You know him?”
She took the phone.
The man was older now.
Gray touched his beard.
But she would have recognized him anywhere.
The trainer who had helped her escape Philadelphia.
The man she believed had saved her life.
“Samuel Price,” Clara whispered.
“Who is he?”
Her hands began shaking.
“He’s the reason I got away.”
Dominic watched her.
Clara looked again.
A terrible possibility formed.
If Samuel had known where she was all along…
then perhaps she had never escaped.
May you like
Perhaps she had merely been allowed to run.
And someone had been waiting for the right moment to bring Scarlet back.
