I swallowed my rage and added, “But I think we both know now that everything you do comes with a price. Usually one nobody knows they’re paying.”
Vic blinked at me, barely suppressing a smile. “Oh, did I forget to mention?” I stared, and he grinned. “Oh, man. I guess I did! No wonder you’re so confused.” He walked over and reached up, placing his sweaty palm on my shoulder. “Tonight’s a big night for you and me both, Killer. You’re goin’ up against Johnny Tutera. What a rare opportunity, huh?”
Johnny Tutera. Johnny fucking Tutera? Vic couldn’t be serious. Johnny Tutera was a legit MMA fighter. A fucking professional. I’d watched his fights on TV a couple of times, spent whole nights in awe of the guy’s skill and prowess. What the fuck was he doing here? And how the hell had Vic snagged him?
More importantly, how the fuck was I supposed to beat him?
Slowly, I realized that was the point. I wasn’t supposed to win this fight. This was Vic’s way of making sure of that. Once again, he’d set me up for a fall. Vic always had to get the last word in, and this was one hell of a “fuck you.”
I swatted his hand off my shoulder and grabbed him by the throat, shoving him back into the set of lockers opposite mine. Vic slapped at my wrist and I hoisted him up, pushing him hard against the metal until his feet left the ground.
“You fat bastard,” I hissed, squeezing hard. Vic wheezed and his face purpled. “You dumb fuck. You think you’re pullin’ all the strings here, don’t you, Vic? You think all your little pit bulls are just too loyal to bite the hand that feeds them, huh? Except we never knew that you were feeding us scraps while you feasted on the food we fucking brought you.”
“Killer,” Vic managed to choke out, and I squeezed tighter.
“Shut up, Vic. For once, I’m gonna get the last word in.”
I looked deep into Vic’s eyes as I strangled the life out of him. His eyes were bulging and his tongue was pushing past his teeth. I could see the veins in his neck and head straining, pushing through his skin as they begged for the blood I was denying him. He kicked frantically, scoring a couple of weak blows against my thighs, gagging hard against my fingers wrapped around his throat.
When he began to struggle a little less and his body started to go limp, I let him go. Vic crashed to the ground and sucked in a long, painful breath, followed by the worst coughing fit I’d ever heard. I thought he was going to throw up.
I squatted down beside him and said, “No matter which way this goes tonight, Vic, I’m walking out of here with what you owe me. I’m not playing your stupid fucking games anymore. You fuck with me again, and the next time we meet, I won’t stop squeezing until you’re dead. It wouldn’t be the first time I looked into a man’s eyes while his life ran out. That’s why they call me ‘Killer,’ Vic. Or did I forget to mention that?”
Vic was too busy trying to get a breath in to answer me. Good. I hoped I’d crushed his larynx and that dick face would never be able to talk again.
I knew I’d done exactly what Parker had warned me not to do, but fuck Vic, and fuck this fight. Johnny Tutera was a monster in silver boxing shorts, a champion among champions. He was a couple years younger than me, too, and in a heavier weight class for sure. He was at the top of his fucking game, and I was on my way out.
Not to mention I’d fucked before the fight. I knew that was superstition, but it didn’t exactly put me at ease. This was turning out to be a big fucking mess, and I was once again caught in the middle.
Everything you touch turns to shit, a little voice in the back of my head sneered. That voice had been softer ever since I’d gotten back together with Parker, but even at a whisper, it made my stomach tie itself into knots.
There’s no backing down now, I thought in reply. The only way to go is forward. Whatever happens tonight, at least I’ll have Parker, and a new lease on life, too. As long as she’s proud of me, that’s enough.
But was it? What if I went out undefeated? What if I could keep the reputation I’d spent so long building in the underground fighting world? What if I could have my cake and eat it too—go out on top, and end up with Parker and my money all the same?
Was that greed, or pride? I wasn’t sure, but I knew damn well it was foolish to even consider going out there against Johnny Tutera.
