by Scott, Ada
Brenton looked as smug as he had during the promotional spots, talking about how if I knew what was good for me then I’d do my best to get the fight on the ground rather than try to stand with him, a superior striker. With my back against the fence, Southgate peppered me with a combination of punches to the body and around the head, only one of which made it through my guard and partially landed after glancing off my shoulder.
He capped it off with a leg kick that I checked, before I managed to push him back and escape to the side. Thirty fucking seconds.
My opponent immediately came after me and I felt a surge of hope. He thought his goading had worked. He thought I was committed to standing with him and that elusive knockout… but if I could get him to the ground, there was still time for a submission.
I stepped backwards… and… he chased me! Faking a punch that brought his hands up to guard his head, I launched into a double-leg takedown fast enough that I caught even the great Brenton Southgate off guard.
He tried to scramble backwards, tried to keep his balance long enough to brace himself against the fence, but I drove forward, steering him to the side just enough that he missed it and landed heavily on his back with me on top of him. The crowd went wild, but I could barely hear them over the thundering in my ears.
I spun to what was known as a north-south position on top of him, trapping one of his arms and forcing it across his own throat as I continued to spin. He tried to escape, tried to get me out of position as I locked my arm behind his head, putting more pressure on his neck.
It was in! The submission was locked in! Holy fucking shit. I arched my body up, pushing off the mat with my feet and driving my shoulder into the other side of his neck as he tried to twist and take the pressure off.
I squeezed with everything I had, hard enough that if he was any less well-conditioned than he was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if his head popped right off. With my face burning bright red and my eyes watering with the strain, I turned my head to seek out the clock.
Fifty seconds.
Twang!
I grunted in pain as some muscle or ligament seemed to snap between my neck and shoulder, but only redoubled my efforts to squeeze the consciousness out of my opponent. By this time he had to know he was fucked. It was over.
Fifty five seconds.
“Tap! Tap you cunt!” I screamed.
Fifty eight seconds.
“Check him! He’s out! Fucking check him!” I shrieked at the ref, who moved about as quickly as molasses.
One minute.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck no.
Even the voice of my internal monologue spoke in complete agony, drawing out the last word into a cry that sounded almost insane. I had failed, and the love of my life might have just ceased to exist.
Half-blind with grief that welled up from the pit of my stomach, I desperately tried to funnel it into some kind of action. I let go of Southgate and sprang to my feet, heading to the edge of the cage and vaulting over the side before I had any conscious thought about what to do.
It wasn’t until I was literally outside the event center that I had a plan, if you could be so charitable as to call it that. Go to the Bertolini mansion and kill as many of them as I could before I died. That was it.
If Skylar got sick, I got sick. That’s what I told her, and now it didn’t matter if Jace had time to work his fucking magic or not. It was time to get sick.
Some asshole on a custom-painted motorcycle with full matching protective gear was at the side of the road, posing for some giggling bitches. I ran over to them.
“Get off the bike.”
He flipped the visor up on his helmet and gave me a look up and down, then glanced at the chicks he was trying to impress.
“Sorry brah, no shirt, no shoes, no……. waaaaaaaah-oof!”
I grabbed him and sent the poser flying low and hard until he went head-first into the side of a taxi. He was lucky he was wearing a helmet.
The bike was brand new and state of the art. I almost went to drag the guy over and enlist him to start it for me before I got the right sequence of shit done and the bike, with “Arion” painted down the side, came to life with an unsatisfying whir.
It may have sounded like it was apologizing, but that motherfucker could move. Almost as fast as I could see them coming, each intersection was upon me, and I had to devote all the concentration I could muster to handling the space-age machine between my legs.
I welcomed the diversion, because this was the easy part. The hard part would come when I had to figure out how to take as many Mafiosos down with me as possible. The impossible part would come if I had to face the reality of Skylar’s death.
Chapter 28
Skylar
It was almost as if hell itself had been waiting for the signal from the referee in the New Ashby event center. The bell rang and then the room I was held captive in shook with an explosion.
The lights flickered for a second and the TV signal cut out, replacing the feed from Austin’s fight with nothing but static. A second after that, I heard gunshots.
“What the fuck?” said Enrico.
“Come with me! Renato, watch this fuckin’ whore,” said Gavino.
The two Bertolinis swiftly exited the room, closing the door behind them and leaving me with Renato, who cursed through his teeth. Outside, it sounded like open warfare.
People screamed and shouted, footsteps sprinted all over the place, and all the while the steady crackle of gunfire reported the scale of the assault that must be happening out there. It sounded like pitched battles were being waged on numerous fronts, some closer than others.
Renato pulled his own gun out and shoved it against my head. “Thehmufucka goh smmmtdo wihish, bich?” he asked.
The words were mostly lost to me, but I got the gist of it. I had no idea if, or even how, Austin could have anything to do with this. We both saw him on the screen when this all started. I shook my head and shrugged, trying not to look him in the eye.
Gradually, the sounds of war outside became more scattered, more sporadic. Somebody was winning.
