Chapter 23
BLOOD
If I thought the first round was bad, the next one is all-out war.
Rig has the Razor on the ground twice, who gets more and more incensed and angry because, in fighting terms, he’s losing.
Rig is doing a better job of blocking his fists.
They’re both exhausted—you can tell from their body language.
Then Rig manages to get him in a headlock, and the crowd hollers as they reel around and around, bouncing off the wire of the cage.
I can see the Razor trying to dig his nails into Rig’s skin, and I flap my hands.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
June, who’s now standing next to me on the other side of Marni, takes one of my hands in hers and gives it a squeeze.
How is she so calm? Well, I guess she probably saw men with body parts blown off in the war.
I try and remember the worst things I saw in the hospital when I was a nurse, but thinking of gaping wounds and gangrenous feet doesn’t exactly help.
“How did that guy die that the Razor fought?” One of the men in front of us says.
What?
“Kicked him in the head and it burst a blood vessel, I think,” the other guy responds. “Bleeding on the brain.”
I suck in a harsh breath. And just as he says it, the Razor does a high kick that Rig tries to dodge and he almost manages it, but it glances off the side of his head, and he seems momentarily stunned as he falls against the wire of the cage.
Oh fuck, oh fuck. They have to stop. My hands shake as I push past June to get to the end of the row again.
But it’s almost as if the Razor can smell his advantage.
He steps forward and punches Rig, somehow scoring right down his face.
He smirks when he does it, too, and something runs cold in my blood. He’s actually going to kill him.
But in the split second where the Razor thinks he’s achieved something, Rig’s hands flash out in a chopping motion, and the Razor suddenly goes down like a ton of bricks.
“Oh, fucking hell,” the guy in front of Marni says, just as his friend who placed the bet on Rig punches the air. “Knockout blow!” he shouts, and several people turn around to scowl at him.
A sudden howl of rage erupts from hundreds of voices as the referee steps over the Razor’s prone body and starts counting down, and the crowd surges toward the stage.
Rig drops to his knees, skin still running with blood from the wounds all over his body, hands on the floor propping himself up.
But the Razor is out, unconscious; you can tell from the way his arms are splayed across the floor.
He’s not going anywhere anytime soon. The guy in the suit at the end of the row starts pushing toward the front where the crowd is surging forward, and I follow him.
I’ve got to go and take care of Rig. A hand lands on my arm.
I look up to find Konstantin frowning down at me.
“Come,” he says.
“What?”
I watch as the referee shakes his head and puts his hand in the air. Oh my God, Rig has won?
If I thought the place was in uproar before, it really goes wild now. The MC has the microphone, but it’s drowned out by the roar of the crowd. Everyone surges around the ring, and as Rig moves back onto his feet, wariness creeps over his face. I put my hand over my mouth.
Konstantin grips my upper arm. “Come, you need to leave. Now.”
“But Rig, he …”
“He will be fine. He will be taken care of. Come. Now.”
He bodily drags me toward a door I hadn’t noticed near the rear, behind the stand of seats, just as I see Rig jump out of the wire cage and disappear into the melee on the floor. Fists are flying and a gunshot rings out. Oh my God! So much for no guns.
“Now!” Konstantin barks, and I turn to find Marni standing by the door with Marge, Agnes, and June, who are all looking beyond thrilled.
Marge squeezes my arm with a grin. We’re ushered out the back of the venue to a waiting 4X4. I hear another shot, and Konstantin’s face hardens as we bundle into the car and he snarls something in Russian to the man sitting behind the wheel. We take off with a squeal of tires.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“A lot of trouble,” the driver says, flashing a gold tooth at me in the mirror, and Konstantin barks at him, “Quiet.”
“Why is there trouble?” Marge asks, eyeing both men in the front seat.
The driver and Konstantin say some words to each other in heated Russian for a few seconds, and then Konstantin says, “Your Rig was not expected to win tonight. People have lost a lot of money, and there will be a great deal of anger. We needed to get you out of there.”
“Is he going to be okay …?”
“We look after our assets. He will be fine,” Konstantin says, and I think about his skin and a knot forms in my throat. I really don’t like the idea of Rig being any kind of asset for this … this … whoever these people are.
We pull up to a nondescript motel about fifteen minutes later, and I quietly thank the Lord that we might have somewhere to sleep tonight. When I look at my watch, I’m astonished to discover it’s 1 a.m. Konstantin disappears into the office and reappears with some room keys.
He passes one to Marge. “You three are in here.” He gestures at a door.
Then he hands me another key. “You are in here. Rig will join you later. And you are with me,” he says to Marni silkily.
“I need you to stay here until I find out what is happening at the fight.” He gives her a key and leans in to kiss her neck, and she smiles up at him.
How is she so blasé around guys like this?
He cups her cheek. “I will come back for you.” He jerks his chin up at the driver, climbs into the front seat, and they take off with another squeal of tires.
