11. Nico
11
Nico
Hot lights blaze down into the ring. The crowd teems tonight, swarming out of focus just beyond my vision. I swipe the sweat off my face as I pace the edge of the cage, eyes locked on my opponent. I watch his every step just as he watches mine. The fucker is built like a bull and he likes to charge like one, too. I don’t know what kind of gear these guys are on these days, muscles all swollen out like twisted-up balloon animals.
Muscle is good for a fight, and street smarts can give you an edge, but rage—that’s the real secret sauce.
I haven’t seen Ava St. Clair in days, and I’m going to make this man pay for every hour between me and her.
I promised Ava that I would leave her alone if I was wrong. I wasn’t wrong, so instead, the girl hid. She puts a locked door between us and dodges all my late-night texts. Hell, maybe it’s for the best. I bet her cunt still hurts, but if she were smart, she’d let me kiss it better.
The charge comes and I weave away, then follow up once his momentum burns out. We lock arms, trying to take each other down. He’s got weight on me, but I have leverage. I sling him over on his own size, tripping him up and getting him on the ground. He goes down hard. He gets his hands around his face like a shield, lets me burn out my energy on useless hits.
I should have known Ava would ask me to lay off her brother. It’s the one simple thing that I just can’t give her. Non-negotiable. It’s not about my pride. I could swallow that for her, if she asked. It’s about something bigger than me, bigger than her, and it presses all around me all the time. I feel it in the eyes that are staring at me now, shadows in the crowd watching the fight with folded hands and straight faces.
I don’t always make the rules. Not anymore.
There’s only one way I get this boot off my throat, and that’s through Marcel. Like it or not.
My opponent climbs back to his feet. He swipes at his bleeding nose as our eyes lock. We size each other up again. He doesn’t have much left in him. From here, it’s a matter of endurance. Whose body gives up first, even when the spirit doesn’t. My ear hums loudly, maybe busted, but it’s no concussion. I can make it.
When we lock again, it’ll be the last time. I feel it in my body, taste it in the blood in my mouth. He feels it too, his movements sluggish and dazed.
We pace around each other, sniffing for a weakness, a single misstep, an old wound that needs the right kick. On the edge of the ring, someone parts the crowd. I catch movement out of the corner of my eye—standing front and center, Marcel stares up at me, his arms crossed over his chest and hatred in his eyes.
My eyes are on Marcel, but my attention—that’s on the brute who thinks he’s finally found his opening. His moment. I turn back at the last second, and I snatch that moment from him. I fall on top of him, and I give Marcel a lengthy and merciless demonstration of exactly what I would like to do to him, one hit at a time.
The crowd roars, and the cash flows.
In the aftermath of the win, I walk through the back, past a dozen hands clapping me on the shoulder. I scrub sweat and blood off myself with a towel. In the backroom, I find a small group of men waiting for me. Five familiar faces. My supporters, my investors. If you stretch it, the word friends might even cover a couple of them, but we all have one thing in common. The only thing that matters. Blood.
Angelo tosses me a beer instead of a painkiller.
Whatever elaborate cocktail of mental illnesses the man had before, they must have gotten worse while I was on the inside. He’s inked up with face tattoos now, his canine teeth filed into sharp points. He always liked that weird satanic shit, only to get nicknamed “Angel” for the trouble. I guess that’s just how it goes. Every man named Christian I’ve ever met has been an atheist. Back in the day, Angel’s calling card was two burning wings tattooed on his shoulders. Now, he’s got horns and blacked-out hollow cheeks to match. One of his eyes is completely shot, milky and gray where there should be white. He says he lost it from a “bad eye tattoo”—as if there’s some other kind.
“Good shit,” he tells me, the “s” scraping weird with how he’s jacked his teeth up. “Thought maybe you’d met your match for a minute there.”
“They haven’t made my match yet.”
“That’s good, man, that’s good,” he says, all friendly. His tone and his body language draw me away from the others. The man teeters in place like a scarecrow caught in the wind, all awkward and squirmy. “’Cause I’ve been hearing otherwise from up top, you know.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“The suits. Come on, Nico, what do suits always want?” he asks, as if he’s just as exhausted with the bullshit as I am. “They want progress, they wanna know that now that we’ve all hopped on, this train is going somewhere. The fights, those are good. Everybody’s happy while the money’s coming in. But you can’t win them all, Nico. You made bigger promises than this. It’s no surprise that Sal isn’t playing ball, we knew he wouldn’t, but it sounds like Marcel’s a bigger roadblock than we anticipated.”
