24. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Now playing: You Want A Battle? (Here's a War) - Bullet For My Valentine
The sharp, electronic beep of the hotel keycard felt like the final chop of an axe. When the door clicked shut behind us, the silence that rushed to fill the space was deafening and all-consuming.
Silas didn’t even make it past the entryway.
The second the lock engaged, his entire body shuddered with a violent tremor.
His gear bag slipped from his fingers, hitting the carpet with a resounding thud.
The Championship belt, still clutched loosely in his other hand, slithered to the floor beside it, and Silas collapsed.
He didn’t just sit down. His knees completely gave out. His broad, muscular frame slid down the smooth wood of the door until he was curled into himself against the floor. Each breath tore out of his throat in sharp, ragged gasps that quickly morphed into high-pitched, hyperventilating sobs.
The dam had broken, and a volatile cocktail of every trauma trigger he possessed was rushing out uninhibited. The high-adrenaline from War Zone had already left his nervous system totally fried, but the real damage happened behind the curtain.
The public humiliation from being screamed at like some unmanageable child in front of our colleagues and peers stripped away every ounce of his pride.
But beneath the anger, the embarrassment, was a soul-crushing hurt.
Everything he had bled for, that he had sacrificed, including his body, to crawl his way back after seven years of exile, had been rendered
irrelevant. All because he dared to marry the person he loved.
I stood over him with my own ragged breaths, and the split in my lip stinging as the taste of copper coated my tongue. My ribs were been black and blue, my knuckles throbbed with a dull, vicious ache, and my world was spinning.
The weight of his agony pressed down on my chest with a suffocating gravity that made me want to drop to my knees beside him and let the darkness take us both.
But I couldn’t. The only purpose that mattered anymore on this earth was to be his anchor, and I couldn’t do that while breaking as well.
He needed me to be strong, to be the stable wall, and I would burn my soul to ashes before I failed him.
With that notion flooding my veins, the devastating sorrow in my chest began to morph, hardening into a white-hot rage.
It settled into my bones like tempered steel, my jaw locking so tight my teeth ached.
Presley-fucking-Murran had broken my husband.
He took Silas’s love and joy and turned it into a crime.
Kneeling on the carpet in front of him, while completely ignoring the screaming protest of my bruised knees, I reached out, gently but firmly grasping his wrists and slowly pulling his hands away from his face.
Si’s eyes were dilated and bloodshot, tears tracking thick lines through the dirt and dried blood on his cheeks.
He was shaking so hard, his teeth were chattering, his lungs heaving like a bellows.
“Si. Look at me, baby. Look into my eyes. Right here.”
“Cal,” he choked out, his voice a broken, high-pitched wheeze. “He’s…he’s taking the belt. He’s taking everything. W-We’re done. We’re g-gonna lose it all.”
My thumbs pressed firmly into his jaw, forcing his frantic gaze to stay anchored on me.
“He isn’t taking shit. The belt is just a piece of metal, Silas.
It doesn’t define who you are, and it sure as hell doesn’t define what we built.
Look at me. Breathe with me. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Come on, do it with me.”
I took a deep, exaggerated breath while Silas stared at me with trembling lips. Finally, he copied the movement and a long, shuddering gasp rattled out of his throat. We stayed on the floor for a while, until the peak of his panic attack slowly began to recede.
When his breathing leveled into a shaky rhythm, I slid my arms under his knees and around his back, hoisting him off the floor. He let out a soft, weary whimper, but his head dropped to my shoulder, and his arms wrapped weakly around my neck as I carried him into the bathroom.
I set him down carefully on the lid of the toilet and reached over, turning on the shower, letting the water warm up.
My hands moved with slow, reverent gentleness as I stripped his sweatpants and hoodie from his body.
I untied his laced boots and carefully peeled the thick strips of tape from his left shoulder.
The piece where I’d written my name was crinkled and torn.
A destroyed remnant of our pre-match defiance.
After washing him meticulously and tucking him into the bed, Silas passed out. He hadn’t said anything the whole time, but as I gazed upon his sleeping face, I could see the exhaustion. His body was completely spent, a man who had left his entire soul on the canvas.
