by CM Genovese
It was time to earn my fucking dinner.
I stepped through the curtain and walked toward the ring. With blinders on, I focused on the ring. I didn’t even want to look over at my MC brothers out of fear the nerves would take over. Seeing Tayla might make me piss myself.
Getting from the back of the house into the actual ring was a bit of a blur, but once I was standing in my corner, leaning back against the ring post, Teddy nodded at me and then introduced my opponent.
“And you all know our next fighter,” Teddy announced. “Our reigning champion of Thursday Night Fights. Undefeated. Unbelievable. Unexplainable…”
For fuck’s sake. What is he a fucking unicorn?
“You all know him,” Teddy continued. “You know the music. Coming to the ring now to the sound of ‘Conquer’ by New Zealand rapper SWIDT it’s Fetu ‘Two-Punch’ Leota!”
The crowd cheered. It seemed everyone in the place did except the people seated at my group’s table. They made a big show of booing. It was pretty funny really, and it calmed my nerves a little. I knew how these things went. As soon as the first punch was thrown, the nerves would melt away. As long as it was me throwing that strike and not taking one on the chin like Slitz’s opponent I’d be fine.
“Two-Punch! Two-Punch! Two-Punch!” the packed place chanted.
Damn. No chants of Pipeline? This is pretty fucked up.
Tayla blew me a kiss and I suddenly didn’t give a shit about anyone else in the arena. My woman was seated close by, her blonde hair hanging down over her shoulders, looking as sexy as could be. I couldn’t wait to finish this total waste of my time and scoop her up in my arms.
The things I’m going to do to her fine ass later tonight.
“You ready?” Teddy asked me, bringing me back to reality.
Tayla blew me another kiss and I passed her a wink.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said.
“You ready?” he asked Fetu.
Fetu nodded, trying to look cold and hard. I laughed.
“You’re a fuckin’ punk,” I said.
His straight face turned to a scowl. The bell rang and he swung at me hard. I stepped back and he missed. He swung a couple more times and I dodged him. If his name held any truth to it, I might be able to take one solid hit before I went down. The second could lay me right out.
“Hit him, Pipe!” BP yelled over the others in the crowd.
“Knock him out, Two-Punch!” someone hollered.
I wished BP would find that punk and knock him out.
“This is what you wanted,” I prodded Fetu. “This is what you’ve been waiting for. Come and get it.”
He charged at me skillfully, feigning an attack but pulling back. I swung at him this time and missed. He laughed.
“Come on, Two-Punch,” I said. “Throw a punch or two.”
“I’ma knock your bitch ass out,” he threatened.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He swung again. This time I moved out of the way and jabbed him with my left. His chin rocked back a little, but the punch wasn’t strong enough to do any real damage. I wished I’d followed it up with something more substantial.
His barrage of retaliatory punches caught me by surprise, and one landed on my chin. I saw stars. The world blurred for a second.
Damn. That was fast. It’s about to be over already.
Somehow, my feet reacted on their own and got me out of the danger zone. If Fetu had reacted the way Slitz did when he landed that punch on Opa-Locka, I would have been a goner, but he stepped back instead of forward. My face mustn’t have betrayed me. It wasn’t obvious I was close to going down.
“You like that one?” Fetu yelled. “Huh? You like that one, bitch?”
His next punch flew to the side as I brought my gloves up and blocked him. He was close, so I grabbed hold of the back of his neck and brought a knee up and into his gut.
“Uff,” he exhaled before blocking my next knee.
He grabbed hold of me and wheeled me around, trying to toss me away but I had a good grip on him, rolled around to his back, lifted him off his feet, and power slammed him over my shoulders in a suplex that sent him crashing onto his back. The crowd went wild. Fetu hit the ring hard, we both did, but he was too damn fast. Even before I recovered, he was getting back to his feet.
His fist drove into my forehead and then another came my way. I was able to block that one, but if he landed another punch like the last two, I knew I’d be in trouble. I shot in on him, grabbed hold of his legs, and drove him into the ring where I mounted him and smashed an elbow into the corner of his eye.
Blood poured from a cut on his eyebrow. I’d opened him up pretty good. I still held my position atop him while he blocked my next two punches from his position on his back. He swung outward and tried to hit my chin, but it was a weak punch and did no damage at all.
“That’s more than two punches, bitch,” I told him. “Guess your nickname is bullshit.”
Pinning my left ankle and my left wrist with his leg and arm, he pulled a move that shouldn’t have caught me off-guard, but I wasn’t used to fighting in the ring. Most street fighters don’t know MMA escapes or countermoves. He flipped me off him easily.
When he jumped back to his feet and delivered a whip of a thigh kick, I heard the crowd gasp.
It was only a thigh kick. The gasps I heard sounded like something that would come from a knockout punch.
As I recovered from the kick, I realized Fetu wasn’t throwing another. He was standing over me but looking out at the audience. Something was wrong. I climbed up to all fours and was crouched in the ring, about to rise to my feet, when it happened.
A group of men wearing black masks and carrying assault rifles, stood next to the table full of Samoans.
I heard Fetu mumble, “What the fuck?”
