6. Alek
ALEK
The blood runs off my body and mixes with the hot water, draining down beneath my feet. My hands are shaking, but I ignore them. I simply scrub my body with the soapy washcloth again and again until I feel clean. It’s never enough, but I do it anyway.
I can still see the body in my mind’s eye. The rich red blood dripping down from his throat and soaking into his shirt and pooling onto the floor…the gaping open mouth and wound. Wound that if I desired, I could almost bury my fist in it and feel the anatomy of the neck around my fingers.
I don’t have to do it to know that it would feel warm and wet.
With a rough swallow, I try to get that image out of my mind. It was just another job that I had to do. That’s all. Another man’s life taken by the blade of my knife for the sake of another…and the money.
The money that I’ll never spend on anything truly important again.
I stand with the water pouring over my hair that sticks to my neck and shoulders as the steam surrounds me.
It’s not guilt that I feel. No, it’s a dark pit of blackness that I fall into every single time I take a life. It’s the knowledge that the person I’ve eliminated will never take a single breath again.
Sometimes it’s for the best.
Other times it’s simply reality.
Tonight, it’s not enough to know that the man I killed would’ve killed far more people than I ever will. It’s not enough to have felt his pulse under my hands and his vein under my blade.
The tension builds in my body and I’m panting by the time I get out of the hot shower. I dry off and step out into the hallway with the towel around my waist and my heart drumming in my chest.
I need to feel something…living. I need to feel my own blood dripping down my face, my own sweat pooling on my skin.
Something to remind me that I’m not nearly as invincible as I feel sometimes.
It’s a twisted way to think about it, but it’s the truth.
Taking a life isn’t nearly as exhilarating as nearly losing my own.
It’s an ache that only grows stronger as I pull my clothing on and head back to my bedroom to sling up my wet towel somewhere around the room where it can dry.
I pull out my phone and look up my most recent message from the owner of the fight club outside of Tessari. He sent me the code to get in about a week ago, and if I’m lucky it hasn’t changed since.
I debate my choice for a fraction of a second before I head out in the middle of the night to the one place where who I am and what I do doesn’t matter.
The entrance to the club is down an alleyway with a large black metal door and a slot at eye level.
I saunter up wearing jeans and a navy sweater with my coat pulled over it. My boots crunch on gravel and likely broken glass on the ground and there’s several people behind me that I keep a close eye on. You can never be too careful out here at night.
When I get to the door the eye slot at the top opens.
“Code?” the man behind the door asks.
“Razer blade,” I reply softly. I wouldn’t want the couple behind me to be listening in and get the code from me.
The door opens a second later and I step into the cold, dimly lit hallway. The moonlight outside is almost more illuminating.
I make my way down the hallway to the stairs, where the massive underground room is. Four solid concrete walls, gritty and blood stained. In the middle of the room is a circle made up of floor-to-ceiling chain link fence.
The arena.
Bloody water flows down toward several drains at the corner of the arena and two one man is being dragged out by his shoulders while the other cheers with his fists up in the air. Like a hero who has just won his greatest fight.
The crowd around the room is loud, but not louder than the grungy music that blares from the speakers.
“Trevor, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were on duty for the night!” A voice to the left of me calls out. I look over to see Lucas Bianchi standing there with a grin on his face.
I smile back at him even though it’s the last thing I want to do.
Putting on my game face and playing the role that I’ve been stuck in for the last couple months.
“Lucas, damn man, I didn’t expect to see you here.
I got done early.” I clap hands with him and he pulls me in for a half hug before leaning back and looking me in the face with an amused expression.
“Only you could do something so heinous and then come out to watch some fuckers get the shit kicked out of them.”
I laugh, and it’s a real one this time. “I don’t know, you’re pretty damn vicious yourself.” It’s not a lie. The man has done more damage to his own family than most, but it’s nothing in comparison to the deaths he’s caused in the lives of others.
“Besides, I came here to blow off some steam, didn’t you?” I ask him.
He laughs at me. “Everyone here came to blow off steam. The guys in the ring, the crowd watchin’…the big guys watching over ‘em. We’re all here to forget about what we do outside this place.”
