Paradise Found: Cain (Paradise Stories Book 2) (36 page)

“Back alley, coming out of the science building,” he clarified. Two thoughts flashed through my head: the death of Sofie’s parents and the fear that Sofie left the science building daily. This could have been her. She could have been the one beat so severely; she wouldn’t have recovered like Abel would.

“Quit being pussies, talking to each other like ya’re school girls,” Atom yelled, his voice full of hysteria and venom, and a hint of the Irish accent he had all those years ago, before he tried to rid himself of it. He didn’t want to be known as a dirty Irish fighter, but a skilled American champion.

“Cain!” Sofie yelled behind me. “Don’t do this.” Her voice full of fear, I sensed her physical struggle, despite not being able to see her.

“He’s never going to let it go,” Abel warned. “He’ll blame her, like he blamed Mom. He’ll drag her to hell if she stays with you, and make certain she breaks your heart.” He exhaled and winced with effort.

“You are him. Father’s son. He’s going to make certain your experience is the same as his. You can surpass him only in one area, student outdoing the master. That’s it,” Abel spoke, attempting to sound wise, but actually sounding tired, like a swift breeze would blow him over and he’d fall into the pleasurable abyss of a deep sleep. I couldn’t hit Abel in his condition. Additional flashes of Montana, Elma’s brother, came before me. I couldn’t raise a hand to my brother. This wasn’t anymore a fair fight than the first time we fought. My brother was in no condition to combat me.

It occurred to me instantly that this was my father’s plan. Keep Abel weak. With some doubt, Atom must have wanted assurance that Abel couldn’t fight back. But I wasn’t a coward, and I wasn’t so ruthless as to fight a helpless man, especially one that was my brother. I straightened upward, taking a deep breath and bracing myself for whatever might come next. The scream from Sofie wasn’t what I expected.

I spun quickly to see my father had her by the waist, a knife at her throat.

“I’ll sacrifice her blood right here in this field. Fight!” he yelled, his eyes crazed, his voice as if it was detached from his body. My eyes washed over Sofie, begging her to still love me, praying that I could somehow protect her with an invisible magical force field.

“Cain,” her voice strained as her head fell back, trapped by my father’s strength and the knife at her throat. “I’ll never forgive you,” she threatened. “Please, don’t do it.” The tremble in her voice proved she was scared, but her tone was firm. She was going to hate me if I fought my brother, even if her life depended on it.

I lowered again, fists raised, nostrils flaring, shutting off my mind to all thought. If she hated me, it would only heat the venom inside me. Her life was worth the fight.

“Hit me,” Abel begged, without a plea to his voice. “Get it over with.” My fist rose, and I braced for the cracking sound I’d hear the instant my knuckles connected with Abel’s face, when another car pulled up to our intimate display. I only briefly noticed the familiar baldhead and dark glasses, despite the darkening day when the hit took me by surprise. It was my bone that cracked and blood sprayed from my nose. My attention returned to my brother, just in time for another hit to take me square in the jaw. I’d had worse, but the sting was worth the effort Abel was putting forth. He wasn’t stupid. He wanted this over just like me, and he wasn’t willing to wait any longer.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kursch questioned somewhere outside the circle of Abel and me. “Are you trying to kill him? Are you trying to prove your father right?” My head spun to look at Kursch, a man who had been a faithful servant and father mentor. I loved this man, like Sofie said. Not wishing to prove anything to my father, I still didn’t feel I had any choices. Too much was happening too fast.

“Stop this,” Sofie demanded. “This proves nothing.”

“I need to prove he doesn’t own me,” I muttered to myself, but Abel heard the garbled words and nodded in agreement. I still hadn’t made a move to strike my brother.

“You pussy,” Abel hissed. “Are you trying to prove I’m a loser? Are you letting me fight you, while you stand and take it, because it’s the only way I’d win? Then what?” he grunted. “Then we have to do this again. It will never be enough for him until one of us wins. Don’t make me look weak. For everything you’ve ever done for me, making me look weak in front of them would be the lowest.”

Abel was right. I had belittled him just like our father, though not half as bad as him. When Abel was young, I attributed his crying to his youth. As he grew older, and I grew more like Atom, I became easily frustrated with Abel. Instead of supporting him or training him, I kept him down, like our father wanted me to. I added to the torture. Letting him beat me would only confirm that I thought Abel was weak, which I no longer believed. In fact, Abel seemed stronger than me. He stood up to our father first. He took the challenge to fight me. For love. For Elma.