“Get down,” I yelled at him.
It was too late.
The gunmen opened fire on the table full of Psycho Samoan Klan members, mowing them all down in a shower of bullets. One of the armed men turned toward the ring and there, right in front of me, Fetu’s chest opened up with red dots. The gun was loud and the sight of this badass fighter, shirtless, torn to shreds by bullets would stay with me forever.
I rolled out of the ring but not before a bullet struck my leg.
Howling in pain, I crawled around the ring, away from the shooter and looked for Tayla.
My MC brothers were mixed in with the crowd of people trying to escape the building.
Women screamed.
Men yelled.
Bullets flew.
I poked my head around the side of the ring and a bullet pinged off the ring post, nearly taking my face off. I rolled again and then crawled under the ring skirt, the curtain that covered the bottom of the ring, and hoped to God the shooter didn’t look for me.
My leg throbbed, and I knew I was bleeding all over the place. He would follow the blood. I crawled away under the dark ring, trying to get around random equipment and other objects, to a place he wouldn’t be able to easily get me.
The shooting in the arena had stopped. I heard gunshots outside, but inside was quiet except the screaming and yelling. Even over all that commotion, I heard the sound of the shooter’s heels clip-clopping over the hard arena floor. He was close, coming around the ring, searching for me.
Maybe ten feet away…
Eight…
Five…
He’d peek under the ring any second. I had to do something. Under the curtain I could see the shadow of his legs. He was standing no more than two feet from where I huddled in darkness.
As fast as I could, I shot my hands out from under the curtain, grabbed his ankles, and pulled him off his feet. The guy yelled and then hit the ground hard. The gun clattered off the ground, and I was on him in an instant. He couldn’t bring the gun up quickly enough before I slammed an elbow into his face. Something cracked beneath his mask. I kept raining down elbows.
Final
ly, I ripped off his mask and saw the guy from the strip club. The one missing an ear with the scar down the side of his face.
I didn’t need to ask who’d sent them. It was fucking Maxim. This was how he’d planned to get revenge.
Scarface smiled back at me with bloodstained teeth.
“The witch wants you dead,” he said. “And they do what she says. You, your club, your woman, your kids. You will all die.”
“You first,” I replied.
My next elbow took out his entire front row of teeth. As he gurgled and choked on his blood, I turned his gun around on him, shoved it past his gums and into his throat, and stood with it, using it as a crutch while it snapped his throat. He stared back at me, coughing up blood.
Once I was standing fully upright, I pulled the trigger.
22
My eyes shot open and I reached out for whatever was nearest. Tayla’s arm suffered the strength of my grip as I unwittingly dug my fingernails into her flesh.
“Pipe,” she said with her sweet southern accent. “Pipe. It’s me. You’re safe.”
The room was pale yellow. Ugly brown curtains hung over the window. A matching reclining chair was in the corner. BP sat in it. Tayla was beside my hospital bed with my fingernails still digging into her arm. She took the pain like a champ and only winced when I let go.
“You okay, brother?” BP asked.
I felt out of it, not fully in the moment, still stuck in a daze from whatever medication was running through the IV beside my bed.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked. “Why am I… I’m in a hospital, right?”
“You fuckin’ fainted, bro,” BP said. “Shot that motherfucker right in the face and then fainted.”
BP turned on the TV, found the local late-night news station, and then turned up the volume.
“You’re on the fuckin’ news, bro,” BP said. “Local hero takes down terrorist at the arena. It’s been playing all night.”
It took a while for the story to play again, but when it did, I saw he was right. I wasn’t a hero. I was trying to save my own ass from being executed under a fucking boxing ring. That was all.
“Turn it off,” I said.
“Fuckin’ hero!” BP repeated.
“I’m not a hero, man. Just turn it off.”
“Fine,” he said as he hit the power button.
Tayla leaned over me and kissed my forehead. “I was so scared.”
The doctor walked in, a young man with a receding hairline and glasses. Young was written on his nametag.
“You’re a lucky man,” Dr. Young said.
“This bastard is full of luck,” BP replied.
“I’m not a hero,” I repeated.
“Hero or not,” Dr. Young said, “you got shot in the leg, survived, and took out the gunman before he could hurt anyone else.”
That’s right. I got shot in the leg.
“Good news is,” Dr. Young continued, “the bullet grazed you. Well, it grazed pretty deep. Kind of like a little trench, but it didn’t technically enter your calf. Just passed right over it, grooving out a piece of meat on the way. It’ll hurt like hell, but you’ll be fine.”
“Fetu’s dead?” I asked.
BP nodded from his seat in the corner. “Yeah. They hit him pretty hard. That’s when you got hit.”
“I remember,” I said. “Punched holes all in him. He was an asshole, but he was a warrior. He didn’t deserve to go out like that.”
“Nobody does,” BP agreed.
“Let’s just count our blessings you’re okay,” Tayla said.
“Yes,” Dr. Young said. “Absolutely. Right now isn’t the time to think about the ones who didn’t make it. We need to focus on the positive, Mr.—”
“Pipe,” I told him.
