Alexei
The crowd goes silent. It’s a shocked silence that doesn’t belong with an audience that paid for violence.
Their champion, Rat, lies on the floor. A heap of flesh and blood.
And the other one, the so-called Iron Arm, continues.
Punch. Punch. Punch. His left hand, covered in wraps, hammers Rat’s already unconscious face.
He switches. He grabs the man’s collar with his bandaged hand and positions the metal bar he calls an arm.
The fist closes imprecisely. The prosthesis isn’t very good.
He punches. The metal has more mass, more rigidity, and less cushioning.
The sound is ugly. It’s a cracking split, a sharp crepitation.
It certainly shatters the champion’s jaw, leaving it mobile, dangling with his neck, crooked and unhinged.
And he laughs, Iron Arm. He laughs. He looks at his grotesque work as if he expects Rat to spit out bloody congratulations through broken teeth and a hanging jaw. He doesn’t stop.
Karpov is plastered against the railing, his eyes bulging.
Even he shuts up, as Rat stares at the ceiling, glazed, unblinking.
With red sclera, outstretched arms, and a loose jaw, he’s a horror film, a scarecrow of violated flesh.
Iron Arm’s mouth twitches. He looks at the mess he’s made and has a spasm—a proud, appreciative half-smile, even amidst the tense silence as a man has to climb into the ring to check his opponent’s pulse.
Of course, deaths happen in underground fights.
But they’re discouraged. It’s too much to clean up, an expense they prefer to avoid, and when they do happen, they’re unintentional—I’m the one who cleans up all of Ivan’s shit, every single time, and I know: fighters may love violence with a devout passion, but even they show concern.
First-time killers get nauseous, dizzy, or, as veterans, worry about the consequences of lost profits, of owing a backer, of disrupting a circle of dangerous men who profit from the now-dead body.
But facing the possibility of killing your opponent with a smile so honest and sick is new.
The crowd only explodes again when Rat is confirmed to be alive. The organizer raises the man’s left arm—the one of flesh and bone—and yells a name that gets lost in the noise. I hear boos, but mostly, I hear organized, terrified chants of IRON ARM.
Karpov slams his fist on the railing. “Son of a bitch! Useless! I told him to finish off the stump in the first round!” He turns, his face red with rage. “That fucking cripple, who does he think he is? Motherfucker!”
I remain silent, watching Iron Arm descend from the ring.
He moves with an economy of motion that contradicts the savagery of seconds ago.
A man, perhaps his agent, meets him, slapping his back with a familiarity the fighter clearly despises.
I see the subtle flinch, the tensing of his shoulder. He doesn’t like to be touched.
“You lost money, Karpov,” I say. It’s always satisfying to see Karpov lose, whining like a child who broke his favorite toy.
“Don’t fuck with me, Malakov,” he growls. “That was a lucky shot. Rat is a lazy imbecile.”
My gaze follows the fighter as he disappears through a back door. That medallion glints again as he turns. An insignificant detail. And yet.
“Who is he?” I ask.
Karpov grabs another beer from the bucket. “Ah, he’s some big shot who failed at MMA, so we took him in here. Was a winning machine... until today. That piece of shit, worthless motherfucker—”
An idiot. I correct him, “The other one, Karpov.”
“Ah.” He stops. He’d rather curse his golden goose than talk about the one who slit its throat. “I don’t know. Some psycho from the south. A nobody who fights for pocket change.” He gestures dismissively. “Iron Arm. What a joke. He’s just a fucked-up stump with a grudge against the world.”
A stump with a grudge who just dismantled your champion with efficiency and a smile.
I could use someone like him.
I cast the bait. “He doesn’t fight like a nobody.”
“Listen,” Karpov begins, pointing the beer bottle at me like a weapon. “That guy? I heard he was kicked out of Los Angeles. Banned. For behavioral problems. The worst kind...”
I’m not impressed. “We’re in a basement where men beat each other for money. What counts as ‘behavioral problems’ here?”
“He’s only in this ring because I owed a favor to his fucking agent. The guy told me, ‘he’s missing an arm, he’s deep in the shit, he’ll take any change you throw at him.’”
“Huh. You didn’t look into who he was talking about?”
“Of course I did.”
Karpov stands there with his arms crossed. A six-foot-tall child, throwing a tantrum because he knows the move that cost him his prize.
“And?”