I lowered to my fighting stance and tried to get my head into this challenge. A knowing smirk crossed Abel’s battered face. While he was beaten, he wasn’t beat. His strength was he was fast; mine was I was strong. He could outmaneuver me in many ways, but my right hook countered to his left uppercut. My powerhouse kick caught him by his right leg and we flipped to the ground. Like a fish out of water, Abel flopped onto his back with an exaggerated exhale of air, and I coiled around him like my signature snake name. We struggled in a deadlock. The earth beneath my feet gave no traction in the dry grassy mess below us. Finally, Abel went limp beneath me.

“Enough,” he muttered. “All he wants is you to win,” Abel admitted with defeat. He conceded this knowledge, his body too weak to fight back, but his mind clear as to our father’s goal. I pushed off his back, making a display of forcing him down. Abel rolled to his side, and it was only then that I offered him a friendly hand. Pulling him upward, I wrapped an arm around him like I’d often done as a child. The ink of my left forearm spoke, and I held my arm tightly over Abel, supporting him, displaying for my father that this ended here.

“Kill him.” My father glared at me, forcing the knife upward and drawing blood from Sofie’s delicate neck. A thin trickle of red snaked down her white throat. Her head didn’t dare shake, but her eyes pleaded with me. Not for her life, but for my brother’s. Faced with death, she was still an angel.

Suddenly, my father was projected forward. Sofie fell in the struggle, her outstretched hands catching her as two men tumbled to the side of her.

“Roll,” I yelled, approaching the sudden mayhem of my father and Kursch, scrapping like two schoolboys on the hard ground. Larger in stature, Kursch toppled their two bodies so he was over my father. With his baldhead and extra thick arms, he typically appeared more like a gentle giant than an enforcer. However, the expression on his face showed the severity of his demeanor. Atom might have been the one who handled the dirty work, or so we thought, but the strength of Kursch and the threat of his stature were evident.

“I won’t take this any longer. You took enough. You’ve punished them enough,” Kursch hissed to our father’s face. “I watched you destroy Eve. Destroy your sons and punish your daughters for being female. You took your love and threw them all away. You took mine and destroyed it, but I won’t let you do it to them. I won’t let you destroy their chance at happiness, just because you are a miserable, thwarted man. Bitterness has consumed you, but I won’t let it take them.”

I’d never heard Kursch speak in such a manner, let alone speak this way to our father.

“You’ve always been jealous,” Atom spit at his oldest friend. “She loved me.”

Kursch blinked in disbelief.

“I wasn’t in love with your wife,” he emphasized.

“When you couldn’t have her, you wanted the next best thing,” Atom snapped, still under the weight of Kursch, who held him pinned with one of his large arms. Sofie had scrambled away from the two men who held all our attention, but she was still separated from me. I didn’t dare move to her, too captivated by the fight before me.

“You’re a sick man, Atom Callahan,” Kursch said, shaking his head slowly, disappointment evident in his tone.

“You’ll always be second best,” Atom slurred, “How does that feel?” His voice struggled under the pressure of Kursch’s hold. “You’ll never be good enough, not even for her.” His head attempted to shift left, and it was then that I noticed Ava Shepherd staring down at my father. Her eyes cold shards of dark; her fists clenched at her sides like she wanted one shot at him herself.

“You’re a bastard, Atom,” Kursch hissed, forcing him down one more time, before moving back as if to stand. Atom spit at his friend like he was a child. Kursch didn’t bat an eye as he wiped his cheek and slowly sat back.

“Actually,” Atom drew out, “she is.” The confusion of the words hung in the air, but the shock of Kursch punching Atom square in the mouth dissipated the puzzlement.

“He’s not worth it,” I replied, stepping forward to wrestle the strength of my mentor.

“No, but she is,” Kursch stated, ignoring my warning and hitting Atom again at short range. His eye instantly swelled. His nose bled. The spray came back onto Kursch and dripped on his forearm.

“Wait? What?” Abel intervened, his voice filled with frustration.

“It’s not my story,” Kursch growled, “but it’s time to tell it.” He pulled Atom upward with two fists wrapped in the collar of his shirt.