I was going to do it anyway. I had to. A man’s not a man if he isn’t willing to stand up and fight when it counts. And as far as I was concerned, this counted a whole damn lot. Even losing was preferable to bowing out. I was going to leave this ring as Killer Kellan, not Kellan the Coward. I’d never backed down from a fight in all my life, and I wasn’t about to start now.
I forsook my robe and threw open the door to the long hall that would take me to the ring. I was taped up and ready to go, still a little sore from all the beatings I’d taken lately, but driven just the same. Sometimes, determination was enough to make the difference. Sometimes, if you just wanted it more than the other guy, that went a long damn way.
I didn’t know if that was true for me and Tutera, but it was all I had. That, and a girl worth putting up a fight for.
I was immediately overwhelmed by the crowd. I’d seen their numbers in passing earlier, but now they were on all sides of me, screaming, roaring, a sea of dark faces amid the lightning strikes of camera flashes. I tried to ignore them, tried to focus only on getting onto the mat, but their collective cries shook my bones. This was unreal. I felt like I didn’t belong.
As soon as I’d made it past the ropes, I stared right into Johnny Tutera’s eyes. This kid was all muscle, and although he was a few inches shorter than me, he more than made up for it in bulk. Johnny was the full package—both quick, and a brick house. He could take a hit like nobody I’d ever seen, and he could dish it out just as hard, if not harder.
He was the kind of fighter I’d expect if Muhammad Ali and Ronda Rousey had a baby. I was good, but I wasn’t good enough to take a Rousey-Ali mashup.
I stalked over to him after giving a reassuring nod to the ref. And I held out my hand. “Honor to fight you, man. You’re one of the best.”
Tutera gripped my palm. “Thanks, man. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of you, though.”
“Slummin’ it, huh?” I said, letting go.
“Just gettin’ a taste of the other side,” Tutera replied. Then he sniffed conspicuously and touched the side of his nose. “Startin’ to get a taste for it, if you know what I mean.”
Great. So Tutera was hopped up on coke, on top of everything else. He was a maniac sober. I could only imagine what he was like amped up. This was going to go badly for me. I just knew it.
At least it’s not one of Vic’s crazy death matches, I thought.
The ref came over to let me know it was time to start, and I backed away from Tutera and into my own corner. I did a quick scan of the crowd, but with so many faces, it was near impossible to make out Parker’s. I tried looking for her goody two-shoes getup with those sexy librarian glasses of hers, but I couldn’t find those, either. I didn’t have more than a few seconds to spare, though. Maybe she was just too far back for me to see her.
Tutera and I came to the center of the mat to hear out the rules. They were the same every time; I knew them by heart. I focused my attention on Tutera instead, on the wild look in his eyes—the controlled chaos brewing in his gaze.
Be cool, Kellan. Be cool. I took a deep breath through my nose and looked to the ref for permission to start.
And just like that, Tutera was on me.
I’d barely managed to get my hands up before I was blocking multiple blows. Tutera came in fast and hard, wasting no time in probing for a weak spot. I kept my hands up and danced backward, leading him around the ring. The strikes I couldn’t dodge hurt, but Tutera was being impulsive. It must’ve been the cocaine, or maybe his ego. Either way, maybe that was something I could use to my advantage once he got tired.
If he got tired. Coked up the way he was, I wasn’t sure he would.
As I pivo
ted to try to get in a body blow, Tutera raised up and hit me right in the side of the head. I knew the crowd was cheering, but I was momentarily deafened by the force of his fist. I stumbled to the side and Tutera kicked me hard in the thigh, sending me down to the mat. I rolled just in time to avoid a stomp that would’ve cracked my ribs, and was back up on my feet within seconds, though my hearing was still fuzzy.
My heart hammered in my chest. Fuck, that was close.
I didn’t give Tutera the opportunity to get the drop on me again. I went after him this time, swinging for his face, backing him up toward the ropes. I got him once in the cheek, but at the expense of taking a knee to the stomach. I guarded just before the blow and was able to keep most of the air in my lungs, but I still had to back up and give up ground to Tutera, who seemed only too thrilled to take it from me again.