“This shit doesn’t happen overnight. It took seven years for them to get me out of prison. How about you tell the suits I’ll have that favor repaid in half the time.”
Angel grimaces at my attitude.
It must be bad if something really has him spooked.
“I’m just letting you know,” Angel sighs, his voice dropping again as the heavy door creaks open on its hinges. “The clock’s ticking, Nico, and people are checking their watches.”
I put my back to him, looking in the dirty mirror and cursing at a bloody cut running through my eyebrow. Suddenly, the room goes cold and quiet, like a haunting. In the reflection of the room behind me, the men silently turn and file out. They leave only one person behind—Marcel. His mirrored image appears over my shoulder, his gaze sharp and his hands buried in the pockets of his slacks.
“If you came here hoping to see me get my ass kicked, you’re going to have to start finding better fighters,” I tell him. I turn around to size him up. “Or maybe you came here to settle our differences like men. Cage is empty.”
He ignores my goading.
“What happened with Ava?” he asks instead, no segue to soften the impact.
Questions tangle up at the back of my skull. I try to read him, try to figure out what he’s talking about—how much he knows and why he cares—but Marcel is cold as ice. Under that calm demeanor, though, I can see a little spark. Maybe that’s where Ava gets her spirit from, that little temper she’s trying out like test-driving a car.
“Why the fuck would I know?” I ask. I try to turn back to my locker, but Marcel slams it in front of me.
“You were the last person who was with her. Thaddeus saw you outside the restaurant; he saw you talking to her. After that, neither of you came back to the house until the next day. The guards say you came back together sometime in the afternoon. I’ll give you one chance to answer: what happened?”
“Why are you here asking me about this now?”
That was days ago, and I haven’t heard a word about it. Not from anyone.
“I’m not losing my little sister again. I barely got her back the first time. And if I find out you had anything to do with this—”
“To do with what ?” I demand.
Is the girl hurt? Did she do something?
There’s a panic in my head, a rush of what-ifs that make it hard to think clearly, and I’m tempted to start swinging on him until I have Marcel spitting out the truth with some of his teeth. Finally, he says,
“Ava’s barely left her room since she came back with you. She won’t talk any more than she has to just to confirm that she’s alive.” His voice lowers, hovering somewhere between a secret and a threat. “She already spent months in there when she lost Vinny. The last thing she needs is someone like you setting her back and fucking with her head.”
Oh, I fucked more than that .
“You ever think maybe she’s sulking because you’ve got her lined up to marry some greasy-haired weasel in a discount suit? Seeing as how you threw her future in the meat grinder so you could make your dinner with it, I can see why she’d be a little upset—”
His hands come up fast on my chest. I let him push me back into the lockers, a laugh already half out of my lips. The kid has a lot of goddamn steel in him, I’ll give him that, but he’s out of his game. Angry, emotional outbursts—that’s my home field, not his, and it shows. He’s still holding himself back.
“That’s between her and Sal,” he says. “You think I don’t want to beg her to reconsider? You think I haven’t begged Sal to let me try ?”
I step closer to him.
“You touch me again, Marcel, I’ll break both your hands.” I grin, clapping him on the shoulder and drawing him in closer. It’s not friendly. “Your problems have got nothing to do with me. The world hurt your sister. I didn’t. When I’m finally in charge again, then you can start coming to me, groveling for me to fix your problems.”
I give him a final clap on the shoulder to send him on his way.
“This is my warning, Nico,” he says, somber and serious. “You stay away from her.”
I give him the courtesy of letting his footsteps fade out of the room before I slam my locker open and grab my keys—to drive straight home to his little sister.
I’ve never been good at doing what other people say I should. Orders, advice, it’s all wasted on me. My will is an iron thing, and it doesn’t bend easy, not even when I want it to. Hell, I could make my own life a hell of a lot easier if I weren’t so damn stubborn—but I can’t. It’s not how I’m wired.
I swore I’d never get wrapped up in a woman like this again. I told myself, the second I set foot out of the pen, I was done with the whole goddamn species. I couldn’t trust myself around them, always getting in over my head, falling hard and fast and for forever .
And that same night, Ava St. Clair happened.
The house is quiet at this hour.
Or it is, until the sole of my boot slams against Ava’s locked bedroom door and cracks it off its hinges.