TWENTY-FOUR #2
A reluctant laugh caught in my throat. Fragile, but necessary. ‘Make those Margaritas and I’m game. I still can’t believe you called me at two in the morning, though.’
She scoffed again.
I shook my head and rolled my shoulders as if shrugging off the weight still braced across them.
‘I need to change. Where do you want to meet up?’
‘Ossidiana.’
I froze mid-step. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘What if I run into him and he’s with another woman?’ I whined, despising the reflection staring back at me from the mirror, looking as if I were ten seconds away from stomping my foot like a petulant child.
I shut my eyes tight.
I’m not going to keep orbiting a fantasy persona who had already walked away, I told myself.
‘It’s a full circle,’ Gianna then said. ‘You started your journey there, you’ll end it.’
I stared at the red gloss smeared at the corners of my mouth. The mirror held my gaze without mercy.
‘With blood,’ I whispered, more to myself.
‘Esattamente.’ My cousin grinned through the line – exactly.
Cain D’Angelo stepped into the ring like a sinner approaching judgment. Clad in black, with hands bound in blood-hungry wraps, his every movement reeked of arrogance – of pride.
The oldest sin.
The crowd cheered as if he were worthy. As if he hadn’t defiled something sacred.
But I knew the truth. He was filth. Blasphemy draped in skin.
I watched from the shadows of my office that overlooked the ring, where the neon didn’t reach. Red and blue lights blinked like sirens across his body, bathing him in the colours of bruises he hadn’t yet earned. He moved with the ease of a man unafraid of consequence.
He had broken her. He had taken her.
He had marked her in places that always belonged to me.
And now he stood in the ring like a god among mortals, while my little lamb wandered poisoned through the wilderness, whispering his name like a prayer instead of what it truly was – a curse.
But to truly set her free – to cleanse her flesh and blood so that it might receive me – his shadow had to be purged.
Purity demanded sacrifice, and he had offered himself willingly.
The fool walked into my sanctum like prey led to slaughter, and I hadn’t even needed the snare I’d laid out to bring him here.
‘You’re up, boss,’ Marco murmured in Italian from behind me.
He never asked questions. That was why I kept him, why he was the only soul permitted to stand this close to the altar. He didn’t ask why I wanted this fighter, why I had circled his name on the list.
The reason was divine in its simplicity: I needed to scrub him out of this world. And that world would know that Cain D’Angelo had a dark streak once they learnt he’d died in an illegal fight. Some would condemn him, others would love him all the more for it.
Reaching for the mask, I drew it over my head. I never wore the same face twice – but this one… this one was special. An angel’s visage, radiant gold and holy serenity carved into a smile that thirsted for blood. A sanctified executioner’s face, hungry to be baptised in Cain’s desolation.
Descending the steps slowly, I let each bootfall echo like a drumbeat in a funeral procession. The crowd roared around me – faceless sinners howling for blood, blind to the reckoning unfolding before their eyes. Unaware that I had built this place to cleanse the world from those like them.
The neon licked the surroundings like the flames of hell itself.
And there he was: the beast I had come to wrangle – and in some way, the reflection I had spent a lifetime denying.
I saw it in the way his jaw clenched, in the black fire smouldering in his eyes, in the stillness that wasn’t calm but coiled fury waiting for any reason to burn. It was a language I knew by heart – rage dressed as control, sin disguised as discipline. I knew it because it was my native language.
We were forged from the same metal. Violence was our inheritance, written into the marrow of our bones long before either of us had had the choice to resist it.
We were born to hurt, to break, to claim.
Only… I had learnt how to mould it – how to cut away the rot and leave only devotion.
With every sacrifice I had brought to Him.
I’d washed myself of the world’s filth: the weakness of mercy, the corruption of doubt, until what remained was purpose and piety.
But he still wallowed in it. He wore the grime of this world. He dragged it into his bed and branded it into her skin, mistaking desecration for salvation.
He was the monster who’d never sought cleansing.
