Skylar
The door opened and the one they called Gavino Bertolini waddled in. Enrico, who I thought I heard someone say was a relative of Gavino’s, had been busy running cables from somewhere outside the room to the back of the large screen TV. He’d also set up a video camera behind me, to record me watching NHBFC-89, and Austin’s fight in particular.
“Turn on the TV, the main event is next up. She still keepin’ her mouth shut?”
“Yeah,” said Renato.
It was almost impossible to understand him when he tried to say full sentences, due to the fact that his face was a mess and his jaw had been wired shut, but that affirmation came through loud and clear. Enrico pressed a button on the TV and it sprang to life, showing some commercials.
“What’s the matter, sweetness? Still sulking because of the little knife thing?” Gavino asked.
He oozed over to me and stroked my cheek with his hand. My skin wanted to crawl completely off my body at his touch. I flinched away but, cuffed to the chair that was bolted to the ground in the middle of a large plastic sheet, there was only so far I could go before his hand found me again.
“He didn’t cut you deep, it won’t even scar. Oh fuck no, you’ve got the kind of face we can make some money off.”
His hand went down my neck and slipped inside my shirt to cup my breast. I shrieked in disgust and tried to squirm away, tears beginning to spill from my eyes.
“See boys? Listen to that. She’s an underground porn star waiting to happen. If we had more time, you’d be starring in a whole bunch of videos for sale to a very particular crowd of people, and one for me personally too. How many guys you think we could get in the train, Enrico?”
“For her? With a couple weeks’ notice? Couple hundred in a night, I guess.” Enrico shrugged, not looking up from the video camera instruction manual.
Gavino pulled his hand back. “Yeah, a couple of those full-length features, sign up anybody who wanted seconds. I bet we could get fifty movies out of her before her snuff film.”
“Probably.”
Renato garbled something in response, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what he said. Gavino continued as if Renato hadn’t made a sound.
“So you’ve got a big career change happening if loverboy wins his fight, and every time a new guy blows his load inside you, I want you to remember it’s happening because Austin Aquila didn’t know his fuckin’ place.”
My heart threatened to break itself in two at the mention of Austin. The entire time I’d been trapped here, they’d been driving that point home. A few times, wallowing in self-pity or in terror, like when Renato cut my head at the hairline with that huge knife, I almost lost control and let myself believe it.
Then I remembered all those times we shared that nobody else knew about, those precious little moments that belonged to us and us alone. I never had anybody to share those with before Austin.
Sometimes we’d lie in bed until birds started singing outside, just talking, joking, sharing little pieces of ourselves. Austin never told me about
this
, but he
did
let me in to some other private corners of his past. Maybe he thought I couldn’t handle this truth.
Then there was the fact that I was carrying his baby. Our lives were irrevocably intertwined now. If we had any lives left to intertwine.
I barely contained a sob when I remembered yesterday morning at home after I read that pregnancy test. It was heart-wrenching to think that the first thing I ever told my child was shaping up to be a lie.
I promise I wanted to do better, little one,
I thought.
There was another promise I’d made too. I held it deep inside myself, so far down that nothing these mobsters said had come close to touching it.
I promised Austin that, in me, he had a love he could rely on. That was one promise I wasn’t going to let
them
turn into a lie. I loved him. I loved him no matter what.
He
didn’t do this to me. They did.
“Hey Enrico, something’s been bothering me,” said Gavino.
“What’s that, boss?”
“This bitch’s name. Skylar Cross. Hey, bitch, did you know a guy… what was his fuckin’ name… Malcolm Cross? That was the guy at NHBFC wasn’t it, Enrico?”
“Oh yeah,” said Enrico, dragging out the last word thoughtfully.
A long-held hope was suddenly wrenched out of my clutches when Enrico started laughing at some sick memory. How could my
uncle
have been mixed up with these people too?
“Ah, look at that pretty little face,” said Gavino. “You
did
know him. Your dad?”
