Page 35 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One

C HRISTOPH

I slowly tape my hands, carefully weaving between each finger and trying to blank my mind. The door to the locker room keeps opening and closing as more of the scheduled fighters come and go. The crowd beyond the door is sedate, impeccably dressed, and sipping fucking champagne.

“This is a bad idea,” I say, for easily the fifth time.

My voice rumbles through the too-clean, too-pristine room.

None of the lockers are dented. None of the sinks leak.

The towels are white. And fluffy. I’m pretty certain the tile floor is usually heated.

And there’s an essence-enhanced sauna and a cold-water pool.

“This is how you take your fights mainstream,” Elias says mildly to my left.

The other fighters getting ready, as well as their hangers-on, ignore us.

Dressed in one of his trademark overly pressed, overly tailored gray suits, the Earl of Hereford, member of the World Council, is leaning against the lockers.

I might not know him particularly well, but Elias — Eli as I call him — is not a leaner.

He’s also been working continually since he showed up — late — with his phone in one hand and a tablet in another. “Just don’t kill anyone.”

That’s easier said than done. I outmatch everyone scheduled to step into the ring with me. Yet there was so much interest that there’s a fucking waitlist in case anyone cancels last minute.

The door to the locker room opens and closes again, during which time I eye a woman sipping champagne beyond it. Likely a mistress, because her jewelry is verging on ostentatious and the lord standing next to her is thirty years older.

I keep going with the tape. Because the thing is … I need the money.

My bastard father’s estate is in shambles, run into the ground by all the legitimate heirs that got to it before me.

Well, technically I’m the bastard.

With my hands taped, I run one over my buzz-cut hair, checking the length even though I just clipped it earlier that day.

The tawny-brown hair and my gold-hazel eyes are both a weird genetic quirk when factored against my light-brown skin.

A lighter shade than my mother’s. But it’s my eyes that mark me as a direct descendent of the Duke of Habsburg.

Actually, I’m the Duke of Habsburg now.

Eli doesn’t know the true extent of the negative balance of my coffers. If he did, I suspect he’d offer to buy some of the copious land that’s the only asset I still own, somehow not squandered by my now-deceased half-brothers.

I don’t truly give a fuck about the title and the lands, but my mother did. She put up with a crazy amount of shit and then was murdered— likely just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time— because of my father.

All because she wanted a certain life for me. She had envisioned a certain life for me. And not just in a mundane ‘hope for the future’ sort of way.

So I can’t just cash out. I also have plans, extensive plans for a large chunk of that land — something actually useful to do with it.

Unfortunately, those plans have been on hold for over six months now.

Another thing the earl next to me could help with, but I still don’t ask.

I haven’t officially been in the ring for almost two years, because the chance of accidentally killing someone became even more of a problem when I became a fucking duke.

Not that anyone in my underground fights — invitation only like this one, but with more ‘real’ crowds — knows or likely even cares that I’m supposed to be royalty now.

A branch of royalty, at least. But ironically, a duke might have a harder time disposing of a body, whether or not legal waivers had been appropriately signed.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I grumble pissily, standing to tower over Eli.

“Business,” he says. Then he sighs, all frustrated. “Courting. Or rather, getting ready to court someone.”

I shake my head, reaching for my water bottle. I don’t want to get involved in anything having to do with the so-called peerage. But I haven’t eaten — I don’t before or between fights — so I’m starving. And I get hangry. Seriously hangry.

I can’t let it distract me.

Eli looks up from his stupid screens for long enough to eye me head to toe, then nod curtly.

Cool bastard .

Though it’s better than some of the attention I get even when fully fucking dressed.

The locker room door slams open with more vigor than necessary, and a pretty boy with blue hair, dressed in a shiny suit, saunters in, grinning from ear to ear. He flings his arms wide and makes a beeline for Eli, completely ignoring the swathe of space that everyone else has been giving us.

I blink at him as he approaches. He’s wearing eyeliner. And maybe tinted lip gloss. A mage. And a powerful one, based on his scent.

“Absolutely not,” Eli snaps, rebuffing the offered hug before it gets anywhere near him.

The blue-haired mage ignores the earl to eye me appreciatively. I might not be into that scene, but I still understand it when it’s directed toward me.

“Hello, daddy,” the mage purrs, grinning at me.

