Takedown

MMA Champ finally gets a TAKEDOWN… from a woman.

Blaze Rockwood has left the Octagon to lead a less dangerous life, and to save what little was left of his family. After the brutal death of his bestfriend in the hands of his own brother, he finds himself entangled with a grieving fiancée, Megan Riley.

She is a fierce, untamed animal fresh out of the jungle. To his shame and horror, he finds himself obsessed with her.

But for the love of her deceased fiancé, she turns him down, a bomb that shatters the man in him but ignites his desire to possess her.

A mistake. She is just a puppet of his enemies. He falls into her trap. She, his brother and everyone else conspire against him for the Fight of the Century to take place, all for the sake of money.

Bruised by deception and heartache, he is left with no other options but to take on an unfinished business that he should have dealt with a long time ago—to TAKE DOWN the World’s Most Dangerous Mad Man.

Copyright © 2016 by Garnet Hart

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

TAKEDOWN

MMA Sports Romance

GARNET HART

Chapter 1

Blaze Rockwood’s eyes widened before the television screen.

“No,” he uttered, frozen in shock. Bryan Miller was not moving. He remained down on the mat half a minute after the heavyweight champion, Travis, rained punches on his head. “No way.”

The doctor climbed into the cage and pressed his fingers underneath Bryan’s chin. Two men, pulling a stretcher, followed.

More medical staffs entered, surrounding the unconscious challenger that the camera could hardly get a good view. When it finally did, Blaze saw the doctor placing a breathing device over Bryan’s nose and mouth.

“Shit.”

He sprung from the couch and rushed out of his house. He had a bad feeling about this. He couldn’t just sit there and watch.

He dived into his sports car and revved up his engine. Thrice, he tried to get through Chuck Paterson’s number, but no one was answering.

He tossed the phone aside and turned the radio on. The event was being aired live. Bryan Miller had just been loaded into an ambulance, going to the hospital.

“God, don’t do this,” he said under his throat. He rarely uttered a prayer, but even for this one time only, he hoped that God was listening to him. If he had to crawl on his knees from Henderson to Las Vegas, he would. He didn’t want to lose his bestfriend, not especially in the hands of his own brother.

Half a mile away from the hospital, an unusual traffic caught up with him. His anxiety rose. Fifteen minutes had passed yet his car barely moved.

He had enough. The moment he spotted a space where he could park his car, he pulled over and ran the remaining distance to the hospital. He was greeted by a horde of people, with the media and their cameras, blocking the entrance. Not a problem. With his buff physique, molded by years of intensive physical training, he had easily squeezed himself, or actually shoved everyone else aside, through the dense crowd of people.

Two guards stood by the door.

“Blaze Rockwood,” he introduced himself, even if the guards seemed to have recognized him already. “Bryan Miller’s friend.”

The two men stepped aside and opened the door for him. As he stepped in, he found a few familiar faces standing in the lobby, all waiting in agony.

He approached the young Asian guy named Prem, Bryan’s Muay Thai trainer. “How is he?” he asked.

Prem shook his head. “I don’t know, man. He’s got no pulse when we arrived.”

Blaze balked at the grim news. He was afraid to ask one particular question, but he had to. “But he’s not dead, is he?”

“Dunno. Let’s hope.”

Suddenly, the door opened. A red head woman, wearing a white apron, stepped in and looked around. She was gasping and sweating, as if she had left her kitchen in haste and ran all the way here when she heard the news. The level of anxiety shown on her face was higher than anyone else’s.

Who is she?

Their eyes met. For a moment, he thought she would come to him. In fact, she had taken a single step forward, but for some reasons, she hesitated and looked around, searching for something… or someone.

He heard murmurs. When he turned around, he saw Chuck Paterson, Bryan’s coach, coming from the corridor. He met the forty year old MMA veteran halfway.

“How is he?” he immediately asked.

Chuck quickly looked at him, as if trying to recognize who he was. He had a dazed expression on his face. “Blaze?”

Blaze nodded. “Yes, it’s me,” he replied, holding Chuck’s shoulder to wake him up from the shock. “How’s Bryan?”

Chuck could not speak, and then he just started sobbing. “Gone,” he choked. “He’s dead, Blaze.”

Blaze’s arms fell heavily to his sides. His body went numb, as if he’d been hit on the head and went unconscious for a long moment. He could hear the referee counting from one to ten. Still, he could not get up.

Chapter 2

Megan Riley dropped her head on the wheel and sobbed. She’d been through a lot in her life, but she’d never been scorned like a piece of trash.

Bryan Miller was her boyfriend. They were practically neighbors in Spring Valley, four blocks away. She grew up in that place, while Bryan just moved there three years ago. His house was located in an area she called the
grassy corner
because all houses there had lush, green lawns, while hers was among the dozens of modest houses in the
sandy corner,
with yards covered with sand and pebbles.

They happened to meet a year ago while she was jogging along the
grassy corner
street. He was already a popular Mixed Martial Artist then, so she was really flattered when he smiled and ran with her. He asked her out the next day, and eventually, they fell in love.