I clenched my jaws shut as a whirlwind of emotions churned me into knots on the inside. Grief wracked me anew, bringing a fresh flow of tears streaming down my cheeks, red from the exertion of my pained grimace.
“You topped him, didn’t ya?” asked Gavino.
“Course. Stupid fuck wouldn’t drug that fighter, so he wasn’t any use to us.”
Enrico made a gun shape with his hand and mimicked firing it, and I groaned in physical pain as Gavino and Renato laughed. The storm inside of me dragged up some other emotion, something much more hot and violent.
Anger. It spread from my stomach to the tips of my fingers, which I bunched into fists behind me. I was shaking with fury, welcoming it over the fear and sadness.
Through a mouth no less tightly shut than Renato’s, I forced out one last promise with every ounce of vehemence I could muster.
“
I’ll fucking kill you all!
”
“Hey look at me, shakin’ in fear,” said Gavino.
The commercial on the screen ended and faded back in to a sweeping camera shot of the inside of the New Ashby Event Center, with the Decagon lit up in the middle and the announcer holding the microphone hanging by its wire from the ceiling. When he got the signal in his earpiece, I saw him nod and he launched into his introduction of the challenger… Austin Aquila.
“Quick get that fuckin’ camera on.”
Enrico messed around with the video camera for a second, adjusting it on its tripod behind me to capture both myself and the TV in the same frame. The live feed changed cameras to show Austin by himself in the tunnels, waiting to be called out.
The camera followed him from side to side as he paced back and forth like a wild animal. His eyes looked like he was watching horrors happening from a great distance and the bags under them betrayed a sleepless night.
Whether he won in the first minute of the first round or not, this was probably going to be the last time I saw him. These guys weren’t letting me go. I was as good as gone. It was strange that the first and last times I laid eyes on him were going to be the same, on television.
Somehow he heard his cue and he stalked out of the tunnel towards the ring and the camera switched back to a wider shot, showing the spotlights following his progress through the middle of a crowd who had no idea that a young marriage, blossoming beautifully against the odds, was about to end violently.
“
There’s been a lot of talk today about the strange behavior of The Killer, John.”
Came the voice of the commentator.
“
There sure has, Pete. From the moment he showed up by himself for the press conference earlier, and stormed off when the reporter asked about how the final touches on his training have come together, he’s looked on edge. There’s been no sign of his coach or his wife, leading some to speculate that there might be something going on between them. I understand our Media Relations team is preparing a statement about that. Either way, tonight, there appears to be no sign of the Austin Aquila who has won the hearts and minds of so many over the past several months. Look at his face, Pete, he’s got some vicious ideas going through his mind, I’ll tell you that much for free.”
“
But will it be enough to unravel the enigma that is Brenton Southgate? Aquila showed that, like all heavyweights, he can muster up knockout power big enough to take out even seasoned strikers, and that left high kick wasn’t slow, but does he have the toolset to bring down the champ?”
The announcer in the ring nodded again once Austin was in his corner and began to introduce Brenton Southgate. The commentators listened until Brenton started his own walk into the middle of the event center.
“
I honestly don’t think so, Pete. If these two met in a jiu jitsu tournament or any kind of pure-submission competition for that matter, absolutely, yes, I give it to Aquila, he’s the better grappler, but what Southgate has is his uncanny ability to defend the takedown and pick apart his opponents with superior striking. That defence, I think, is what is going to make the major difference between this fight and Aquila vs Sanchez.”
“So what’s your prediction, John?”
“Southgate by knockout in… the third I say.”
In the center of the ring, the referee was giving the fighters the instructions to protect themselves at all times and obey his commands. He invited them to touch gloves, but neither fighter made any movements to do so. Southgate, probably because of the face-heel turn Robbie Johnson had him playing out and Austin because he was too on edge.
With the cameras rolling, in the event center and behind me, Enrico pulled his gun out of its holster as the fighters on screen backed to their respective corners. The referee approached the middle of the ring and looked to each side as the mobster reached out and held the barrel against my temple.
