Chapter 5: The Mat

I did not sleep.

I lay in the big bed with the Beretta under my pillow and his uncle's words going around my head.

Your mother. She had that exact face.

I remembered almost nothing of her. A yellow kitchen. A hand braiding my hair too tight. The smell of smoke.

My father never talked about her, and I had never asked, because the dead were not my favorite subject.

At five in the morning I gave up and went looking for a place to hit something.

The Creighton house had a gym in the basement, with a boxing ring, mirrors and a rack of weights.

Valentin was already there.

He stood in the ring with his shirt off and a strip of tape around each hand, working a heavy bag in the corner.

I stopped in the doorway.

He was built like a man who did this every day because he had to, not because he liked how it looked.

Wide back, a long scar along his ribs, old bruises, fresh ones.

The bag swung from his punches, hard and even.

On his left side, between two ribs, his hand slipped. A tiny stumble, a mistimed hit.

He caught himself and went on.

I added it to the pile.

"You're staring," he said without turning.

"You're standing in front of a mirror."

"Come in, then."

He stripped the tape off his hands and tossed me a pair of gloves.

"Show me what you've got, Harlow. If you're going to pass for my fiancée, people will want you to look like you can handle me."

I put the gloves on.

Doyle appeared from nowhere with a thermos and sat on a weight bench to watch.

Valentin came at me slow.

I slipped his first jab and stayed inside his guard.

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