by Hamel, B. B.
For the past year, I had done nothing but worry about that divorce. I had obsessed and thought about how much better my life could be if I didn’t have an absent husband weighing down my conscience. And suddenly he was back, but the divorce had slowly melted from my mind.
That was what he did to me. He made me forget what I wanted, replaced it with something else. Because for the past few weeks, ever since he had come home, what I really wanted was him. Not a divorce, nothing like that. Just him.
Eventually I found myself wandering into the parking structure outside Cindy’s workplace. I checked my watch: five minutes early. I quickly found the spot and leaned up against a pillar, waiting.
Madison was right on time. She walked out of the elevators and over toward me, her heels clacking on the concrete. Her face was hard and serious. There were only a few cars parked near us, which meant the place had an eerie, empty feeling.
Exactly what I wanted.
“Hello, Madison,” I said sweetly.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
I smiled and relished in her discomfort. “I wanted to talk to you about our little problem.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Come on, Madison, really? Denial? That’s pretty weak.”
She looked flustered, frowning. “I’m, well, I just, I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Blackmail is serious, Madison. It’s a crime. You can go to jail for this.”
I actually wasn’t sure if that was right or not, but I didn’t care. The threat of jail had the desired effect, though. Madison looked even more agitated, even more confused.
“What do you want from me?” she said.
“I want you to stop. I want you to destroy the pictures you bought from Marla, and I want you to leave me and Cole alone.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said again.
“Marla, the waitress. We met her, you know. She told us that it was you who paid for the pictures.”
“Marla,” she whispered.
“Yes, Madison. We found her, and she told us everything. We have it all on tape. I’ve giving you an out here, letting you make up for the pain you’ve already caused. If you destroy the images and back off, we won’t go to the police with what we know.”
As I spoke, Madison’s face slowly drained of all color.
“Marla has proof, you know—emails from you.” I was bluffing, but I figured that was probably true.
And it paid off, because as soon as I said that she had emails, Madison burst out into tears.
I gaped at her as she stood there and sobbed. I had no clue what to do. She was my blackmailer and I wanted to hurt her, but I felt terrible that this poor girl was sobbing like an idiot in public.
“Okay,” I said awkwardly. “Please stop crying.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. It wasn’t my idea.” She was sobbing, and I could barely understand her.
“Okay, wow, you have to calm down,” I said.
“Please don’t send me to jail.”
It was almost funny. This girl had caused me so much stress and pain, so much worry, and there she was crying her eyes out like a child, blubbering about jail. All I had needed to do was threaten her a little bit, bluff a little bit, and she totally broke.
Which was actually strange. If she were blackmailing me, you’d think she would have prepared herself for this. And yet there she was, sobbing into her hands.
“Okay,” I said, reaching into my bag. “Here, take these.” I handed her some tissues.
She took them and blew her nose. “Thanks.”
“You’re not going to jail. Please calm down.”
She took deep breaths, tears running down her face. “I’m not?”
“If you stop crying you won’t.”
She nodded, visibly trying to pull herself together. I stood there watching, totally baffled, as she slowly stopped sobbing.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“It wasn’t my fault,” she said. “It really wasn’t.”
I sighed. “Okay, Madison. Who was it then?”
“My boyfriend, Trent Hanger.”
I recognized the name, but it took a second before it really sank in. When it did, though, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Trent was the name of Cole’s big nemesis, the same guy he was going to be fighting soon.
I gaped at her. “Did you say Trent?”
“Yes,” she sniffled.
“MMA fighter Trent?”
She nodded, dabbing at her eyes.
I shook my head, completely mystified. “Tell me everything. And start with how the fuck you know Trent.”
Slowly she began to talk, and she told me the most improbable story I had ever heard in my life.
Madison used to work for Ultimate Fighter Championship, or UFC, the most famous MMA league in the United States. She lived in Las Vegas back then and was working her way up in the company as a member of the public relations group.
As a PR person, she worked with the fighters constantly. That was how she met Trent. At first, she said, she hated Trent, but slowly she fell in love with him. Apparently he was persistent, and although I wasn’t interested in the details of their courtship, she decided to tell me way too many anyway.
Finally, though, she and Trent got together. Back then, she had no clue who I was or who Cole was, and she had no plans to ever bother us. But things had changed when she had applied for an internship at Cindy’s company a few months ago.
“I never thought I’d get it,” Madison said. “But I did, and Trent agreed to move to the Bay area with me. I guess Cindy liked me, because after a month of the internship, she fired her old personal assistant and hired me.”
I listened as she talked about the nightmares of that job and how stressful it had been when the companies had merged. She said she wasn’t really that ambitious, but Cindy was teaching her a lot.
The blackmail happened by accident. Madison had hired Marla to take some pictures of the event, mostly of Cindy’s family just in case any gossip magazines wanted a scoop about the scandalous company marriage. She said she was in the habit of doing that just to make some cash on the side, another one of Trent’s ideas. She said she never expected to find what she found.