The fear was back, blurring my view of the fight with stress and watering eyes. My breath came in short bursts as iron bands around my chest tightened.
I tried to close my eyes, to let myself sink down into some daydream to escape this reality. I tried to feel Austin’s arm around me, calm and strong. Safe.
“Watch it, bitch,” Enrico pressed the muzzle against my head painfully until I complied.
I would have to face my last minute on Earth with my eyes open.
Austin
Pacing back and forth on my side of the ring, barely staying inside my designated area, I was going out of my motherfucking mind. There was no calm confidence in my abilities and no reassuringly familiar anger either.
This was fear and confusion unlike anything I’d ever experienced within the chain-linked borders of this decagon. Although it must have looked something like the old Austin Aquila on the outside, it was completely different for me.
The referee approached the middle of the cage and I started huffing air not entirely unlike Benny had in the office in that construction yard. The closer he got to the middle, the closer he got to signaling the start of the fight.
If Jace hadn’t done what he said he would yet, and I hadn’t fucking heard he
had
, then that meant Skylar was sitting in a chair with a gun to her head and it was all down to me. One minute to tear apart one of the greatest the sport had ever known.
Of all the fighting assets I needed to do that, the one I needed the most was pretty much fucked. My mind was flickering between the fight, what they’d do to Skylar if I failed, what I’d do to them, and failing to cope with the extremes of emotion that came with it all.
It was a gruesome mess in my head, no matter what.
I’d arrived home late last night to find the front door wide open and Skylar’s shoe rack knocked over, but the rest of the place seemed to be undisturbed. I stared at that small mess for a fucking hour solid, only to find something in the bathroom that brought me to the ground, where I ended up passing out for a few hours.
It was still there on the floor when I woke up, having dropped out of my hand. It was no hallucination brought on by stress. A home pregnancy kit, still showing the double lines of a positive result.
Skylar had given herself to me, all the way, everything that she was. She already gave me more than I deserved, and now she was carrying my child. The words hadn’t yet been invented for the things I would do to the Bertolinis, and the Picollis.
When I stepped out of my front door in the morning, half delirious from the stress and exhaustion, and sporting a pounding headache, I found a little package on my doorstep, with a note from Jace.
‘
Here’s something to give you an edge tonight. People are calling it ‘F-Pro’, since it’s based on that new drug ‘F’ that’s starting to take over the market, but this is aimed at the sporting sector. It should give you a hell of a kick. Good luck. J’
With whatever reasoning I had left, I decided not to take it. What happened if I won the fight, but then failed drug-testing? Gavino and his lackeys would slaughter Skylar. My life, my future.
More to the point, my mind was already screwed up enough as it was. I didn’t need speed, power or energy, I had all that.
I needed to
see
clearly. What Southgate was doing, any windows of opportunity, every fucking move he made. Dealing with the side-effects of “F” or “F-Pro” or whatever the fuck that green powder was, wasn’t going to give me what this fight required of me.
“Are you ready?” The ref asked Southgate, who nodded.
I braced myself, prepared to launch at the absolute worst person in the entire fucking world I could have been facing in this situation. For the sake of his family, I hoped I didn’t fuck him up so bad that he died. For the sake of Skylar, I couldn’t afford to hold back.
Either way, I hoped I had enough in me to do this.
“Are you ready?”
I nodded.
“Alright let’s do this! Fight!”
The ref swung his arm in a downward arc and I never even heard the bell. I would have been halfway across the cage by the time the soundwaves hit me.
Faking with a push-kick to Southgate’s lead leg, I went for a Superman-Punch instead. Until the last fraction of a second, I thought I might just have done the impossible.
Shifting his weight to the side, my skull-caving punch whistled through mostly thin air,
maybe
catching the very edge of his ear with my glove, it was that fucking close. His knee came up and impacted my stomach with a meaty
thunk
that had the crowd on its feet and screaming for more.
My momentum carried me past Southgate, and I caught myself against the fence in his corner before spinning around with a backfist that also missed. It did at least do the job of forcing him to pause, rather than taking advantage of that knee he landed.