“And what? And nothing,” he answers too quickly. “A cesspool, that’s what I found. Crippled someone, killed someone else...”
“And you, knowing this, let him fight your champion?”
Karpov takes offense, which is funny—I’m not actively trying to offend him. He’d know if I were. I’m just describing his own actions.
He points a trembling finger in my direction.
“Because it was a rumor, for fuck’s sake!
His agent sold me a loser, not a demon with a tin arm!
Do you know how many guys show up at my door claiming they killed ten mob bosses?
All of fucking Sacramento claims they’ve taken off Donald Trump’s head—if the guy was kicked out of LA for being out of control, half the guys here are too.
Welcome to fucking Sacramento. Rat, that lazy bastard, should have crushed him in thirty seconds, not stood there with his arms wide open for a cripple.
” He turns back to the railing. His face contorts in disgust.
He’s going to drown his financial loss and wounded ego in cheap beer and self-pity. Useless.
“I’ll have this cripple erased. Nobody makes a fool out of me in my own backyard,” he mutters to himself.
It’s the reaction of a petulant child: destroy. This imbecile is about to break his final playing card.
“Killing him? Is that your grand business strategy?”
Karpov blinks. “He humiliated me! He cost me money!”
His problem is obvious. He doesn’t know how to manage the one business he has the slightest taste for.
“He could make you more money than you can imagine,” I say, taking a step toward him. The power shifts on our small, elevated platform. “Were you deaf? Didn’t you hear the crowd? They would pay double to see him again.”
The gears turn slowly in his head. Greed fighting against wounded pride.
“So what do we do?”
We, in the plural. A new development. This basement game has nothing to do with me. I prefer to professionalize it.
“That depends. Does he have a brain, or just a metal arm and a temper?”
Karpov frowns. “How the fuck should I know? I’ve never seen him solve an algebra problem.”
This is part of the problem with men like Karpov and, subsequently, Ivan. They think intelligence is tied to an academic notebook, a diploma in a gothic font, and a square root. They don’t think intelligence mixes in a putrid ring like this. But on that, part of the time, they’re right.
The so-called Iron Arm sets off an unbearable alarm. And honestly, I don’t know why his is the name that sticks in my head. Something in the way he fought, in the way he transformed into something other than human the moment the bell rang.
The main idea is to rip away the business Karpov’s deceased uncle left in his lap, letting him play gladiator with his band of “strong men”.
My family—I—will have 100% control over the drone routes, and Karpov would surely like to rid himself of the burden in exchange for a good deal to focus solely on his little fights.
By then, with the right structure and the right face on the posters, even this filth can be repackaged, promoted, and made profitable on a scale he can’t even imagine.
It can be made to look legitimate. And anything that looks legitimate can be used to make dirty money clean.
I hate getting involved. But this will prove fruitful. I’ll make sure of it.
“Put him in the ring against the opposite of Rat,” I say after a sigh. “A man who, for a change, knows what he’s doing—boxing, judo, muay-thai; it doesn’t matter.”
The idea lights up Karpov’s face for a second, then it fades. “A real professional is expensive. The purse would have to be high. I don’t have that kind of guy on my payroll.”
And I detest babysitting.
I slip a hand inside my suit and take out my wallet. There’s always a stack in there for minor contingencies, insignificant amounts on our monthly spreadsheets. I count out hundred-dollar bills.
“We’re in a partnership. Your success is my interest.” I separate a few tens of thousands; a minimal, thin green block, and extend it to him.
His eyes gleam green with money. The instant he reaches for the stack, I pull it out of his reach.
“I have conditions, Karpov.”
He sighs and straightens his spine. Poses as a man again—but this time, as the worst kind. He forces a wide, yellow smile, searching for the right words to convince me to hand over the cash.
“Of course, my friend, of course. What are your conditions?”
“Your drone operation,” I say. The reason I came here in the first place. “We’re willing to finance it, but we want a larger percentage.”
“Larger than fifty? Ah, Malakov, now you’re fucking with me...”
“This offer covers the fees for your future fighters. If our route expansion plans would increase your profits by 30%, partnering with better fighters will... establish a higher standard. I can create a profit growth plan if you provide me with the numbers.”
Karpov stares at me, the yellow smile still stretched across his face, but his eyes sparking with the humiliation of being treated like the dog he is. Greed always wins with men like him.