Page 111 of Mean Machine

“Neither do I anymore.” Brooklyn leaned back in the leather seat and gave him the address of the hotel. After that overnight hop across the Atlantic, he wasn’t up for small talk, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about boxing, not with a guy who probably had googled him once the press vultures had started circling.

Even business class hadn’t made that trip any less tiring, though Brooklyn had managed to sleep for a few hours. Now it was the eight-hour time difference that kicked him in the balls, but it did mean it was about eleven o’clock in the morning when he arrived in London, which, compared to Vegas (or New York City), seemed drab and flat and understated but felt a lot more familiar.

He asked the driver to wait outside while he checked into his hotel and dropped the suitcase off at least, then returned, his travel companion still squeezed under his arm, to the car. “Just get me to Temple Tube station. I’ll find my way from there.”

At that time of the day, the short trip was bumper-to-bumper and stop-and-go and creeping along the Thames, but they eventually made it. Brooklyn pushed Pinky the UnicornFly out of the car before him, and for once was reasonably sure that Pinky attracted more attention than he did.

He’d count that as a win, though in this area, it was mostly tourists and some smart-dressed City bankers and Temple lawyers looking for a quiet place to have a coffee and a sandwich near the river, and in typical British fashion, nobody batted an eyelid. Londoners were both too jaded and too polite to kick up a fuss, so it was only the tourists who stared at him.

He made his way to Nathaniel’s office in a quiet side street and pressed the button, feeling stupid for not calling ahead and making sure Nathaniel wasn’t in court or even at home to catch a nap in between work. Or maybe he had recovered an interest in other human beings and was at a new boyfriend’s place.

The buzzer went, and Brooklyn pushed the door open. He climbed one floor of stairs and ended up in front of another door. Behind it, a young woman in business dress cast a curious glance at him but didn’t betray any reaction at his floppy friend.

“Yes, sir, how may I help you?”

“Is Mr Bishop in?”

She furrowed her brow quizzically, as if she had to compute whether it was safe to admit that yes, he was in, or no, he wasn’t. And also what nefarious plans somebody like him in jeans and leather jacket could be working towards with a stuffed animal.

One of the doors opened.Shit.Dion.

“Grace, don’t worry, I’ll deal with this,” Dion said smoothly and opened the door wider, elegantly side-stepping. “Mr Marshall, if you would.”

Brooklyn cast him a glance, not daring to relax just because he’d made it past the PA. When he entered the office, he recognised it as Nathaniel’s—Dion wasn’t likely to have a framed photo of Hazel on his desk, now was he?

Dion offered him a seat in the chair in front of the desk, where a client would sit, while he moved fluidly around the desk with its tidy stacks of files and paperwork and sat. He leaned forward over the desk. “You’re here to see Nathaniel, I assume?” A curl of the upper lip at Pinky the FlyCorn.

“I don’t think I owe you an answer to that.” Brooklyn placed the stuffed whatever gently on the floor, where it promptly collapsed in a spineless heap. “Is he in?”

Dion’s features retained their careful blasé expression. “I fail to understand how you think you can simply march in here and assume Nathaniel will even give you the time of day, after what you’ve done.”

Brooklyn lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Take the chance of a lifetime and follow through with my career? Ah, forget it. I don’t owe you an explanation. Where’s Nathaniel?”

Dion’s lips thinned, and he leaned back in the chair, both hands on the armrests, which he then used to push himself back to his feet. “Then let me be frank. You’re not exactly father material. You’re certainly not husband material. You killed two people, beat one to death—and while I can understand how a man as refined as Nathaniel might debase himself to the point where somebody like you might scratch a physical itch, who knows if you’ll be able to rein in your coarse brutality? There’s nothing to keep you from hurting Nathaniel, or even, for heaven’s sake, his daughter.”

Hurt Hazel? Dion might just as well have kicked him in the balls—Brooklyn was off the chair before he could fully compute the sentence, but he stopped himself before he grabbed Dion and pushed him up into the dark wood bookshelf behind him until he fitted between theLegal Dictionaryand a replica of that famous Egyptian hippo statue.

“The fuck you said?”

Dion looked up into his eyes, barely blinking. The man was maybe half Brooklyn’s weight sopping wet, and shorter, but he betrayed absolutely no fear. “If you hit me, if you so much as put a hand on me, I promise you this—you’ll never see the light of day again.” Spoken with an icy superiority that had Brooklyn’s hands clenching into fists.

But then he’d prove that he was exactly the kind of brute Dion thought he was, wouldn’t he? Somebody who solved all problems with his fists. And he wasn’t that. He wasn’t his father.

Brooklyn grimaced and took half a step back. “Well, why don’t you go first, then. I’ll give you the first punch. You can even have a second, little man.” Brooklyn scoffed when Dion didn’t move, and gathered up Pinky. “Have a good day.”

He moved to the door and hesitated, pondering whether he should leave a message with Grace, but after what he’d just seen from Dion, he’d probably order her to rip up the note and eat it before he let Brooklyn leave a message.

And that was when the outer door opened, and Nathaniel came in with a paper carrier and two paper cups in one hand and his leather briefcase in the other one.

“Oh, dear Lord,” Nathaniel muttered and managed to put the carrier on Grace’s counter. “Brooklyn, what are you doing here?”

Dion appeared like a grey-clad ghost from Nathaniel’s office. “I already told him he’s not welcome.”

“Yeah, you did, thanks, except I don’t give a fuck what you think.” Brooklyn kept his focus on Nathaniel and felt weirdly self-conscious about Pinky now, but if Dion said even one word, he’d quite happily try to feed one to the other—and decide which one would be fed spontaneously. “Nathaniel, can I have, like, fifteen minutes of your time?”

“Of course.” Nathaniel plucked one of the coffees from the carrier and led the way to the office. “Dion, could you give us some space here? We’ll catch up after I’m done.”

“Nathaniel, this isn’t a good idea.”

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