Fuck. That was ten seconds gone already and all I’d succeeded in doing was tipping my hand about what little strategy I had.
Brenton looked as smug as he had during the promotional spots, talking about how if I knew what was good for me then I’d do my best to get the fight on the ground rather than try to stand with him, a superior striker. With my back against the fence, Southgate peppered me with a combination of punches to the body and around the head, only one of which made it through my guard and partially landed after glancing off my shoulder.
He capped it off with a leg kick that I checked, before I managed to push him back and escape to the side. Thirty fucking seconds.
My opponent immediately came after me and I felt a surge of hope. He thought his goading had worked. He thought I was committed to standing with him and that elusive knockout… but if I could get him to the ground, there was still time for a submission.
I stepped backwards… and… he chased me! Faking a punch that brought his hands up to guard his head, I launched into a double-leg takedown fast enough that I caught even the great Brenton Southgate off guard.
He tried to scramble backwards, tried to keep his balance long enough to brace himself against the fence, but I drove forward, steering him to the side
just
enough that he missed it and landed heavily on his back with me on top of him. The crowd went wild, but I could barely hear them over the thundering in my ears.
I spun to what was known as a north-south position on top of him, trapping one of his arms and forcing it across his own throat as I continued to spin. He tried to escape, tried to get me out of position as I locked my arm behind his head, putting more pressure on his neck.
It was in! The submission was locked in! Holy fucking shit. I arched my body up, pushing off the mat with my feet and driving my shoulder into the other side of his neck as he tried to twist and take the pressure off.
I squeezed with everything I had, hard enough that if he was any less well-conditioned than he was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if his head popped right off. With my face burning bright red and my eyes watering with the strain, I turned my head to seek out the clock.
Fifty seconds.
Twang!
I grunted in pain as some muscle or ligament seemed to snap between my neck and shoulder, but only redoubled my efforts to squeeze the consciousness out of my opponent. By this time he had to know he was fucked. It was over.
Fifty five seconds.
“Tap! Tap you
cunt!
” I screamed.
Fifty eight seconds.
“Check him! He’s out! Fucking check him!” I shrieked at the ref, who moved about as quickly as molasses.
One minute.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck no.
Even the voice of my internal monologue spoke in complete agony, drawing out the last word into a cry that sounded almost insane. I had failed, and the love of my life might have just ceased to exist.
Half-blind with grief that welled up from the pit of my stomach, I desperately tried to funnel it into some kind of action. I let go of Southgate and sprang to my feet, heading to the edge of the cage and vaulting over the side before I had any conscious thought about what to do.
It wasn’t until I was literally outside the event center that I had a plan, if you could be so charitable as to call it that. Go to the Bertolini mansion and kill as many of them as I could before I died. That was it.
If Skylar got sick, I got sick. That’s what I told her, and now it didn’t matter if Jace had time to work his fucking magic or not. It was time to get sick.
Some asshole on a custom-painted motorcycle with full matching protective gear was at the side of the road, posing for some giggling bitches. I ran over to them.
“Get off the bike.”
He flipped the visor up on his helmet and gave me a look up and down, then glanced at the chicks he was trying to impress.
“Sorry brah, no shirt, no shoes, no……. waaaaaaaah-oof!”
I grabbed him and sent the poser flying low and hard until he went head-first into the side of a taxi. He was lucky he was wearing a helmet.
The bike was brand new and state of the art. I almost went to drag the guy over and enlist him to start it for me before I got the right sequence of shit done and the bike, with “Arion” painted down the side, came to life with an unsatisfying whir.
It may have sounded like it was apologizing, but that motherfucker could
move
. Almost as fast as I could see them coming, each intersection was upon me, and I had to devote all the concentration I could muster to handling the space-age machine between my legs.
I welcomed the diversion, because
this
was the easy part. The hard part would come when I had to figure out
how
to take as many Mafiosos down with me as possible. The impossible part would come if I had to face the reality of Skylar’s death.