by Rome, Ada
“Aren’t you a rich shit?” I asked teasingly.
“I made my own money. I didn’t inherit it from Mummy and Daddy. These kids don’t know anything about fighting. They don’t respect it either. At least I can take his allowance money without breaking a sweat.”
“Good luck, Trent,” Oscar called from the left. “Though you won’t need it.”
“Hey, Oscar. Why don’t we switch numbers? You take this one. Piece of cake.”
The clock ticked down. Trent needed to hurry or he would forfeit the fight.
Oscar’s mouth hung open for a moment. He swiftly closed it and rubbed his palms over his knees.
“Don’t you have any faith in me?” His eyes registered an unmistakable hurt.
“Of course, I do.” Trent replied. “It was just a thought. Never mind. You’ll get your turn.” He punched Oscar good-naturedly in the shoulder and bounced down the steps toward the ring. The rich kid made punching feints and hopped from foot to foot in a pathetic imitation of every Hollywood boxing scene.
“Oscar, he was trying to help.” Esmeralda sighed. I buried my head over the duffel bag, trying to avoid an impression of eavesdropping.
“Why does everyone think I need help?” Oscar’s tone did not sound petulant, just slightly sad.
“Honey, don’t be like this.” Esmeralda’s voice broke with the onset of tears. She cleared her throat and continued in a more level tone. “We need help. It’s for both of us. You could have taken that kid with one punch and earned a cool five thousand. It’s not charity.”
“It is charity. Look, I appreciate everything Trent does. I know he passes you money on the side.”
Esmeralda began to peep out a feeble protest, but Oscar silenced her with a shake of his head and an outstretched palm.
“I’m not an idiot, Ezzie. But there is a limit to what I can accept. I’m responsible for my family, you and the kids. If I can’t take care of you with my own two hands then…then, what’s the point? What good am I?”
“How can you say that?” I heard her shift in her seat. When I turned, her arm was wrapped around Oscar’s back. She kissed his temple and rested her head on his shoulder.
Trent’s fight terminated with a monstrous roar from the crowd. The rich kid lay sprawled on the mat, rolling helplessly from side to side. Trent walked calmly toward the referee. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. The referee raised Trent’s wrist to a cheer that rocked the stands.
A scared-looking girl in a flowery sundress approached me with a wad of cash in her hand.
“For you?” she said, glancing nervously to the right and left.
“Yes, it is.” I lowered my voice, trying to sound like an old pro. She smiled limply and trotted down the steps. I stuffed the money into a duffel pocket.
“I took it easy on him,” Trent said when he returned. “No use destroying the kid’s pride, right?”
He peered at Esmeralda and Oscar, sensing the lingering vibes of recent tension. He looked at me and raised a questioning eyebrow. I shrugged and shook my head.
“Oscar, why don’t we make a bet?” He smacked his friend on the knee with a rolled-up towel. “Whoever knocks out his opponent fastest has to pay for dinner. Deal?”
“Deal, brother.” Oscar smiled wanly.
The fights continued until Oscar’s number appeared. He bent over Esmeralda, their foreheads resting against one another. Trent stood, his attention focused at a point in the stands and shifting to the entrance of the fighting cage. He locked his fingers over my forearm.
“No, this can’t happen,” he whispered.
“What?”
I spotted the object of his focus. Oscar’s opponent was the stranger from earlier, the one with the bleeding skull tattoos, biceps of iron, and beastly carnivorous eyes.
Trent snagged Oscar’s arm as he passed. “I don’t like this. Something is not right with that guy. Walk away from this one.”
“You know I can’t just walk away.” He snatched his arm free of Trent’s grip.
“Baby, he’s right.” Esmeralda’s eyes widened. She watched his opponent pace the edge of the cage, grunting and huffing like a wild thing. She reached for Oscar’s forearm but missed and swiped at the empty air.
“You too, Ezzie?” Oscar stared dumbfounded between Trent and Esmeralda. “The people I trust most don’t believe in me?” He swallowed hard and lowered his head, wagging it from side to side. “I’ll see you all soon.” He jogged down the steps, into the lights and noise.
