Page 2 of Six
If Lenny is responsible for the deaths, it will be my deep pleasure to take care of him. I can’t fucking stand crimes against kids—for very justifiable reasons.
Dark, painful images try to assault my mind, but I push them back down. I need to compartmentalize. Now is not the time to think about the past. I have a show to perform and a crowd to entertain. Lenny Berko has finally come to watch. Maybe he heard about my winning knockout. Maybe not. Either way, I need to impress him.
I brush my thumb against the long scar in the center of my palm. It’s a comforting habit, the feel of the thick raised skin under my fingertip. It reminds me of the promise I made to my fiveblood brothersand to myself. It reminds me of why we do this.
A loud ding takes me back to the present. There’s no announcer here. The bell rings and the match starts. It doesn’t stop until one of the fighters is knocked to the floor.
I exhale, letting coldness seep inside my body. Icy calmness wraps around my emotions and my tunnel vision zeros in on my opponent. He advances, his taped hands up in front of his chin, still bouncing on his feet, showing some nice ballerina footwork. I remain still, like an unmovable brick wall, fists down at my sides, body relaxed but alert.
When he throws his first punch, I know this is going to be over very soon—the guy is slower than a snail. I easily slip his jab, leaning to the left just enough to take my head off the punching line while maintaining my balance. I could slug him in the side, he left it wide open, but decide against it. I have to play the part, to make it interesting.
Begrudgingly, I let him land some body shots on my front, tightening my abs and pecs. I have to admit, the guy’s hook is not that bad. It makes me grunt…slightly. After a few minutes of this dance, he’s sweating profusely already, his movements turning sluggish. I can smell the sour stench of alcohol coming from his pores.
I bring my shoulder to my chin and turn my hips away, watching his punch slide harmlessly off it. He loses his balance and falls straight into the ecstatic crowd. They love this shit.
While the elated audience unceremoniously pushes the fighter back into the ring, I glance at Rami. My brother signals me with a tilt of his head.Time to end this.
As soon as the other fighter stumbles and turns my way, I raise my arm with the elbow parallel to the floor, shift my weight to my right foot, and throw an effective and powerful uppercut through my hip, torso, and shoulder. A whoosh sound comes from my mouth as air escapes my lungs when my knuckles connect hard with the area beneath his chin.
The punch is so explosive that his head snaps back, his whole body arches, and his feet leave the floor for a half-second as he floats in the air before hitting the ground with a disturbing thud.
A moment of dead silence, and then a booming sound detonates from the crowd.
Hulk. Hulk. Hulk.
My heart is racing, breath quickly leaving my lungs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see people jumping and cheering, but my gaze is on the blond guy to my right, the one flanked by two bodyguards. Lenny’s sly smile is directed at me, eyes filled with dollar signs. It looks like he found his new golden goose. Me.
I incline my head in greeting, and he raises his clapping hands in response. I feel an instinctual animosity toward the motherfucker.
He turns to Rami, mymanager,and waves at him to come closer—hopefully to talk business. My job is done.
I jump over the small wall into the crowd. People hurriedly make space for me. A few reckless fuckers pat me on the shoulder, backing up when they meet my glower. I quickly head toward the ancient bathroom where I left my stuff earlier. I walk down a long dusty corridor. The place was a button factory once upon a time. Been abandoned for more than thirty years and is now used to hold clandestine fights.
Nobody follows me. People know by now that I don’t like to interact after a fight. Or before. Or at all, actually. Plus, the next match will start soon, and the crowd is surely busy making more bets.
I enter the bathroom, moving past the three dull cast-iron sinks to stop near my bag on the wooden bench. I don’t attempt to reach for it. I just stand there for a minute. I let my head fall forward, my fingers unfurl near my thighs, and I will my heart to slow down. My tunnel vision eases up, and I’m able to take in details again. The deep cracks running through the bench. The strong smell of mold and sweat. The slight ache in my muscles after being coiled tight during the fight. The distant sound of people yelling.
I inhale deeply and let it out slowly.
I need to decompress. To let the adrenaline still pumping through my veins go. Otherwise, the irrepressible energy will turn into something dark, something that reminds me of a small brick room and the two scientists who experimented on me.
When I was just a kid, I was kidnapped—not that my crack whore of a biological mother cared. Those scientists kept me locked inside a facility and used me as a lab rat for their unsanctioned project. I was rescued years later, and only then discovered that I wasn’t the only one imprisoned there. There had been other kids. Seven in total. Six of us were moved to a group home, and our foster mothers, Meg and Linda, raised us as their own and helped us to reacquaint ourselves with societal norms. Michael was adopted by another family—very long story there.
We later learned that we were chosen by the scientists because of our psychopathic traits, since the project was about creating unemotional assassins. But as we grew up, mine as well as Rami’s, Sari’s, Michael’s and Gabe’s faded away. Only Raph is a true psychopath, and my other brother, Uri, is a sociopath. We’re all fucked up though, in one way or another. Years of torture tend to leave a mark. Or two.
My hand moves to touch the scars behind my ear, but as usual, stops before it makes contact. I let out a long sigh and decide to peel the white tape off my fingers.
Any trace of the rush from the fight is gone. My hands are steady. Years of meditation and self-soothing, learned from our psychiatrist mother, Meg, have served their purpose—along with other kinds of training. While other kids were learning how to play basketball or the guitar, in our free time, my brothers and I were taught combat, self-defense techniques, weapon use, and much more. Linda used to work for a few federal agencies and believed we would need these types of skills in the future. She was right.
I’m reaching for the wet wipes inside my bag when I hear someone enter the bathroom. I expect it to be Rami. But what I find when I turn my head is a young guy leaning against one of the sinks. He looks sweaty and there’s some blood under his nose. Another fighter perhaps?
His arms are stretched behind him, hands curled around the edge of the basin, pushing out his chest covered in a thin pink tank top. His body isn’t overly muscular, but well-toned. He’s clearly in good shape. His dark red lips are stretched into an impish smirk. His angular face, pointy chin, and high cheekbones are softened by the lightest water-green eyes I’ve ever seen. The left one has a large brown spot in it, taking up half of his iris. Peculiar, and at the same time, bewitching.
His gaze is utterly focused on me, precisely my scarred back. But I can’t read any disgust, nor wariness in it. On the contrary, those green-mist orbs are shamelessly eye-fucking the shit out of my grey-sweats-clad ass.
“Hulk, right?” His voice is lower than I anticipated. Maybe he’s older than he looks. Around twenty perhaps. I reply with a nod. Then I turn my eyes forward again and start wiping off the thin film of sweat from my face, chest, and neck.