As I tried to push him back, he raised his knee again and I dropped a hand to block him, but that was a mistake—he was only feinting. I knew the second my palm made contact with his thigh. There was no force behind it. The punch that came hurtling at my face, however…
I took one hard in the jaw, my teeth clanging together painfully. Before I could even raise my hand again, Tutera had hit me with a left hook that sent me reeling, then a right cross that nearly knocked me off my feet. I put both my hands up again, but Tutera was a demon, forcing me back so fast I almost tripped over my own feet. I ducked a particularly powerful swing, only to end up meeting his knee again, this time straight in the chest.
Fuck. Instinctively, I doubled over. It felt like he’d cracked my sternum with that one. It was a stupid move, but sometimes your body betrays you. It wants to curl in on itself, to protect you from any more pain. Your body doesn’t know the rules of MMA or professional fighting. It just knows it doesn’t want to get killed.
Folding forward put me almost eye-level with Tutera, and he smashed me right on the bridge of my nose with a head-butt. Stars exploded in front of my eyes in all the colors of the rainbow and I toppled back against the ropes, sinking to the ground.
Fuck!
Nose injuries were weird. I could feel the blood coursing down my face, knew the wound was swelling, but it didn’t really hurt. It just felt like nothing was holding my face together anymore. It was disorienting as hell.
The ref got between us before Tutera could go in for the kill. “Let him up! He’s gotta get that bleeding stopped! Folks want their money’s worth tonight.”
Smart money was on Tutera, I guessed. He backed off and the ref helped me to my feet, then over to my corner so I could get patched up enough to keep fighting. I couldn’t see it, but I knew my face was a mess. I could feel how bad the swelling was; the inside corners of my eyes even felt tight. I felt like a Mack truck had hit me. I could barely even hear what the ringside medic was asking me.
“You good?” he said again, much louder than before. I looked up at him dumbly, but nodded. He shined a small flashlight in both my eyes, hesitated, then turned to the ref and nodded. Holding onto the ropes, I stood up.
Somebody rang the bell, and as a ring girl strutted around holding up the card for the second round, I scanned the crowd again for Parker’s pretty face. I had more than a few seconds now, but no matter how hard I strained, I still couldn’t find her. My heart sank as realization dawned on me. She wasn’t here.
Where the hell is she? I wondered. Suddenly, I felt very alone—like I had no one in my corner at all.
~ TWENTY ~
Parker
Crap. I was running so late.
The senator had shown up to our meeting at Café Franz a whole twenty minutes after I did. He took his sweet time ordering, too, letting me know that he had all the power here. I did my best not to look like I was watching the clock, but I couldn’t help it. Kellan was out there suffering through the last fight of his career, and I wasn’t there to cheer him on like I’d promised.
I couldn’t show Senator MacFarlane my cards, though. Not with so much on the line. So I sipped my wine and ground my teeth and waited for the right moment to sink my teeth into his throat—so to speak.
Once our food arrived and the senator was too busy cutting his steak to interrupt me with small talk, I sprang it on him. “I want to talk about the bill, Senator. That’s what we’re here for, and I’m not about to waste any more of my time. Not when there’s so much on the line for our veterans.”
Senator MacFarlane smirked as if that amused him, but didn’t look up from his dinner. “By all means, continue.”
I didn’t even bother with my food, just leaned across the table. “You know as well as I do what this bill is about. It’s about giving back to the men and women who have given us so much. They’re coming back from serving our country, only to find there’s no place for them in it anymore. Giving them job preference is the least we can do. So why haven’t you agreed to support it?”
The senator chewed a bite of his steak before answering, savoring every pink morsel. He rolled his eyes skyward. “Well, let me answer your question with a question, Ms. Jones: do you believe in capitalism?”
“Are you asking if I’m a communist, Senator?” I answered, and he smiled.