“Actually,” she said, “it wasn’t me that figured it out. When Marla gave me the pictures, I didn’t think anything of them at first. Trent found them buried in a pile of a bunch of boring other shots.”
“And that was when it happened?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Trent knew what it was right away. He recognized Cole and he knew all about the drama, of course. He actually is a good listener.”
“Okay, Madison,” I said, annoyed. “I don’t care if Trent is a good listener.”
“Sorry. After that, he took the pictures and said he knew what to do with them. I thought he was going to sell them to some magazine, not blackmail you. Anyway, he made me go back to Marla and get more.”
“So you didn’t know we were being blackmailed.”
She shook her head. “No! No, I swear.”
I stared at her for a long time. The story seemed incredibly improbable, but it made a kind of sense. She was lying, of course, at least according to Marla’s story, but it was amazing that Trent and Cole would end up so closely linked. It was a near miracle, but it had happened.
“Madison,” I said, “I need you to get the pictures back for me.”
She looked at me for a second and then burst out crying again. “I can’t!” she wailed.
“Okay, okay,” I said, patting her back. “Why not?”
“Trent dumped me!”
I almost laughed out loud. The poor, pathetic girl. She clearly had been used by Trent, and the second he got what he needed, he had moved on.
It was disappointing. I had been so close, but apparently I was still too far away. The real blackmailer, th
e final piece of the puzzle, was Trent himself.
As Madison slowly stopped sobbing, I knew that my part in the whole thing was coming to a close. I knew that once I told Cole about Trent, he would lose his shit and probably try to kill the guy.
But once I convinced him not to do something stupid, I knew he’d take care of it. Even though it seemed so insane and impossible, I knew Cole would come out on top.
As I comforted Madison, I knew it was almost finished.
Finally, after what felt like hours, Madison got herself together. She told me that she was sorry and never meant for any of it to happen, but it didn’t matter. I felt bad enough for the pathetic girl to forgive her anyway.
I walked her to the elevator and watched her get in.
“I’m sorry again,” she said.
“Forget it. I’ll take care of Trent.”
“Tell him I said he’s a fucking piece of human shit.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
The elevator doors shut.
I turned and walked back toward downtown. My heart was racing in my chest. I didn’t want to tell Cole, but I knew I had to.
I was afraid, but I was excited. It was finally coming to an end.
Chapter Sixteen: Cole
As the fight drew nearer, my life became more and more focused. That was how it always happened. The things that swirled around my life and caused me stress, and even the things that I enjoyed, they all were swept aside as I prepared myself.
MMA fights didn’t last very long. Because of that, people tended to think that they didn’t take much effort. Sure, you were normally in the ring for less than a half hour, sometimes only minutes.
But the time spent in the ring was the most brutal and intense moments imaginable. You were constantly fighting for your life, trying to defeat your opponent. That person across from you was as trained to fight as you were, and he wanted to beat you into unconsciousness or hurt you until you begged him to stop.
It was a bloody frenzy, a terrifying frenzy, and I loved it.
But because of that, I had to prepare myself. The weeks leading up to a fight were spent training my body, but also my mind. I would meditate on the fight, watch film of the guy I was going to be up against, prepare my strategy. I would plan and think and try to keep myself in the right frame of mind.
Since the Trent fight was coming up fast, I had to do all of my intensive preparations that much faster. I hated to rush everything, but I had no other choice. My only solace was knowing that Trent was rushing his preparations. More than that, he didn’t have any film of me fighting, while I had film of every one of Trent’s matches since I was last in the ring with him.
And he had gotten much, much stronger since then.
I remembered a relatively weak guy that was prone to fits of rage. He used to love to stand up and throw punches. But the guy Trent had turned into was much more lethal, much more controlled. He didn’t lose his temper a single time, and he picked his opponents apart with smart and well-timed attacks.
He’d gotten a lot better, but so had I. Back before I left for Thailand, I was known as a Judo fighter, a submission guy. I was good at getting my opponents onto the ground and getting them into submission holds, forcing them to give up before I broke their bones or choked them out.
In Thailand, though, I had gotten much stronger. Muay Thai fighting was all about throwing punches and kicks. Trent knew the sort of stuff I’d learned over there, but he had never actually watched me practice it. As far as he knew, I was still that same Judo guy he remembered.
That fact changed my game plan. That plus a hundred other factors went into my planning and made my head spin.
Which was why I didn’t even notice when Alexa walked down into the basement. I was too deep in my own head, envisioning the fight, going over my moves, as I finished my sit-up reps.
“Hey,” she said, yanking me out of my daze.
I looked up at her. She was sitting on the bench press machine, her legs crossed. She was leaning back on her hands, making her breasts jut out from her chest. I couldn’t help but look up and down at her body.
