by Amity Cross
The moment I saw the Mercedes pull up outside, I shoved out of the safe haven of the office and thundered down the stairs. No use dragging my heels.
Waiting just inside the studio, I ignored the curious glances being fired at me from the guys training in the ring and crossed my arms over my chest. Listening to the pounding of fists against leather in the background, I used the familiar songs of male peacocking to calm my nerves. Aggression in a controlled environment was my stress relief.
I reined in my attitude the moment Vincent Carmichael unfolded himself from the back of the car and strode across the footpath to meet me, his stature and refined appearance marking him as a powerful man.
“Dad,” I said briskly. “If I had known you were coming—”
“You would have run away with your tail between your legs,” he said, cutting me off.
That was Dad. Heartless and full of shit.
It was all about how big your balls were and how much money you could bet on them with that guy. Seeing me standing in a small boxing studio in an out-of-the-way suburb of Melbourne instead of a ring in Vegas with a title belt slung over my shoulder was eating him up inside. Give the guy a chance, and he’d have me there in a blink of an eye…no matter the consequences.
He’d worn his powerful asshole face today. His eyebrow was split with an impressive scar, his upper lip slightly pulled up on the left from another scar, which gave him a permanent resting dick face. Thankfully, I’d gotten my looks from my mother, but my pale features I’d inherited from dear old Dad. Blond hair, blue eyes, and broad shoulders.
In short, we looked exactly like father and son from the neck up, but from there down? That was another story. I preferred to wear sweats with a T-shirt emblazoned with the Beat logo, and here he was in a suit and tie.
I watched as he glanced over the lower floor of the studio, his lip curling slightly. Usually, the guy didn’t show any emotion, so that little tick on his upper lip told me a fuck load. He already hated the place.
“So this is where my son has been spending the last six months,” he drawled, flipping the arms of his aviator sunglasses closed and sliding them into his breast pocket.
“Coaching,” I said, steeling myself for the barrage of passive-aggressive insults that were about to start flying. Like he cared, anyway. This was the first time he’d bothered looking in on me since my final round of diagnoses twelve months ago.
He plucked at a poster for self-defense classes pinned to the notice board like it was coated in a fine sheen of poison. “Is that what you call it? Coaching champions in self-defense?”
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I nodded toward the guys training at the back of the studio. “Got some promising guys who are almost ready to start looking for matches.”
Dad glanced over my shoulder but didn’t bite. He merely let out a humph and stepped around me, barging his way into the gym.
Standing at the top of the staircase, he looked over the trophy case at the end of the hall, then perused all the photographs of fighters past. It was affectionately dubbed the ‘Lickable Beat Wall of Fame’ by the owner’s daughter, Ren Miller, but I wasn’t about to divulge that to the world’s most unhumorous man.
“You know Andrew Miller,” I said, nodding at the photograph he was currently staring at. “He owns the place and hired me himself.”
If you asked me, Andrew Miller was an Australian boxing legend. He’d won a stack of belts in his time but was forced into early retirement, much like I’d been. There was no way my dad didn’t know him. If that didn’t impress him, then nothing could save me.
“Yes, he was a good man,” he muttered, looking at the picture with an air of whatever.
“Is,” I said. “He is a good man.”
“Until he gave up coaching boxers to cash in on that Ultimate Fighting.”
“I’d call it diversification, not selling out,” I retorted, but he’d already moved off. “Besides, he’s trained two titled fighters in a brand-new league.” Following him through the studio, I may as well have been talking to a brick wall for all the notice he gave me.
I bristled silently, wanting nothing more than for Daddy dearest to bugger off and leave me the hell alone. It was all well and good when I was the hero of the ring, the next big thing to come out of Australian boxing, but now that it was all gone, nothing I did was good enough. I was a full-grown man, but I would always be a delinquent child to my father. Like a sordid cliché, he wanted me to be exactly like him. Mr. Big Time with his fleet of chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benzes, custom-made suits, solid gold watches, and a wall full of championship belts from multimillion-dollar title fights in Las Vegas.
It must cut to see his only son working in what he saw as a small-time shit factory.
Out the corner of my eye, I saw the guys watching our every move and knew I would cop shit for following him around like a bootlicking dog the moment he was gone. Gritting my teeth, I stopped trying to talk up the place and allowed him to form his own opinion. Like he’d listen to me, anyway. A man like my father only saw what was on the surface.
What did he say to me when I was growing up and getting the shit knocked outta me in the ring? If it looks like failure and smells like failure, it is a failure. Beat it into your kid’s head enough, and he’ll actually start believing it.
Once the grand tour was over, Dad turned to me, and I could see I was about to cop it. What ‘it’ was, I didn’t know, but it was about to slap me around the face.
“I expect to see some changes when I come back,” he said, pulling out his mobile phone.
So that was why he’d graced me with his presence. Not to see how I was getting on but to judge from on top of his high horse. Typical.
“It’s not my business,” I replied with a scowl. “I only manage the place.”
“It’s not fitting for a Carmichael,” he said. “I’ll compile the list and have it sent to you by close of business.”