Atom spit again, saliva mixing with the blood from his nose.

“Speak,” Abel demanded and Elma, who had sauntered up to him, flinched beside him. Sofie had moved next to Ava. Something in Abel’s tone forced our father to begin his tale.

“Your mother was always meant to be mine. She was intended for me. We were going to be the perfect couple, but she got knocked up before we were married. She was young and scared. I was new to the circuit. I couldn’t take on the responsibility. I wanted a fighter, some day but not at seventeen. I made her give the child away.”

Elma’s breath hitched. I glared at my father.

“It was a girl,” he spoke in disgust.

My first thought was how could he do this twice. My mother and Evie. But then, it hit me like that spit on Kursch’s face. Another daughter, born
before
me, was out there somewhere because of his selfish intentions. He made our mother give up a girl because she was a girl.

“Where’s the child?” I hissed, sensing my father would know. His eyes shifted, then the dark daggers returned to Kursch.

“She was given to a family friend. He was a fighter who’d lost his wife and baby in childbirth. He was devastated, so we gave the child to him. We thought it would ease his pain, replace his loss, to care for the baby. He couldn’t raise his wife from the dead, but he could have our girl as his own.”

“What?” I questioned, my voice sharp, but it was Sofie’s sweet voice that filled in the blank.

“Ava,” Sofie addressed in a soft tone. My eyes flipped to Abel’s coach, as Sofie placed one hand tenderly on Ava. The woman visibly trembled. Her head shook back and forth, her eyes never left the hard face of Atom. Sofie’s hand soothed up and down Ava’s arms.

“No,” Ava muttered. “No, no, no, no,” she murmured.

Kursch released Atom and quickly crossed the space to Ava, gripping her shoulders.

“Ava, look at me. I told you I was telling the truth,” he spoke softly, but his tone commanded her attention.

“Lies. Always lies. You said you knew something that would stop him. You said you held his secrets. But this?” Her voice rose as she pushed her arms upward, breaking his grasp.

“You’re a liar!” she yelled in his face. “You’re both liars!” she screamed. “You already killed my father in the ring. What more could you want? The death of your own children? You are a sick bastard, Atom. Sick.” She stepped back from Kursch.

“And you?” she addressed the large man before her. “You’re still no better than him,” she bit, and briskly walked away from our circle.

“Shepherd,” Abel called after her, but she raised a hand to signal he should not follow her.

“Let her be,” Sofie soothed him.

“What the ever-loving-fuck is going on here?” I demanded. Nothing was making sense. Why was Kursch comforting Ava? How did she know him? My mind raced with questions.

Kursch spun to face Abel and me. Sofie stepped around him and came to me. Both needing her comforting touch, and fearing it, I didn’t reach out for her.

“Your mother had a daughter. She was given up for adoption like Atom said, and she was raised by Zeke Shepherd.”

“The Z?” Abel questioned, interrupting Kursch’s explanation. A famous fighter in his own right during the time of our father’s attempt to climb the ranks. Atom’s strength paralleled Zeke’s, but when he killed him in the ring, questions went unanswered, and my father became a legend in his time.

“Yes.”

Abel and I turned in unison to face our father. We had heard this story before. Our own father was so intense in the fight; he killed. It was one reason my father felt so connected to me. We had shared a similar experience in the cage. My case had been ruled an accident; his case was never investigated. A young upstart bodyguard, freshly out of the military, had connections that got Atom off the hook. Abram Kursch. Atom had originally owed Kursch, until something happened, and the tide turned in favor of Atom.

“How do you know Ava?”

“I was the investigator on the case. I’d been in the Marines and returned Stateside to work security duty. I researched the case and met Ava.”

“You did more than meet her,” Atom hissed behind us. My father’s face was that ruddy red, typical of his growing anger. With the swollen eye and the bloody nose, he didn’t come across half as fierce. He suddenly looked like an old man who’d been beaten by life.

“I fell in love with her,” Kursch said, letting his head fall. His large hand came up to rub his forehead as his eyes remained toward the ground. “But Atom disapproved.”

“I still don’t see how it was any of his damn business,” I stated, seeing the pattern of interference in matters of the heart from a man who didn’t have one. The web my father wove to destroy the lives of people was so entangled; it had more verses than the Bible.