“Stop him. Please stop him.” Esmeralda wrung her hands together, lifting out of her seat with indecision and fear.
Trent ran halfway toward the ring. Oscar was already inside, looking small and fragile as he offered a handshake to the hulking beast. Trent called once, his hands gathered around his mouth to magnify a sound that was instantly lost in the roar of the crowd. Oscar ignored him, walking around the edge of the ring with his head bowed. Trent turned and headed back up into the bleachers.
I placed an arm around Esmeralda’s curved spine. She swayed from side to side, head lowered, whispering a soft prayer. Trent settled on her other side. He shook his head and peered at her from the corner of his eye.
“It’ll be alright,” he said gently. His arm touched mine as he patted her back. Our eyes met above her head. His quick glance communicated a profound worry.
“It’ll be alright.” I repeated Trent’s words. They were empty and meaningless from my mouth, echoing the uncertainty that we all felt within our hearts.
Trent and I continued to watch the ring with anxious dread. Esmeralda stared into her lap. Her muscles shuddered against my arm with each cry and shout from the bloodthirsty crowd.
Oscar stepped forward, his arms held defensively at his sides. His opponent exuded the controlled stealth of a jungle cat and the unstoppable strength of a freight train. His arms hung long and loose at his sides as he bobbed and shifted from foot to foot, his teeth bared. He seemed to be taunting Oscar, who merely watched the ground and punched one fist into his other palm.
With a throaty roar from the assembled multitude, the fight began. A lightning burst from his opponent sent Oscar reeling and staggering backwards, clutching at the air for balance and caroming off of the cage netting. He gripped his ribs, where an iron fist had landed with a devastating thump of pounded muscle and a crunch of bone. Oscar flailed at the face of the giant, taller by at least six inches, and bent double with another fist to the gut. He spit something dark onto the mat. Blood.
“Stop the fight, Oscar,” Trent muttered.
The referee approached Oscar with his hands spread in a questioning gesture. Oscar waved him away, rising unsteadily to his feet.
His opponent loomed, shoulders hunched like a stalking predator, mallet hands hanging loose, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. A distinct tension began to form within the crowd as spectators stood and watched silently, their cries stilled by a collective sense of onrushing tragedy. The only person in the arena who seemed unable to detect the air of impending doom was Oscar. He flicked blood from his lip and stepped forward.
Esmeralda gripped my arm until her fingertips were stark white. I placed my hand over hers. The ending seemed fated. Each hit, the butchering sound of fist hitting flesh, was magnified in the rapidly hushed arena. A shudder ran through the crowd like a traveling wave. Oscar raised his hands in defense. He was too late. With an awful crack of splintered bone, the beast landed one perfect blow that felled Oscar instantly. He dropped to the mat in a lifeless heap. Gasps erupted to my right and left. The seconds ticked away in stunned silence. Oscar did not move.
Trent rose and zipped through the stands faster than my eyes could follow. When I next spotted him, he was climbing through the ring’s entrance and kneeling over Oscar. I grasped Esmeralda’s wrist and pulled her after me. The crowd parted before us. Their sideways glances expressed sympathy and dismay.
“Come on, buddy.” Trent’s voice was audible in the nervous quiet. Oscar
’s opponent simply stood and watched from the sideline. He spit onto the mat and scratched his shorn scalp with apparent unconcern.
We tried to enter the ring but were shunted aside by several men in dark blue uniforms. In an instant, they set Oscar on a stretcher and carried him from the ring, straight to an ambulance that had appeared like magic through the open garage door. The ambulance tore into the night with a squeal of sirens.
I felt a hand grip my shoulder and turned to see Trent, wide-eyed and staring.
“The hospital is five minutes away,” he said.
He pulled us toward his car. Esmeralda ducked into the front passenger seat, pale as a ghost and shaking. Just before I climbed into the back seat, Trent placed a hand on my waist and drew his face close to mine.
“Kat, he wasn’t breathing,” he whispered. “Oscar wasn’t breathing.”
Seconds later, we sped through the pitch-black waterfront streets on the tail of the screaming sirens.
Chapter 13
“Any news?”