“No,” I say, though I’m almost certain he’s playing. And not with me.

“Sully,” Eli says, all stiff now, “you’re not fighting Lord Williams.”

It takes me a beat to remember that I’m Lord Williams. I insisted on keeping my mother’s surname when I accepted my inheritance, but most of the toffs I meet refer to me by title or my first name.

I get that them using my first name is supposed to be some sort of dig at my legitimacy, but I couldn’t give a shit.

“Salvatore to you,” the pretty-boy mage snaps. “And I’ve made other arrangements. Don’t worry, your crowd is going to love this, and I’ve got overdue business to settle before …”

He doesn’t specify what the ‘before’ is, just leaving it hanging like bait. Eli looks at him sharply. Then the earl glances at me, almost guiltily, and lets it drop.

That bothers me. That exclusion. Though I’m not technically friends with Eli. He’s some bigwig. Like, literally. I think his actual job involves wearing wigs or some other judicial, governing-body sort of shit.

Maybe they don’t actually wear wigs anymore, but that’s how I imagine them. All the old shits with their inherited titles and positions gathered around a table, yammering on about things that don’t matter in the real world.

Sully eyes me, smirking.

Then I realize that I’m grinning, all amused, at what’s going on in my own head.

Eli’s brow crinkles in a slight frown before he catches himself and blanks his expression. “I don’t care what arrangements you’ve made. Or who you think you’ve made them with —”

Sully reaches into his black leather satchel and pulls out three fucking gold bars. They’re way thinner than the gold I’ve seen in movies or TV — ‘1 Ounce Fine Gold’ according to a currency stamp from a Swiss bank. But still … fucking gold bars.

The mage sets the bars on the bench before me. Then he looks at the gold, then me. Pointedly.

“That’s how it works, correct?” he asks all pertly.

I can’t imagine this man fighting anyone. Not with his fists. Not because he’s necessarily weak in any way. More that I can’t imagine him mussing his appearance, on which he presumably works almost as hard as Eli does …

I glance at Eli. The earl I met in my ring three years ago. I don’t get why these privileged fucks with their titles and money want to get their faces pummeled. Paying to get their ribs bruised and —

The conversation from the crowd beyond the door changes in tenor, intensifying enough that I can actually pick up a shift in energy through the wood and concrete between us.

“Oh, good.” Sully claps his hands together. “He’s not late.”

“This is a charity event,” Eli snaps.

“Of course it is, darling.” Sully hits Eli with a megawatt smile. “And my chosen opponent will only entice your crowd and fill your coffers.”

I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But I reach down and scoop up the gold bars. Paper money might be all but obsolete in big cities like London, but I’ve never seen solid gold in person before.

“Good, daddy,” Sully purrs. Winking at Eli, not me.

The door slams open, and a guy who obviously thinks he’s some sort of rock star strolls in. The formerly snooty, offish crowd actually tries to press into the change room behind him.

My hired security scrambles to keep them back without actually touching them.

Fucking peerage.

“What the fuck is this all about, Sully?” the rock star snarls.

I instantly recognize the voice.

Bolan.

No last name.

He looks like hell.

“You look underweight. Sickly, even, Oliver,” Sully says scathingly. “Are you sure you’re up for this? For any of it?”

Bolan pauses, eyeing the mage balefully.

It’s an easy guess that Oliver is the actual rock star’s given name. And that he really doesn’t like being called by it.

There’s something more going on here. Eli has tucked his phone in his pocket and the tablet in the locker behind him and now appears to be waiting on whatever lies underneath the words, the questions, that Sully laid on Bolan.

The rock star narrows his eyes at Sully, then takes in Eli and me with the same discerning glance.

The announcer’s magnified voice emanates through the door, announcing the first fight. A pairing that includes me. Another shifter huddled with his buddies next to the sauna glances over. A cat of some sort. I ignore him as I pass the gold bars to Eli.

“Don’t kill him.” I rumble my blessing to Sully as I step past. “It’s a charity exhibition, not a revenge-fueled bloodbath.”

Bolan scoffs, crossing his arms and scowling at the mage. Normally, I’d never bet against another shifter. Bolan’s scent says he’s a wolf, with something else underlying it. But he looks wrung out. Maybe even strung out. Though I can’t smell any drugs or alcohol on him.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Sully says to my back. “She’d be pissed about it.”