However, very few knew about her relationship with Bryan for two reasons. First, because they both wanted their private lives off the scrutiny of the public. Second, because his parents did not like her. In fact, they wanted another woman for him.

She had never met them. When Bryan arranged for a dinner so they’d get to know her, they did not show up.

She understood their dilemma. The Millers co-owned a multi-million dollar fastfood chain company, so they would naturally be very cautious about a woman who was to be their sole heir’s future wife.

For that reason, she had been very patient with them. She was determined to prove to them that they perceived her wrong. But now that Bryan was dead, all her sacrifices meant nothing anymore.

She just crumbled down.

For three days, she’d been begging the Miller’s family to give her a few minutes to attend Bryan’s wake, just to take a look at his remains. But they shunned her away. She had no choice but to wait for this day when they opened the viewing to the public.

Bryan was the number one UFC heavyweight contender. He had gained popularity eight months ago when he defeated the two-time champion and UFC veteran, thus earning him a shot at the championship against Travis Rockwood, the one they called “The Worlds Most Dangerous Man”, but others called him “The World’s Most Dangerous Mad Man”.

She had expected that hundreds of MMA fans would gather around the chapel today, but she found thousands. She had to fall in line for two hours before she finally had a glance of her boyfriend’s body, but only for a brief moment. The guard had asked her to keep moving to give chance to others.

She cried for a few more minutes, until she ran out of tears. She lifted her face off the wheel and pulled a tissue to wipe off the smeared make-up around her eyes.

She only had the morning off from work and she still had to go to the gym where her brother, Josh, worked. He had not come home for two nights and whenever she called him, he kept telling her he was fine. But she was getting worried.

A deafening rock music greeted her as she walked along the corridor going to the gym entrance. This place had always been noisy and smelled like man sweat, but that kind of music was unusual. The only person she knew who’d play that song in its loudest was her brother.

The place was empty when she stepped in, which was again unusual, and then she saw a note posted on the door, that the gym was temporarily closed in the morning for maintenance.

“Josh,” she called, but of course, no one could hear her voice with that music blowing the whole place up. She walked around, searching for the source, but she found a man instead, his back on her. Despite the loud sound, she heard him yelling harshly.

It seemed the place was not empty as she thought it was.

Then she noticed that the man was not alone. He was clutching the collar of another man in front of him, and that another man was Josh.

She gasped and fumbled for the brass knuckles in her purse. When she found it, she quickly slid her fingers through the holes and ran to her brother’s rescue.

Whoever that man was, he was big and over six feet tall. Josh was just a novice wrestler of five feet ten height. Most of all, he was a special child, slow in learning and easily scared.

“Where the fuck is he?!” she heard the man roar, scaring Josh even more. The scene was too much for her to bear.

“You asshole,” she uttered furiously.

Without warning, she hit the man on the nape with her metal knuckles. Hard.

The man stopped, dropping Josh to the floor, and then he slowly turned around.

Horrified, she stepped back. If that did not work, this monster might strangle her into pieces, with his bare hands.

To her relief, the man dropped to one knee on the floor before he could even see her.

He growled.

Fearing for her life, she grabbed the nearest stool, ready to hit him again if he’d lay a hand on her, or on her brother.

Eventually, the man collapsed, face-down, to the floor.

“Shit!” Josh finally managed to say a word. “What did you do?”

“He was trying to kill you,” she argued. She had to speak really loud so her brother could hear her.

“No.” Josh shook his head and rolled the man on the floor so she could see his face. “Do you realize who he is?”

She looked at the unconscious man on the floor. Her eyes flung wide open when she recognized him. She stepped back.

It can’t be.

Blaze Rockwood?

She found herself biting at her fingertip, trembling. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “Is he alright? Is he breathing?”

Sitting on his haunches, Josh checked Blaze’s pulse. “He’s got a pulse, but he’s not breathing.”

“Oh God!” she cried, now in a panic. She’d go to jail for this, or strapped to a gurney for lethal injection. “Call 911.”

Josh grabbed his phone. “Run, Meg.”

“What?”

“Go. I’ll take care of this.”

She was not sure if this was the right thing to do. For the first time, it was Josh who had made the decision. That had always been her role as the older sister. “They’ll blame you.”

“They won’t. I was in front of him, and he did not see you. Just run. I won’t say a word about you.”

In a state like this, she could not think clearly. Perhaps she should just do what Josh asked her to do… for now.

She turned around and scampered out of the door, and down the stairs to the parking garage where she left her car. She grabbed for the wheel, but her fingers were numb and cold. She could not feel anything.

To her relief, she heard the siren of an approaching ambulance. They’d better be on time to save Blaze Rockwood’s life or she’d be faced with homicide.

Her brother should be safe, though. Blaze could not possibly claim that it was Josh who hit him while her brother was right in front of his face when she attacked him.

“What did I do?” she whined as she clutched both sides of her head. Why did she snap out of her senses just because she saw someone yelling at her brother?

She had always been an overprotective sister, but this time, she’d overdone it… so carelessly.