“Says here your name is—”
“Pipe,” I repeated.
“OK, Pipe. Let’s focus on getting you out of here.”
When the doctor left the room, BP filled me in on the rest. Only one of the Samoans survived the attack. He’d fallen backward out of his chair and crawled under someone else’s table. The gunman I shot in the face was the only one to go down. The cops swarmed the place, but the rest had all fled. The bullet had only grazed me, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like a motherfucker.
BP had to leave. He had to fill everyone else in on my status and make sure the MC was secure. It seemed the hit at the arena was mostly on the Samoans. They might have planned on hitting us too, but our table was too far into the center of the crowd. The Samoans had been seated near one of the exit doors. It was an easy hit. One of the off-duty cops took a bullet, but he’d survive. He was in the hospital room adjacent to mine.
Tayla spent the night with me. Oosik stayed in the waiting room just in case anyone tried to get in to finish me off. I doubted they would, but then again, I’d killed one of theirs. They might want revenge.
It was the next morning when I got a surprise visitor.
Our traveling brother, X, came to see me. He knocked softly on the doorframe before entering.
“May I come in?” he asked.
He was a big dude with tattoo-covered, muscular arms. His forearms were massive. His cold stare fixed on Tayla and me, and I couldn’t help thinking this was the kind of guy you sent to shake someone down. When he looked at you there was an instant unease. But then he smiled, a corner of his mouth turned upward, and he was the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with.
“Pipe, how’s it going, brother?” he asked. “And this is your ol’ lady?”
“Well I’m—” Tayla started.
“Yeah, she is,” I interrupted her.
She looked at me and cocked her head to the side. Calling a woman your ol’ lady was admitting she was yours. That you two were basically hitched. She was mine and I was hers.
She finally smiled and said, “Tayla. Nice to meet you,” but her gaze was still on me.
I brushed her cheek with my knuckles.
“Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re feeling, man,” X said. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Of course, man,” I replied.
He sat down, filling the chair with his big frame. “Glad you got that fucker last night.”
Hearing he was half-Russian, I expected him to have an accent, like Ivan Drago off of Rocky IV. He was accent-free. If anything, he had a bit of a southern sound to his voice coming from West Virginia.
“Me too. I almost didn’t. That motherfucker had me in his sights. If I didn’t yank his legs out from under him…”
“But you got him first. Heard you been having some dreams,” he said. “Not sure how much I should say around—”
His nod was toward Tayla. We didn’t usually say too much around our women. The less they knew, the better. But this was something that concerned her too. She’d already heard about it.
“It’s fine,” I said. “She knows what’s going on. You can say whatever you want to around her.”
X nodded. The scar on his face flexed with his jaw muscles, and I wondered what it was like having his face carved up like that. It was cool looking now that he was in an MC and was expected to look tough, but what would it have been like growing up with that mark?
“BP told me about the dreams you’re having,” X said.
“They’re not really dreams,” I replied.
“Nightmares then.”
“Closer, but not really. It’s real. I mean I’ve seen this black car—”
“The Black Volga,” he said.
“I guess. That’s what Lena, Slitz’s woman, called it.”
“And you’ve seen this car around town?”
“Everywhere. I saw it when I was younger first. There was a nun…”
He nodded as I was speaking, and it was clear he knew what I was talking about.
“You’ve seen the Black Volga before?” I asked.
“No, not really. But I’ve heard about it. I was born in Volgograd, Russia. Long story but I lost my sister to so
me Russian thugs when I was young. Fourteen. That’s when I got this.” He pointed at the scar on his cheek. “I tried to save her.” He looked down at the floor, took a deep breath, and brought his gaze back to us. “I kind of lost my shit after that. Got unruly. I ended up in an orphanage. Kids disappeared sometimes. Some people would talk about the Black Volga coming for them. That was the story used to keep us indoors and stop us from running away.”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said.
“I’m sorry you went through all that,” Tayla added.
X nodded. “Thank you.”
“The Black Volga,” I said. “It was a curse put on me.”
“Makes sense,” X replied.
“I met the witch bitch who put it on me.”
“You met a Russian witch?”
“Yeah, she’s here in town. Some Russian douchebag, the asshole who ordered last night’s hit, is her grandson. She’s at his strip club. Sits in the fucking dark with some kind of strange, hobbit looking interpreter. She put the curse on me.”
“You met her?” X asked, leaning forward in his seat. “That’s rare. Usually a witch is hired to put the curse on someone, and the cursed person never even knows about it. But you found her. That’s wild.”
“The curse was on somebody else, and I got in the way of it, so it passed to me.”
“Did she say what she wants? They always want something.”
“The blood of some kid I saved. He’s a teenager now.”
“The Black Volga’s children,” X said, rubbing at his jaw. “I see.”
“How can I stop it?”
“You have to give her what she wants… and then kill her.”
My head fell back onto my pillow. “I have to kill some old lady?”
“My friend, make no mistake about it. She is not some old lady. If she deals in dark magic, she’s evil. Who knows how many have died at her hand?”
Tayla reached down to run her fingers through my hair. “Stop worrying about all this for now.”