“Then maybe let me forget yeah?” I ask him as I clasp my hand on his shoulder tightly. He shrugs away from me and shakes his head.
“Nobody can let you forget…” He points at me as he takes a few steps back. “You’re…something to be reckoned with. The Dresvanni assholes aren’t gonna know what’s coming.” He grins and then looks toward the ring where two more people are being shoved in to fight. This time it’s two women.
Two women with strong shoulders and one with at least a foot of height over the other. They’re lithe but muscular and definitely look like they can hold their own as much as any of the others who have stood in the ring.
It’s not often that there’s women fighting each other here.
There’s way more men interested in beating each other to a pulp.
But women? They tend to get back at each other in more covert ways.
Icier ways. Knives in the back in the dead silence.
They tend to kill for their own pleasure, with no audience to cheer them on.
So the fact that these two women have decided whatever prize is being offered tonight is worth their lives….well, it only tells me that it must be a pretty damn important one.
“What’s the pot tonight?” I ask Lucas as he watches the ring with hunger.
“Two mil,” he replies. “Chump change for guys like us, but to them? It’s a lifetime of cash.” He shakes his head but he’s still smiling.
I smile back at him, forced and uncomfortable. I came here to forget, but I’m forced into playing this role.
“I don’t know, I could use a nice two million,” I tell him. “I’m not sure I’d want to hop in the ring for it, though.”
“You could do it,” someone else from beside us says, obviously having been listening in.
I glare in their direction, but Lucas seems entertained.
“They’re right. You’d give one hell of a show,” he insists.
I can’t help but smirk at that and look back toward the ring.
Swing after swing, the two women take each other to the narrow peak of passing out with blood flying in every direction possible.
The crowd is getting even more amped up, several people rattle the chain link around the arena and the guards have to pull them off it.
None of the people in here understand the weight of the fight they’re watching. They’re not the ones risking their lives. They’re here for entertainment alone.
It makes the pit in my stomach burn and my hands ball into fists.
“I don’t know that this crowd is worth entertaining,” I say in a low tone.
Lucas pats me on the back. He’s a big man with the confidence of a bull. “I’d hop in myself, but I’ve got bigger things to do,” he tells me. “Don’t be so hard on these slums. They’re what make us rich.”
I chuckle once or twice and shy away from him through the crowd to get closer to the arena.
I watch as one woman’s fist makes contact with the other’s face, and I can imagine her cheek bone cracking and breaking. I can feel the vibration of the floor under my feet. The energy in the room is palpable…
I have to admit; it makes it seem like a viable choice. The tension, the excitement, the blood… It’s all hot and sticky in the air.
The muscles of my back and shoulders tense with each strike made and I find myself rooting for one of the women over the other.
The smaller one. She’s feisty and has a certain look about her.
As though she would have just as much confidence while fighting even if there were a literal bear in the ring.
She’s getting her ass kicked right now, so there may as well be.
“What are their names?” I ask someone beside me, not caring who it is.
“Natasha and Lily,” they tell them. I vaguely recognize the names. It’s important to know who is who around here, but they must not be too important to be risking their lives, right?
Then again, it’s becoming even more intriguing as I stand here watching them.
Every hit, every tooth that flies out of their mouths…
the blood that stains the floor and their clothing.
I wonder about their lives, about who they are outside of this.
What else they would be willing to do for two million dollars.
There’s a hell of a lot I’d be willing to do. I’ve done more for less…
The air around me seems to grow even more tense, and I hear murmurs that clue me onto something having changed.
I glance around the room but don’t see anything suspicious right away.
No, I see…Tiger, the owner of the ring standing in a corner talking to someone with money in their hands. Likely a bet that’s being placed.
“Dresvanni,” I just so happen to hear as I turn back toward the ring.
It could be any of them, but I have a feeling it’s the one I both want to see the least and would give just about anything to see again.
Not here though. Not with Lucas nearby watching my every move.
I draw my eyes around the room again, looking behind my shoulder and that’s when I see him.
Tommaso.
He looks even bigger in this light somehow. Broad shouldered, wide backed, and looking like he’s prepared to take care of any trouble that comes his way.