I hadn’t seen her much in the last two days. As far as I knew, it was Tuesday, but I wasn’t keeping good track.
“Are you busy?” she asked.
“Nah. Just finished.” I stood up and walked over to my bag, grabbing my towel.
“How’s it going?”
I shrugged. “About as good as it can.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fight’s on short notice, but I’ll be ready.”
“How long do you usually get?”
“Months, at least.”
“Wow.” She paused and sat forward, looking away. “Maybe this isn’t a good time.”
I could tell she had something she wanted to say, but clearly it was a little uncomfortable for her. I realized I’d probably been neglecting her and our little blackmail issue.
“Now is a good time.” I wiped the towel across my brow and leaned up against the wall across from her.
“It’s about Madison.”
“The assistant.”
She nodded. “I went and saw her.”
I raised an eyebrow, surprised. I had planned on dealing with that, but my workouts and preparation had gotten intense, and it had slipped my mind.
Still, I hadn’t expected her to go and talk to the girl herself. “What happened?”
“Well, your mom wanted to have lunch with me, so I used that as an excuse.”
“Cindy did?”
“Yeah. Something about wanting to be a family?”
I laughed, grinning at her. “We’re a pretty close family already.”
She blushed. “Yeah, well, she doesn’t need to know that.”
“So how did it go?”
“Lunch was fine, I guess.”
I smirked at her. “I mean with the assistant.”
“Oh.” She paused, her discomfort growing. I wanted her to spit it out, but I decided to let her take her time. I didn’t want to spook her or something.
“Well,” she said, speaking slowly, “I found out some pretty interesting stuff.”
“Do tell.”
“First of all, she’s not really our problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she paid for the pictures and everything, but she’s not really the one blackmailing us.”
I let out an annoyed breath. This whole thing had been a long lesson in failure. We’d been so sure at least two other times that we’d had the culprit, and now I was finding out that we had hit another dead end?
“But I know who it is,” she said quickly, probably sensing my anger.
“You sure? Or is this just going to lead to ten more people?”
“No, really. It’s her boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend now, I guess.”
“Who is he, some dickhead that hates the tech industry or something?”
“I think you should sit down,” she said softly.
“Why? I don’t care about some liberal arts pussy. Just tell me his name and I’ll take care of him.”
“His name,” she said slowly, “is Trent.”
I blinked at her. “Okay. That’s a weird coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence, Cole. Well, it is, but not how you’re thinking.”
I stared at her for a second, a strange feeling wheeling around in my gut. “Spit it out, Alex.”
“Madison used to work PR for UFC, which I guess is the company that runs MMA fights.”
I nodded, confirming what she said. I thought the room might begin spinning.
“Well,” she said, “Madison met Trent while she was doing that job. Your Trent. Then she got the job as Cindy’s assistant, basically by accident, and lucked into those pictures.”
“You mean she didn’t pay for them?”
“No, she did, but she wasn’t coming after us. She was just looking for some pictures to sell to some tech blogs in the area.”
“Trent . .
.” I said, trailing off.
“Trent was her boyfriend. He saw the pictures and knew what he had. Trent is the one blackmailing us, Cole.”
I stared at her for a second and then shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry, Cole, but it’s really him.”
I felt rage rush through me then, a rage I’d never experienced before. “That motherfucker,” I said. “He’s doing this just to distract me, to make this fight easier. That fucking piece of shit. That’s why he wants to rush in to it.”
“Cole, calm down,” Alexa said, standing up.
“That snake cunt,” I said, grabbing the end of the weight rack and tearing it to the ground. Weights smashed to the floor and went toppling.
Alexa backed up, her eyes wide. “Cole,” she said.
I couldn’t control myself. Every bit of my carefully built self-restraint was suddenly gone as I ripped off another rack of weights and pushed over a machine, my muscles flexing. Rage flowed through me freely, and I wanted to kill Trent, kill him with my bare hands. I wanted to tear his skull to bits and drink his blood.
It wasn’t that he had hurt me. I didn’t fucking care about that. Fighters did dirty shit all the time to try to get in their opponent’s head. I didn’t fucking care about that shit. Trent was a snake fuck, and he’d do whatever he had to do to win, including some dirty as fuck tricks.
But I was pissed that he had dragged Alexa into the whole thing. Alexa and her family had been nothing but kind to me since everything had started. Alexa was mine, my fucking wife, my fucking woman, and Trent had dared messed with that.
He had gone too far. He had stepped across a line, and I would make him pay. I was going to find him and I was going to kill him. Fuck the fight. Fuck everything else. I was going to murder him.
“Cole,” Alexa said loudly. “Please, calm down.”
“I’m going to murder him,” I said. “Right now.”
I stormed upstairs. I could hear her following me, yelling my name, but I couldn’t understand a word she said. The only thing on my mind was finding Trent and ripping him to pieces. I would end it, end the blackmail, end the stress, end it all.