*****

“Hey.”

Megan turned to look over her shoulders and saw Travis. She sighed. Of all people that she had wanted to meet, this monster was the last.

This was the person the MMA referred to as the world’s most dangerous man. To her, he was a monster. Now, a killer.

His fists were made of iron, and known for pounding his opponent’s face without mercy, without restrain, spilling blood over blood on the octagon mat. In fact, two of his last four opponents fell into a coma. The other one was permanently injured. The most recent one suffered a concussion.

Yet for some reasons, the audience loved him. They adored him. They called him the greatest and the coolest fighter that ever graced the Octagon, and a lot better than his brother, the former heavyweight champion, Blaze Rockwood.

“What do you want?” she asked uninterestedly. In fact, she felt like slapping this son of a bitch who had the gall to give her that annoying grin after he had killed her boyfriend.

But of course, Travis did not know that. Nobody knew about her relationship with Bryan aside from her friend, Candace, and Josh. It was just unfortunate that she would have to deal with him from time to time.

She was employed in the Battledome Incorporated, a Mixed Martial Arts organization closely affiliated with, yet independent from the UFC, as a scheduler. She would regularly plan MMA classes and fix the trainers’ class schedules according to their available time. She would also schedule events, promotions, and everything else that needed specific time and date. It was an easy job, and that was why she could be pulled out at anytime to temporarily sit for an absent, suspended, or resigned employee.

Two months before the last UFC fight, Ryder Ross, the young CEO of the Battledome, felt the need to give the heavyweight champion more support, so he pulled her out of her office and ordered her to see through Travis’ needs at all times. In short, she was to be Travis’ personal assistant until after the fight.

If she didn’t need the job, she could have refused, especially that Travis would be fighting against Bryan. She felt like betraying her boyfriend, but even Bryan told her it was okay.

The Battledome was probably the biggest MMA organization in Las Vegas, and the most expensive. Its gym alone was massive in size, occupying around three acres of land, complete with exercise and training equipments, with two swimming pools and a garden where Ryder Ross’ elite miners, meaning those who were currently signed up with the UFC and were earning a lot of money for themselves and for Ryder, could relax.

At present, Battledome had over five hundred members and more than a hundred were currently signed up with the UFC. It had produced twenty six champions in different weight classes over the past ten years. The Rockwood Brothers were among them.

And there was more. Within the Battledome, there were two groups—the Red Clan and the Black Clan.

From the very beginning, the Red Clan was the more dominant one, considered the clan of the elites. Its master was Steven Hall, a former UFC middleweight champion. He wouldn’t take just anybody in. Applicants would have to go through a mountain of extremely difficult tests to be accepted into his clan. His biggest success so far was Travis Rockwood—the reigning UFC heavyweight champion for two and a half years now.

The Black Clan on the other hand had been called a group of amateurs. A few of the members would make it to the UFC from time to time, but rarely could they produce a contender.

But the wave had made a sudden turn when a then twenty-three year old Black Clan member stunned the world by knocking out the UFC’s heavyweight champion in less than two minutes. His name was Blaze Rockwood—a man who lacked emotions. He’d glare at his opponents like he was about to drag them to hell. That was how he earned his alias as the Octagon Demon.

“Where’ve you been?” Travis asked. “I’ve been looking for you.”

She raised an eyebrow. It seemed spectacular that this famous champ was looking for her, but it was nothing special really. “Why?”

“I want to know my schedule for the day.” He leaned closer to her face. “Duh.”

She cringed. For a man of two hundred and sixty pounds, that expression didn’t suit him. She had used that word to him one time, and since then, he had made it his expression, imitating the girly way she had said it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” she asked. This big chunk meat of a man couldn’t do anything by himself.

“I’m bored. I want to do something.”

“I don’t think you’re scheduled to do anything for the week.”

“Why don’t you check your record? I might have an interview or something.”

She sighed and grabbed the organizer in her purse. She flipped the pages and browse through it. “Nothing. Go home. I have things to do.”

“Your job is to look through my needs.”

“Temporarily, that is. And as of Monday, my job as your babysitter is finished.”

“So who’s going to plan for my meal?”

“You can eat anything you want. Go to the bar. Have fun. Have a lot of sex. Drink yourself to death if you want. It’s your rest week. Enjoy.”

He rolled his eyes. “Maybe I should just go to the gym. Are my gears there?”

“No. I sent them to the laundry service.

“So what am I going to use?”

“Is that my problem?” She sounded sarcastic. “I told you, I’m through babysitting you. Go find yourself another babysitter.”

“Jesus, Megan.” He cringed. “Why are you so upset? Is it too much to ask a question?”

Because you killed my boyfriend!
She wanted to scream.

She brushed her hair with her finger. “Sorry. I’m…”

“Nevermind.” He waved his hands, uninterested to hear her explanation. “I got something for you.” He handed her a check.

She frowned as she read the amount on the check. Ten thousand dollars. “What’s this for?”

He leaned closer to her and whispered, “I heard you’re planning to have your tits fixed. Go on. I’m with you.”