“If you believe in capitalism, you’ll understand my reservations,” he continued. “Employers in this country are always looking for ways to lower expenses, and of course, we hope they’ll pass those on to us, their consumers. It’s much more economically sound to employ a college graduate or hell, even a high school dropout who’ll take the job for eight dollars an hour rather than ten or fifteen, which is the rate of pay this bill encourages for the veterans it encompasses. If we force employers to give preference to employees who will demand higher wages, it’s my constituents who will suffer the consequences. Higher prices on goods and services never make anybody happy except the manufacturers, and they’re not my primary voting base.” He winked.
I stared at him. “So what you’re saying is that, essentially, if employers have to hire vets and pay them living wages, the rest of us will all get screwed?”
The senator chuckled. “Boy, you really have a way of boiling things down.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. This was an argument I’d heard before, and one I had prepared for. I said, “Okay. Let’s talk about McDonalds.”
Now the senator frowned. “All right. What about it?”
“You remember Occupy Wall Street?” I asked. He vaguely nodded. “They wanted fifteen dollars an hour for fast food workers, and everybody and their mother said that if the minimum wage went that high, we’d see ten-dollar Big Macs the very next day. That’s your argument, right? That paying workers more will result in higher costs for consumers?”
“It’s basic math and common sense,” he answered. I smiled.
“I’m not sure Seattle would agree with you.”
“You’re losing me, Ms. Jones,” the senator warned. “I’m not sure what McDonalds and Seattle have to do with this bill you’re so gung-ho about.”
“Seattle passed a wage-hike on restaurant employees back on April first,” I told him, pausing to take another sip of my wine. I was going to need it if I wanted to get through this without screaming at him to Google the misinformation he was spewing. “There was some real concern from business owners and politicians, as well as corporations, that raising wages that high would have a negative effect on growth, as well as inflation. But this year, more permits than ever have been issued for restaurant openings, and the cost of a meal has seen no substantial increase. Everyone there seems pretty happy with more equitable wages.”
“One city mandating a wage-hike for one set of businesses is hardly comparable to the effect something like that would have on an entire state,” Senator MacFarlane said with a smugness that made me wish he would choke. “I love our veterans as much as any red-blooded American does, Ms. Jones, but I have to think of the greater good here, too.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “One city isn’t comparable to a whole state.” The senator sat b
ack, satisfied, until I added, “Let’s talk about New York, then, which has approved a similar wage-hike for fast food workers. Or for that matter, the increasing number of cities who have taken setting a higher standard for a living wage to heart. This bill wouldn’t even propose a sweeping measure like that. This would be beneficial strictly to veterans, and honestly, neither of us can say with any certainty that they’ll be demanding that much compensation. And honestly, Senator, the alternative of not supporting this bill has way worse consequences for everyone, including those ‘Joe Schmo’ constituents you’re worried about.”
“Okay. I’ll bite,” the senator said, abandoning his meal for the first time this evening and focusing his attention solely on me. “How so?”
I hadn’t planned on it when I came here, but since I couldn’t get my mind off him anyway, I told Senator MacFarlane about Kellan. I told him about what Kellan had experienced after coming home from Afghanistan, and all the vets he knew who were in the same boat. I interwove my narrative with some of my own independent research on how vets with PTSD or other, physical injuries often couldn’t get a job due to their sacrifices. I told him about the illegal fighting rings Thom and I would be exposing soon, and ended on a note about the human interest piece I was writing on Kellan and how it would be interspersed with details about this very meeting.
“So,” I concluded, “this could either look really bad for you, or really good. Either I pepper my article about a vet who has served his country well with details about how you’re working hard to ensure people like him get a fair shake, or I make sure to mention how you’re so worried about fat cat corporations complaining that you wouldn’t even entertain the idea of giving our vets the opportunities they deserve. I hear you’re coming up for re-election soon. Which story do you think your constituents would prefer?”
The senator sat silently for several moments, just staring at me, his face an unreadable blank slate. I stared right back, refusing to even check the time on my phone again. I wanted to, desperately, but I got the impression that the senator and I were currently engaged in a battle of wills. Kellan would never back down from a fight, and he’d never let anything distract him from winning, either. I wasn’t about to let him down by showing weakness now.
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