With Renato’s handgun pressed against my head it felt like an eternity, but eventually, even those sporadic gunshots stopped completely. There was still yelling, still running footsteps, but I had no idea what was out there.
Neither did Renato. He gathered himself and pulled the gun away from me, approaching the door as if it might be a demon in disguise.
With air hissing in and out through his teeth he reached out and put his hand on the doorknob, turning it slowly and then pulling. The hallway came into view.
From my perspective in the chair, I couldn’t see anything different. Renato cautiously stuck his head out and looked one way, then the other.
Faster than I’d seen almost anybody else move before, Renato cursed in a screaming tone through his wired-jaw and whipped his head back as a thunderous roar of some kind of gun splintered the door frame. Shielding his face from the wooden shrapnel, Renato slammed the door shut again and frantically retreated behind me.
Misplaced hope ate away at the acceptance of my own death. I gritted my teeth and squinted my eyes, still wondering if I would feel it when the bullet tore through my head, even as I watched the door for somebody to come in and end this nightmare.
Adding to the chaos going through my mind, Renato was undoing my handcuffs for some reason. Once I was loose, he yanked me to my feet by my hair and dragged me backwards, until he was in the corner of the room with me standing in front of him.
Resting his gun-bearing arm on my shoulder, he pointed it at the door and waited, breathing hard. The door burst open and Renato fired.
This close to my head, the sound was almost deafening. With ringing ears, I tried to see what had just happened, but nobody was slumped dead in the doorway.
“Let her go, Renato, and I’ll let you die with some dignity,” yelled a voice I recognized.
Austin! Austin was here! I almost howled in triumph.
“Fuk-oooo!” Renato screeched.
A head appeared low in the doorway for the briefest moment and I bumped Renato’s arm upwards, making him miss his shot.
“Ooofukinbich!” The Picolli mobster hit me just under the eye with the butt of his gun.
Pain bloomed there, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my heart when I saw that it wasn’t Austin out there. I could still die, and it would have been such a relief to see him one last time.
“Over here! Over here!” that voice, eerily like Austin’s came again.
With one eye shut against the pain from the pistol strike, I saw another head peek around the corner, even faster than the first. It wasn’t there long enough for Renato to get a shot off, but it was enough for me to see that it was Austin this time.
“Imakihdisbich!” screamed Renato, frantically alternating between pointing the gun at my head and at the door.
“Skylar! I’m sorry!”
His voice for sure! He really was here. I sobbed with relief. If he was here, I could tell him. I could let him know I meant what I said. He could rely on me to the very end.
“Austin! I love you!”
“I love you too!”
“Wahduhfuk! Thsnomuhfukin’ cuppohscunslin’!”
“Think, Skylar! You’ve been here before! Remember the gym!”
What was he talking about? I’d never been held prisoner by the Mafia before. Had he lost his mind? The gym?
The gym!
All those hours Austin spent teaching me self-defense in the gym after the mess in Las Vegas! He’d been through all the most common scenarios, and one of them was being held from behind like this.
What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t remember! It was all so different when Austin had been using his finger as a gun or the edge of his hand as a knife.
Think, Skylar!
That was the key. I had to think through the chaos. It was all just a few simple steps. The quicker I did them, the less time Renato would have to react.
I remembered.
After one last deep breath, I watched Renato’s wildly swinging arm, drowning out his mush-mouthed gibberish. Time seemed to slow down for me.
Now!
I grabbed his forearm with both hands, holding it across my chest, and bent down, then quickly bent my upper body forward. I felt Renato’s weight move over me and I extended my legs.
To my utter amazement, Renato went sailing clean over my back with an almost comical sound of wordless disbelief. I still had his arm trapped with his gun pointing behind me when he landed flat on his back on the ground.
Moving so fast he was almost a blur, Austin made a beeline for that gun, dropping his knee on to Renato’s face and ripping the firearm out of the mobster’s hand at the same time. Renato screamed once before Austin knocked him out with the pistol.
In an instant, Austin was back on his feet. He was still wearing nothing but the shorts and fingerless gloves he’d had on in the New Ashby event center.
Then his hands were on me, on my upper arms, moving me away from the unconscious and seriously re-disfigured Renato. My arms and legs started going numb and I stumbled.
Austin steadied me, then lifted me up the same way as when it was our honeymoon. I reached out and touched him to make sure.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“I think… I think so. Is this really happening?”
“Yes, Sky, you’re safe. Look at me. You. Are. Safe.”
I stared at his face as other men filed into the room behind the guy with the Austin-like voice. He tucked his gun into a holster and looked down at Renato disdainfully.
“You two, search him, tie him up and put him in the car. We’re gonna have a talk when he wakes up.” He paused. “You, go to the store and buy a pack of crayons so this asshole can write down his answers.”
“Did you… mean it?” Austin asked.
I knew what he meant, and I repeated it. “I’ll love you forever. I meant it.”
“What did I do to deserve you?”
“Everything.”