Trent handed me a paper cup filled with steaming black coffee. I took one sip and recoiled at the bitter flavor.
“Nothing yet. The doctors haven’t been out to see Ezzie. I wish they would tell her something just to ease the uncertainty.”
I tilted my chin toward a corner of the waiting room, where Esmeralda sat hunched in a chair, her phone held up to her ear. She periodically swiped tears from her cheeks and shook her head as she spoke to the person on the other end of the line.
Trent settled into the blue plastic seat beside me. He sighed deeply and rubbed his hands on his thighs. A few other acquaintances from the fighting arena had come to the hospital in a show of support. Trent nodded at them grimly. Everyone seemed afraid to speak until a bull-necked man with a Celtic cross tattooed into the side of his shaved head took a seat on Trent’s other side.
“Trent, what’s the story?” His voice was low and rough, with a rumble like tires crunching over gravel.
“Len, I didn’t know you were here.” They shook hands. “Len, this is Kat.” Len’s eyes flashed at me, an absinthe green.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said weakly. My gaze flitted every other second to Esmeralda. She sat curled around her phone, speaking softly, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath.
“Len started the fighting ring. Pretty much runs it at this point,” Trent explained. He turned back toward Len. “Who the hell was that guy anyway? I haven’t seen him at any of the fights before.”
Len shook his head and knit his thick black brows together. “I don’t know. I checked the roster. The name he gave was Hades.”
“Hades? As in the mythological god of the underworld?”
Len cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “I guess.” He shook his head and spread his palms outward. “Look, he puts up the money, he gets to fight. Those are the rules. We don’t dig any deeper than that. My hands are clean.”
“Relax, man. I’m not accusing you of anything. I just want to find out the identity of the asshole who destroyed my friend.”
None of us realized that Esmeralda had approached from the other side of the room. She flinched at Trent’s last words as she stood before us, her phone gripped tightly in her palm.
Len rose from his chair and patted her arm. “Here, take this seat, hon.” The rough grit of his voice had audibly softened. He nodded briefly at Trent and walked in the direction of the vending machines down the hall.
“Oscar’s mother is with the kids. I just talked to her.” She sniffed and wiped damp streaks of mascara from beneath her eyes. She glanced around the waiting room, decorated with painfully cheerful decals of oversized flowers and cartoon animals. “What’s taking so long? Why won’t they tell me anything?” She turned expectantly to Trent. “Did he speak to you? Was he awake when you reached him in the ring?”
Trent dropped his head and wagged it from side to side. “No, he didn’t.” The words sounded choked and raw. He cleared his throat and placed a hand on her knee. “I’m sure he will be alright, Ezzie. Oscar is as tough as they come.”
“I know, I know.” She closed her eyes and breathed slowly in and out through pursed lips.
The door to the emergency wing swung open with a startling squeak of metal hinges. A doctor in green scrubs blinked in the fluorescent lights and surveyed the room. Esmeralda stood. The phone in her lap clattered to the floor, but she didn’t bother to pick it up. The doctor strode toward her with rapid, swinging steps and the soft tap of rubber shoes on linoleum.
“Mrs. Calabresis?” he asked. He looked far too young to be a doctor, probably fresh out of medical school. He was also more than a foot taller than Esmeralda. She resembled a supplicant at an altar as she peered hopefully up into his face.
“Here, have a seat with me.” He guided her over to the row of plastic chairs. His large brown eyes were kind. He seemed to struggle momentarily for the right words.
Anxiety pounded in my temples as I watched and waited. I grabbed Trent’s hand and twined my fingers between his.
“Mrs. Calabresis…” the doctor began.
“Esmeralda,” she whispered.
“Esmeralda.” He nodded and cleared his throat. “I am doctor Patel. I have been with your husband since he came in this evening.”
“Is he alright? Can I see him?”
Dr. Patel paused. “We believe that your husband…Oscar…sustained a serious injury to his spinal cord.”
Esmeralda gasped. Trent squeezed my hand.
“He is currently in a coma” Dr. Patel continued. “We do not yet know the extent of any brain trauma that he may have sustained. I can take you to see him, but I want you to be prepared. This is a very delicate time, but be assured that we are doing everything we possibly can to help Oscar.”