When Silas rolled away enough that the mattress could shift without waking him, I slid silently out from under the blankets.
My body screamed in protest, every joint aching, but the rage in my gut refused to let me rest. There was no hope for sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, it was Murran telling me I was useless outside of a ring.
Threatening to bury the future I was trying to build with my husband.
I padded across the carpet in silence, collecting our items and packing them away.
Our clothes, gear, and a carefully wrapped Championship belt filled the duffel bags.
My head pulsed as I tried my absolute hardest not to think about the fallout.
To block out the uncertainty of tomorrow and what would be waiting for us, but my brain refused to cooperate.
I was furious that someone had Silas looking that broken.
Si was a prince. He was wrestling royalty, and he had a heart too big for this godforsaken business.
I’d be damned if I let an entitled, corporate jackass like Presley Murran hurt him like that ever again.
My fingers twitched against cracked glass as I scooped my phone off the dresser. I needed answers, and it couldn’t wait for morning.
Stepping into the crisp Boston air on the balcony and letting the chill shock the fatigue from my bones, I pulled up the single contact I had in mind.
Tate Martin.
It was nearly two in the morning, so I half-expected the call to go straight to voicemail, but I didn’t care. There needed to be a paper trail, so I hit dial.
“Cal? Jesus, kid. I’ve been trying to reach you for three hours. What the hell happened backstage?”
The genuine, frantic concern from the only suit within the company who actually gave a damn about us broke something inside my chest. The protective ice shattered, and the words tumbled out of my mouth in a raw, fractured rush.
I broke down, telling Tate everything that happened with Presley.
Every single word that man spit in our faces came rushing back tenfold, right up to him threatening to blacklist me from production.
When I finally finished, there was a terrifyingly long silence on the other end of the line, and my next breath hitched. The faint sound of papers shifting came across before Tate let out a long, furious breath.
“He put you in a supply closet?”
“Yeah,” I choked out, wiping a stray tear from my cheek. “He said we were causing discomfort to the rest of the roster.”
“That son of a bitch! Listen to me, Cal. I promise I was entirely unaware of any of this. I’ll swear to God and on my life.
The ones who’ve been kissing Presley’s ass and protecting his ego have been doing everything in their power to keep me out of the loop for the last two weeks.
They know I’m close with Scott and Maverick, so they thought I was too close to the Reed family.
Too close to Silas. But the rumor mill in this business never stops running, you know that.
Those whispers about Mark being absolutely pissed at how Presley is running this company?
They haven’t just grown louder. They’re a goddamn roar in the office right now.
Mark is furious about the metrics and about the sponsors pulling out because of Presley’s erratic behavior.
I think it’s time Mark is made aware of what his son has been doing to the two biggest stars on his payroll.
But we can’t just walk into his office empty-handed, and we can’t go in alone.
Otherwise, Presley will flip the script, so to speak, and spin it as a locker room attitude problem.
We need more people on our side so this isn’t swept under the rug by his sycophants. ”
“I’ve recorded him,” I said bluntly, leaning my forehead against the cold iron railing of the balcony.
“When?”
“When he told us we were a distraction and threatened our contracts over the rings, I recorded the whole thing on my phone. So I would have evidence.”
Tate let out a sharp, breathless laugh that sounded like victory. “Goddamn, Cal, that’s huge. It changes everything. But we still need institutional leverage. You said Presley threatened your production future? Said you’d never get behind the scenes?”
“Yeah, said the ring was all I was good for.”
“Right then, here’s the play. You need to reach out to Jim Dallas. Right now. Don’t wait for the morning. Call him the second you hang up with me. I know for a fact Jim is absolutely disgusted with the things Presley’s done since he took over the day-to-day operations.
“Jim’s all about the integrity of the writing team.
If Presley is threatening to gate-keep production roles based on personal vendettas, he’ll take it as a direct insult to his department.
Let Jim know, Cal. We need to get this train in motion, and preferably before you two leave because of this bullshit suspension.
No more letting Presley freeze you out. We fight this now. ”