“Dad, it’s not my place to go changing things,” I argued. “We don’t own the place, so we’ve got no right knocking down any walls.”
He turned, sizing me up with his beady eyes. Every time he gave me that look, I could picture him standing in a ring giving the same stink eye to his opponent and have them borderline piss their silk shorts. I was about to get cut down to size, and it would be brutal.
“Caleb, I would rather you come back and train with Logan as you used to,” he practically barked. “Your injury is a mere hindrance that has a work-around. This place…” he trailed off as his face took on the look of someone who had sucked on a lemon. “This place is beneath you.”
“You want me to go back and fight?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. The bastard couldn’t be serious?
“Immediately.”
“You do know that if I get back in the ring and get hit the wrong way, I’ll be back in the hospital, flat on my back, again? You do understand that I won’t be walking out of there? I’ll be rolling out on my new set of wheels.”
“You’ve spent your entire life training to become a champion, and you’ve wasted it on this,” he snarled, shaking his head.
“Nice to see caring for my physical well-being is such a priority for you, Dad. Love you, too.”
He narrowed his eyes and turned his attention to his mobile phone, effectively dismissing me. “You shall receive my list by the end of the day,” he said, reiterating his earlier command. “And the next time I visit, I expect to see an equally measured change in your attitude.”
I opened my mouth, but he’d already turned his back on me and began to descend the stairs. His Highness had spoken, apparently, and that was that. Like the judgmental asshole he was, he’d slammed down his gavel with a bang.
Escorting him to his car like the dutiful son I was, my blood boiled. He’d rather risk his only child being put into a wheelchair for the rest of his life than see him do good honest work and keep the use of his legs. Was a Championship belt worth that much to him? It was a stupid questio
n because yeah, it was. If it looks like failure and smells like failure…
We didn’t exchange goodbyes or see ya laters. We didn’t say anything at all as he got into the back of the Merc. The moment the car rolled away, I flipped it the bird. Rebellion was my middle name, after all.
“Love you too, Dad. So sorry I’m such a fucking disappointment to the Carmichael legacy.”
3
Juliette
I wasn’t sure where my story began.
At the start of it all, I was born a full two minutes after my twin sister. I grew up in her shadow, but then she was brutally murdered in her own bed at the age of twenty-three.
Every time I looked in the mirror, I was haunted by my past. We weren’t identical—the egg hadn’t split or anything—but we were so similar, people often confused us at first. Melanie was the star, the athlete, the pro surfer with a shelf packed full of trophies.
Me? Well, I was the one with a shelf full of books and an aversion to all forms of exercise, including swimming, running, going to the gym…let’s just say I was allergic to anything sport related that made me crack a sweat.
Then Mel died, and it became national news. It was on the five p.m. bulletin, the lunchtime headlines, and the nighttime ones, too. It was in the local and the national newspapers before being syndicated for worldwide distribution for over a month. Then it was on Sixty Minutes and was given the full investigative journalistic approach. Who killed Melanie?
The world asked the question for months and months, and every year, on the anniversary of her death, they asked it again.
Who killed Melanie?
No one knew.
For five years, I merely went through the motions, the constant reminder of what had been taken from me wearing down my soul until all I could feel was pain. I numbed myself the best I could, but it still didn’t work. I forgot about the things I wanted to accomplish, letting my dreams of a career in publishing slide and my friendships dissolve into ash.
My parents became shells of their former selves, devoting all their time to finding out what had happened. It became an obsession for them, but for me…
I wanted to escape.
Everything around me reminded me of my dead sister, so there was only one thing I could do. Move away. Start fresh. Change everything in hopes of finding a future that didn’t include the legacy of one of the most horrific murders in Australian history.
So that was exactly what I did.
I had a new hairstyle, a new job, a new city, and a new name. It was like I was wearing a superhero mask, and all my past problems had melted away until they were a blip in my rearview mirror. I had the chance to reinvent myself and become who I’d always wanted to be. I was more than the twin sister of that murdered girl.
Nothing could hold me back now…
Except for one thing.
Me.
The dripping tap woke me.
A cool drop of water hit my nose, then trickled over my lip, sending a shiver down my spine.
Moving, I winced as my neck began to ache something fierce. I’d fallen asleep in the bath at an odd angle, and my hair and top were all damp. Coughing, I retrieved the knife from my lap, thankful I hadn’t sliced myself open during the night.
Scrambling out of the tub, I bashed my elbow against the sliding screen door and cursed, my eyes still feeling gritty with sleep. Moving through the bedroom, I kicked off my shoes, then tentatively began inspecting the locks I’d hammered into place the night before.
Standing in the middle of my tiny living room, I listened to the sounds of the city waking up, my body trembling. Nothing had been disturbed. The table was still where I’d left it in front of the back door, the locks were still engaged, and the windows were closed—there’d been no need for me to hide in the bathroom with a knife, paralyzed by fear.
With a sigh, I slid the knife back into the block and padded back into the bathroom. Reaching into the shower, I turned the hot tap on as far as it would go and began stripping out of my damp clothes. Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I hesitated, staring at my reflection and not even recognizing the woman who stared back. Blonde hair and blue eyes peered at me, but I knew it was an illusion created by the fear in my own mind.