Esmeralda rose from her chair. Her legs shook. She nearly stumbled and was saved only when Dr. Patel reached a hand around her back to keep her steady. He also stooped to retrieve her phone from the floor.
“Do you want me to come, Ezzie?” Trent’s voice trembled.
“I’m sorry, it’s family only,” Dr. Patel said gently.
“Go home, Trent.” Esmeralda tilted her head to the side, her eyes welling with tears.
“Ezzie, I ---”
“Please. Go home.” Her tone was quiet and firm. “Everyone should go home,” she said a bit louder, trying to catch the ear of the small assembled crowd. “You can’t do anything to help him now. None of you can.”
She turned and followed Dr. Patel through the swinging doors.
***
“It’s my fault.”
Trent tossed his keys onto a glass table, where they clinked and jangled loudly in the cavernous silence of his penthouse.
“This is not your fault. You did everything that you could to stop it.”
“No, I didn’t,” he snapped. “I could have done more.”
A single ceiling lamp shone on him in the center of the foyer. His fists were clenched at his sides, the muscles in his arms tense and thick beneath the roiling bands of tattoos that seemed to writhe and shift in the filtered light.
I leaned backwards on my heel, startled by the anger in his tone. He sighed and shook his head, his beefy shoulders slumping and his clenched fists relaxing. He cupped a hand in the air and gestured with curled fingers for me to come closer.
“I’m sorry, babe.” The word sent a thrill into my core. I stepped forward and allowed him to wind an arm around my waist. “I know you’re just trying to help.”
He clutched the side of my neck, my chin resting in the hollow between his thumb and forefinger. He kissed me, his lips warm and full. His tongue stroked mine in a smooth rhythm. I angled my hips against his.
“It’s not your fault,” I repeated between hungry kisses. His lips and tongue snaked down my neck and over my collarbone. His fingertips reached under my shirt and pressed hard into the naked flesh of my back.
“I need you, Kat,” he said with a throaty growl. “I need you to he
lp me forget about everything. I need you to keep me sane.”
He gripped the edges of my tank top and lifted it roughly over my head and outstretched arms. With a quick pinch and a solid tug, he tore my bra from my chest. He buried his face between my breasts, licking the center of my cleavage and wrapping his warm mouth around each of my hard nipples. I threw my head back with a long moan as his tongue and teeth tickled and bit the yearning flesh of my naked breasts.
He held my waist tightly and raised me up. I wrapped my bare legs around his hips until I was completely off the ground, his hands firmly clasping me. He carried me into the living room and tossed me onto the couch.
He removed his t-shirt, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it across the room. The swells of his rippling chest and arm muscles shone in the reflected light of the panoramic city skyline outside the windows. A thin shaft of moonlight outlined his hulking form, casting shadows over his handsome face and keeping his expression dark and hidden.
He lowered his shorts and briefs and tossed them aside. His body was like a work of art, a classical statue in its perfect proportions. He was huge with a throbbing erection. I wanted to lick it and suck it and feel it plunged deep within me. I unbuttoned my shorts and slipped them over my thighs and shins, along with my flimsy black panties.
I spread my legs wide apart, an invitation. He watched me, his face still obscured in shadow.
“What do you want me to do, baby?” He stood next to me and played his fingertips along the curves of my bare breasts and stomach and down between my legs. I was glistening wet and fully open. He teased me with gentle strokes.
“I want you to fuck me,” I said breathily. I groaned with the tingling pleasure of his touch.
“Do you need me to fuck you?” He climbed on top of me, his hips resting against my inner thighs and pressing my legs wider apart. His hands rested on either side of my head as he loomed above me. “Do you need me, Kat?”
“Yes, Trent. I need you.”
“Good.”
With a dashing and delicious smile and a long rumbling groan, he thrust himself fully into me. I gasped and moaned as our bodies combined in one hot and writhing wave of absolute ecstasy. He moved slowly in an out, the muscles of his six-pack undulating with each lift and plunge of his hips. My back arched high. He kissed and sucked my breasts while he moved within me, his heft sliding smooth, long and slick.