Marge claps her hands. “Good Lord, that was amazing! Best night of my life.”
“Better than your wedding night?” Agnes asks.
“Oh God, yes. That was a disaster. Neither of us had any clue what we were doing.”
I hold up my hand. “TMI, ladies.”
“I can’t believe he won!” Agnes squeaks, like it was some ordinary event where he wasn’t brutally torn to shreds by a maniac.
“I know!” says Marge, clapping her hands again. “Time for a drink, ladies. Let’s finish off this hooch and see if the ice machine still works and the vending machine has any mixers.”
“Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’ll be in more trouble from winning than losing,” I mutter.
“Oh come on,” Marni says. “He’s just made a pile of money. Let’s celebrate!”
“This is the fucking Russian mafia, Marn,” I round on her. “Who knows if he’ll ever see any of it? He was torn to shreds, and they didn’t really give a shit; they just wanted him to finish the fight.” Tears clog the back of my throat.
June puts an arm around my waist and squeezes. “You know blood always looks worse than it is. They’ll be stitching him up now. He won a fight for them so they’ll be taking good care of him. That man said they had doctors, and Konstantin said they’re not going to harm an asset.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. That he’s some kind of asset to them now.”
“Come on,” Marge says, tucking her hand into my elbow. “There’s nothing we can do to help him right now, so let’s at least do a toast to Rig. That was brutal, and he fought really hard.”
God, she’s not wrong. But I can’t shake the image of Rig on his knees in the ring, covered in blood. Maybe a drink is the best option I have.
I follow them into their room, and though it has a brown nylon carpet and orange floral bedspreads, it’s clean and serviceable.
We dig around for plastic cups and dredge up five from our various bathrooms, and we fill them with the leftover hooch from the flasks.
Marni bashes her cup into mine and says, “Bottoms up!”
It turns out the little old ladies have a huge stash of booze tucked away in their purses, and by the time I stagger back to my room, I’m a bit tipsy.
I knock back some water and press Rig’s number on my phone, but it goes straight to voicemail, so I send a flurry of texts.
Eventually, I collapse on the bed and hope deep in my heart that neither Rig nor one of the little old ladies dies in the night.
I turn over to a key in the lock and the door opening, and a dark shadow moves into the room.
“Rig?”
“Hey,” he says.
“Oh my God! Are you all right?” I fumble for the light switch on the nightstand, gasping when I take him in. He’s covered in Band-Aids with more substantial bandages on his arms and face.
“He ripped you to pieces!”
“Yeah, the asshole. Fuck.” He sits down on the side of the bed, and I shuffle over to him, slide my arms around him, and rest my head on his back.
He rests his hands on top of mine and lets out a long sigh.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I wanted to come down to you. At the end. I …” I start.
He bows his head. “Just as well you didn’t, babe. Three people got shot before they managed to calm the whole thing down. I remembered tonight why I always said no to these guys.” He bends forward to ease off his shoes. “Everything fucking hurts. Fuck, but they’ve got an amazing doctor.”
I shift back on the bed as he moves back onto it. His face is a mess.
“Not so pretty now, am I?”
I grin at him. “You’ll always be beautiful to me, Rig.”
His eyes lock on mine. “I hope you mean that.”
My eyes wander over his face, and I smile. “Of course I do. What did the doctor do to you?”
“Tiny, tiny stitches mainly. I’ve been sitting in this guy Konstantin’s house while this female doctor did this careful stitching all over me.
Been there for hours. She said I should be okay, a few scars, but nothing too bad.
Might take some time to fade, she said. She’s a plastic surgeon here in the city.
I’ve got to go and see some buddy of hers in St. Louis in a coupla days, and she’s given me all this cream to rub in …
I don’t even know. Fuck, I’m wiped. I fell asleep while she was patching me up. ”
Konstantin has a house? He must make good money working for the mafia.
But I’ll think about that after I’ve inspected Rig’s stitches.
He shifts around so he’s lying on the bed with his head on the pillow.
I lean over him and peel back a couple of bandages on his arm to take a look, and he’s right, the sutures are amazing.
“Wow, this is incredible work, Rig.”
When I look up at his face, his eyes are closed.
“Yeah,” he says, and I can hear he’s falling asleep.
“Are you in pain?”
“They pumped me full of painkillers. I’m fine. Go back to sleep, Carl. Christ, I need to rest. I’ve been pummeled to death.”
I settle down next to him, turn on my side, and reach out to switch off the light. He shifts and curls into my back just like he always did.
“God, I’ve missed this smell,” he says, burying his nose in my hair, and my heart takes off. I could cry. Me too, I want to say, but I squeeze his big hand where it’s curled around me, and he winces.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
I’m just wondering what to say next when he snores into my hair, and I want to giggle and cry at the same time. And in a flash I know that, even if he can’t give me long-term and I don’t know whether this will work out, I can’t lose him again. I can’t be without him in my bed.