The ghost of my dead sister haunted me.
For five years, she’d followed me around, her face splattered with blood, her eyes empty and lifeless as they stared back at me…except they were mine, not hers. It didn’t matter where I was, looking into my bathroom mirror in my dreams or even reflected back at me in the windows of a shop, she was always there, cut up, bloody, and completely lifeless.
She was gone, and I was left behind. I’d moved to the other end of the country, but I couldn’t escape it. The fear had followed me here, just as it would everywhere I went. I would run again, and it would snap at my heels like a rabid dog. I would huddle in the bathtub again, swiping helplessly at an invisible intruder with a blunt carving knife.
A new city wasn’t going to solve my problems.
A new hair color wasn’t going to help me find closure with my sister’s murder.
I could pretend all I wanted, don my stupid superhero mask and play the part of the person I thought I deserved to be, but in reality, I’d only run away and brought all my baggage along for the ride.
If someone had followed me home last night, I had no idea how to protect myself. My fear was so crippling it would have gotten me killed.
I had to do something.
I stepped into the shower, the hot water searing my skin and soothing the kink in my neck.
I had to do something. But what?
What?
Fight back. The words came to me, cutting through the steam and slapping me around the face. Fight back.
Was the first step that simple? I could go to that gym I kept seeing signs for down on Sydney Road. Learn to fight back with my fists. Learn how to protect myself if he came looking for a complete set of twins. I could really become Juliette Spicer, badass, instead of pretending I was.
I couldn’t go out after dark anymore, but if I went to that gym after work, then I’d be home before it was a problem.
Turning off the shower, I got dressed and grabbed my keys and phone before I could change my mind.
Outside, it was a bright summer’s day.
The sun beat down on my bare shoulders, stinging my pale skin, and I was already cracking a sweat. Partly because of my shattered nerves, but mostly because of the heat. Or was it the other way around?
I crossed over the road, taking a wide berth around the place the police had roped off the night before. Nothing was there now, the footpath free of flashing lights, crime scene markers, and that horrible white sheet. A block down, I found the side street where I’d seen the sign for the gym. Hardly glancing at it, I followed the red arrow printed at the bottom, walking away from the main road and into an area that had both houses and garages backing onto the footpaths on either side. A line of cars were parked to the left, tip to tail with hardly any room for them to back up and get out.
I found the gym half a block in. At first glance, it looked like the back of a mechanic’s garage with an open roller door and a cavernous space beyond. It was so bright outside that I couldn’t see far, but I heard plenty. Male grunting, fists smacking into stuff, the sound of the radio over the speakers—alternative rock music from what I could tell—and the stench of leather and sweat. Great. Stinky boys.
Staring at the opening, I glanced up and down the street, but it was empty save for a lone car that passed my position and turned onto Sydney Road, disappearing around the corner.
Go inside, I thought to myself. Go inside. Go inside. Go inside. What harm could it do? If they didn’t have any classes or training programs, then they’d say no and point me in the direction of someone who did. All I had to do was go inside and ask. I was a customer, and they wanted custom. Match made in heaven. Stop being such a scared little girl, Jules.
Taking
a deep breath, I boldly stepped into the gym, my eyes gradually adjusting to the change in light. The sounds of fists hitting punching bags filled the space, and my heart began to pound as a dozen pairs of eyes turned to stare at me…all of them male.
Swallowing hard, I turned, and to my utter relief, I found a notice board just inside the door that was packed full of flyers and what looked like class schedules.
“Would you get a look at that…” someone said, then let out a low whistle.
“I love it when they wander in off the street.”
Did they think I came here to gawk at their muscles? I began to squirm, doing my best to block the words out, my gaze scanning the flyers. I shouldn’t have come in here. It was the wrong place. No one could help me.
When I was finally able to register what I was looking at, a flyer for self-defense classes popped out at me. Reaching up, I gently grasped the corner, wondering if I could take it to look at later on. You know, when I ran home and died of embarrassment. I’d always been a bit awkward, but this was taking it to new heights. I was completely rattled.
“Shut it,” a male voice boomed behind me. “I want a hundred fist push-ups from the lot of you by the time I come back.”
Wincing, I was about to yank the flyer down and make a break for it when I felt the presence of someone standing behind me.
My heart lodged in my throat, and I turned, my gaze slamming into a tall man about my age, maybe older. About thirty, I suppose, but I was having a hard time making eye contact so I couldn’t be sure.
“Hey,” he said, his blue eyes seeming to see right through me. “I’m Caleb, the manager here. You interested in taking some classes?”
I hesitated, struck completely dumb. He was really good looking. Dusky blond hair, chiseled jaw, iridescent eyes, stubble on his chin, broad shoulders, and the outline of well-sculpted muscles underneath his tight, black T-shirt. I studied the outline of the logo that sat over his left pec—a pair of boxing gloves with angel wings—before feeling the telltale heat of embarrassment on my cheeks.