“I love you, Skylar. If anything had happened…”
I rested my head on his chest. “You’re going to be a father.”
“I saw the test. How about that, huh? Think it’ll be any easier than taking down a crime family?”
“How did...?” I asked, gesturing at the guys dragging Renato away, and the whole thing in general.
“It’s a crazy story.”
“It’d be crazy if it wasn’t. Austin?”
“Yeah?”
“Get me outta here, over here.”
Chapter 29
Skylar
Months Later
The ref waved his arms, signaling the end of the fight, and the crowd erupted. Austin disentangled himself from Brenton Southgate and stood to his feet, letting the (now-former) champion’s unconscious form slump unceremoniously face-down on the mat.
Austin bounded to the edge of the decagon and straddled the fence, raising his arms in triumph instead of fleeing the premises the way he had the first time these two fought. With those thick arms bulging, he practically howled in his victorious euphoria.
His eyes sought me out, and he gave me a private smile in the middle of the seventy-thousand strong crowd, pointing at me before dropping back into the ring. Beside me, like everybody else in here, Kendall and Jace were on their feet.
Kendall, about as jealous of my pregnant body as I was of her returning-to-normal-post-pregnancy body, was holding my hand and bouncing enough for the both of us. King Austin the Second (I was going to veto the hell out of that one, but that’s what Austin and Jace suggested) even gave a little kick to show his support.
The announcer declared Austin the new heavyweight champion of the MMA world, as the Head of NHBFC secured the belt around my husband’s waist and Brenton Southgate started to show signs of consciousness. One of the commentators approached Austin with microphone in hand and waited for the noise to die down a little before beginning his interview.
“First of all, Austin, congratulations!”
“Thanks, Pete.”
“Thanks for sticking around this time!”
Austin laughed. “No problem.”
“Obviously a classic submission victory for yourself. Could you walk us through what happened here?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. I learned from the first fight that Brenton’s best defense against the ground game was avoiding it as much as possible. That’s not to take anything away from him, he knows his sh-… stuff, he knows his stuff, but I figured that if I could take him into the later rounds by standing with him for that long, my conditioning would see me through, and I’d spot the opening I needed to take the fight back to where I had the advantage, and I could tie him in knots.”
“Well, mission accomplished, right?”
“Yup.”
“So who do you see yourself fighting next? A rematch with Coles maybe?”
Austin laughed again. “No. No, I don’t think that would be a healthy move for him.”
“So, who then?”
“Um…” Austin looked in my direction again. “Actually, I’ve decided that I’ve now done everything I could in the sport. I’ve beaten the best, and it’s time to move my life in a different direction. As of, let’s say, tomorrow, I am officially announcing my retirement from MMA.”
The cheering immediately went from rapturous cheering to stunned whispers, slowly building up to a cacophony again. Even the commentator did a goldfish impression for a while.
“But… but you’re only twenty-four…?”
Austin shrugged. “I’ve got some other work I need to do.”
The heavyweight champion walked over and helped his fallen opponent to his feet, before exiting the decagon and leaving a stunned crowd in his wake.
He’d just closed the door on a big chapter in our lives. Now it was time to concentrate on the next one.
*****
The corner of the room I’d been si
tting in was cloaked in shadows. Gavino didn’t even know I was here. Yet.
He looked somewhat worse for wear. That was to be expected, considering the special attention Austin and Jace had been giving him for the past few weeks.
“You’re looking good, Gavino,” said Austin. “You been trying that paleo diet? You’ve got the jowls of a man twenty years your junior.”
Austin sank a fist into the former boss’ still-considerable gut, forcing all the air out of him along with a groan of pain.
“No more,” he pleaded. “I’ve told you everything I-”
“I don’t know,” said Jace. “On one hand, you’ve been very cooperative. After that first wild goose chase, you learned quick and stabbed pretty much everybody you know in the city in the back, they’re all dead or working with us now by the way, and given up all those stockpiles of cash, drugs, guns, whatever we wanted. I’m especially happy about the information. On the other hand, it sure was a pain in the ass to hunt you down for all those months. I don’t know how you got away from that house in the first place. It’s not even at the top of a hill, so I know you didn’t roll away, motherfucker.”
Jace struck Gavino just below the eye, and his head rocked to the side, dripping blood on his shoulder.
“I’m inclined to just keep on beating you until you’re nothing but a stain on the floor. But Austin here, he wants to let you go.”
“I’m a real nice guy,” said Austin.
I could see Gavino’s head turn from one man to the other and I could almost imagine the incredulous expression through the blood and bruises on his face.
“Please! Let me go! I’ll disappear! You’ll never hear-”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Jace. “We’ve decided we needed to call somebody in for a tie-breaker. It’s somebody you can answer one more question for.”
I stood and checked my gun. The safety was still on, just like Jace had taught me. Leave it on until you’re ready to use it. That time was soon.
Hearing my footsteps, Gavino struggled to crane his neck, but couldn’t get a good view of me. I looked down at the gun in my hands, and at the bump in my stomach, feeling my heart starting to pound.