As he shifted his stance, muscles rolled beneath his skin and sweat clung to his shirt. Filthy.
I felt the twisted thrill of comprehension rattle through me in that moment – he was not my opposite. He was my unsuspected twin, stripped of faith, order, shackled to his flesh, while I had transcended mine.
And that was why he had to fall.
Because only one of us could stand before God and call himself worthy.
Only one of us could touch her soul without destroying it.
And when his blood slicked the canvas and his breath shook its last, the balance would tilt – and she would be mine, body and spirit.
So I could cleanse her of every stain he’d left behind.
A sanctified gift. Balance restored. And offered up to our Lord, so He could witness the soul I’d made worthy.
So He could forgive me.
The host called out the start of the fight.
As expected, Cain moved first, because pride always lunged before faith.
His fist cut through the space like a thunderclap, grazing my jaw and snapping my head sideways. A ripple of heat tore through my neck, and for a moment, the crowd’s roar became nothing but static in my ears.
I grinned beneath the angel’s mask.
Pain.
Blessed and beautiful.
It bloomed down my jawline like a benediction. It was the hymn of war; the first nail in the cross.
My turn.
I lurched forward, twisting at the hips, and my knuckles drove into the soft spot just above his waist with a sound that was not a punch, but a prayer answered. Bone flexed beneath my fist – a dull, hollow thud reverberating through my forearm.
He grunted – barely – but I allowed it. A pained tremor rippled through his frame; the momentary falter in his breath.
We circled, predators orbiting one another, twin stars locked in each other’s gravity of violence.
The next exchange came fast – a hook from him, a block from me, a low strike to his side.
The mat beneath us drank the sweat and blood, the soles of our boots slipping as the ground tried to claim us with each move.
Every hit was a psalm. Every bruise a prophecy.
His fists were heavy, each blow calculated – but so were mine. We matched each other, at first. But I had the strength of God urging me on. Already, my purpose was honed into something he couldn’t match.
The crowd roared for spectacle, but they didn’t understand: this wasn’t a fight.
This was exorcism.
I ducked under a swing and drove my elbow into his shoulder, sending him staggering back a step. But the bastard recovered too quickly – and slammed a fist straight into my ribs, hard enough to knock the breath out of me.
He was fighting like he was performing an exorcism of his own.
I laughed. Aloud.
Because I could already taste it – the inevitability of breaking him. I could already imagine the glorious moment when his knees gave way, and the fight bled out of his body. The thought of his bones fracturing beneath my knuckles filled me ecstasy I could only compare to holiness.
He swung again. I caught his wrist mid-air, twisted, and drove my knee into his gut. The breath tore from his lungs with a satisfying whoof, and I watched him fold, just slightly – just enough for the madness in my chest to purr with—
A scream cut through the chaos, clean and bright.
It rose above the bellows and roars, a single note of divinity ringing clear amidst the din.
I knew that voice. That quivering cadence.
My head snapped towards it, vision tunnelling to a single, searing point.
And there she was.
Her scent was delayed in reaching me.
Honey. Orange blossoms. Sex.
But it came. Then the shape of her emerged from the crowd. The eyes settled on us.
She was here.
My deliverance. My absolution in mortal flesh.
She stood among the baying crowd, eyes wide, breath caught, watching – me. The noise around her fell away, the lights dimmed, and for one intake of breath the fight faded out of focus.
My salvation had come.
Every blow I had thrown, every bone I longed to break, every drop of blood shed beneath these lights – it was all for this – for her. She was watching me dance to death’s drumbeat, bearing witness to the holy rite I had prepared in her name.
This was no mere fight now.
It was the final ritual before I could purge the stain from her soul.
And in her terrified gaze, I found proof of my purpose.
I would bleed the monster clean for her.
I would not fail her.
My gaze never left hers as I slid a finger beneath the slit of the wrap around my hand, curling it around the small, hidden blade beneath the tape. Warm steel met my fingertips like the hand of God Himself.
Now, I thought, as the crowd howled and Cain turned to face me again.
Now, she could be made pure.