Fight For You

Chapter 6

Dominic sat in the front seat of my Bentley. The bleeding had stopped, but he still held an extra pair of gauze pads in his hands. Thank God, because I may have killed him if he bled on my seats even if I was the one that gave him the bloody nose.

"So what are we going to do since practice ended early?" he asked.

"I need to get in a shower before the fight, so probably run home." I glanced in my rearview mirror before pulling out of the parking lot.

"My mom asked if we were coming by for dinner..."

"Yeah?"

"You know everybody is going to be there: the aunts, your sister, your mom...everybody."

I clenched my jaw. "You mean my dad who is going to give me shit about the fight tonight? And the fact that everyone is going to give me shit because I probably won't eat anything so I can make weight?"

Dominic shrugged, looking out the window. "It's just an option. You don't have to come. It just might be nice if you stopped in. They miss seeing you."

I groaned. "You really want me to come, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do, Nick, I really do."

I glanced over and saw that his blue eyes were intensely focused on me. When we were younger, my Nonna used to always say she couldn't believe that we had a blue-eyed Italian boy in the family. She used to call him "Little Sinatra" when he was really little and he would sing Rat Pack songs.

"Okay. For you, I'll go."

He smiled. "Thanks. It means a lot to me."

"It better, cuz your mom's crazy."

He laughed. "Ah, all our moms are a little botso."

***

After dropping Dominic off, I went back to my condo. I parked in my designated spot in the underground garage and took the elevator up to the penthouse. Most people would kill for the life I lived. And a lot of the people who worked for me did. Typing in the code to unlock the floor to my condo, I tried not to shudder, thinking about all the blood that was shed just so I could live the lifestyle I had.

Did I need the large living room with the floor-to-ceiling windows that stretched the entire length of the room and looked over Lake Michigan? Or the high-end kitchen with granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances that I never used? No. I didn't. I didn't need any of it. The condo was my father's gift after I graduated college. He said "Anyone who runs this town should live like it." Yeah, because a single guy in Chicago needed a five bedroom condo that cost a couple mil. Most guys fresh out of college didn't live like I did. I was living the life that they thought they dreamed of, but to me it was my biggest fucking nightmare.

I didn't need the condo. The car. The job. To me it was all paid with blood money and the blood on my hands was just getting thicker. Now I had to worry about seeing my dad before a fight, just what I needed when I had enough shit going through my head.

I walked through the living room, past my ninety-inch TV and the leather furniture that barely ever got sat on because no one came to my house. My mom hired a decorator who set my place up to look like a "modern Chicago bachelor pad" with black, white, and granite accents everywhere and a wet bar in the living room. The whole condo was even featured in some design magazine as the perfect place for any man living his dream in the city. As if my life was anyone's dream. My living room that was supposed to be for entertaining hadn't had a single guest since I moved in.

The wet bar with the top shelf booze and marble counter tops had never been touched. I think I'd had one drink since it was set up over a year ago. I shook my head as I walked past it and into my bedroom, the supposed "sanctuary" as the designer called it. A sanctuary from what, I didn't know. The only woman I ever had in the room was my housekeeper. But maybe after tonight I'd have an actual use for the king size bed and the gray upholstered head board that I planned on having Jackie against.