Page 19 of Road to Ruin
“Alex, please…”
Alex huffs down his nose. He is raging mad. Absolutely raging. He may seem relatively calm and held together, but I used to make a habit of studying this man’s mood swings. He’s unpredictable and violent at all times. The smallest tic at the corner of his mouth is sometimes the only indicator that he’s about to pull out a gun and shoot someone in the back of the head. A realignment of his shoulders is often the only thing that will warn you he’s about to lose his fucking mind and explode. Genevieve seems to be calming him down, though. I’d never have said it were possible if I wasn’t witnessing it with my own two eyes.
“Fine. You can stay,” he grinds out. “But don’t say you haven’t been warned. This isn’t a place for women. It’s dangerous.” The threat is heavy in his voice. I hear it, and so does every other hot-blooded male in the place. He’s sending a message to those listening in the crowd: this woman is not under my protection. I’m not going to have you killed if you scare her a little. Maybe more than a little.
“Jesus,” David groans. “She’s not gonna last five seconds down here.”
“She won’t stay,” I reply. “No fucking way. She can’t be that crazy.” I’m so sure she’s going to see sense and do a one-eighty, turn around and walk back up the stairs, that I turn away from her, focusing my attention back onto my sister. Alex’s frown deepens, though, a dark fury settling over him, and I know I was wrong. She hasn’t left. Nikita has stepped down onto the fight floor and disappeared into the mass of surging bodies gathered around the cage.
Girl has some fucking balls, that’s for sure.
David’s about to open his mouth but I shut him down immediately. “She’s not our responsibility. We came here for Gen, remember? Don’t get caught up in things that don’t concern us. We’re in enough shit as it is.”
He grunts by way of response. His need to play the knight in shining armor has gotten us both into trouble plenty of times before. Tonight is not a good night for heroics. We’re meant to be flying under the radar, not launching a full-scale attack of any kind. I’m insanely attracted to the woman, but I can’t see helping her doing us any favors.
The room gradually grows louder and then positively deafening as Alex sits down beside Genevieve, scowling like a petulant child. The PA system booms as the MC announces the first fight of the night. People resume placing their bets, frantically waving wads of money in the air and shouting at the bookies that are being mobbed all over the place.
Minutes pass, and David and I take the opportunity to slip off to one side, standing at the far right of the tomb, our backs pressed to the wall. We’re unnoticed here. A part of the shadows. The fighters come out next, two kids I don’t recognize, both of them covered in ink and bruises. They’re what we always used to call the shit-kickers in the Champion Ultime tournaments. Bottom rung guys who have to fight every single night of the week in order to climb up the ladder and into Alex’s good graces. I spent a very brief amount of time as a shit-kicker. I was a fucking good fighter. I was savage, merciless, which Alex liked, so he promoted me quickly. Still, I remember how fucking painful it was getting hit every night. I remember how doped and drugged and crazy I felt half the time, drowning in adrenaline and testosterone. And I vividly recall how satisfying it was to finally win over the crowd, after so many nights bleeding and brawling on the canvas for them, waiting for their approval, for them to finally start chanting my name.
Their fight doesn’t last long. Eight minutes, total. Disappointment sweeps through the crowd as the shorter, stockier guy in blue shorts catches his apparently stronger opponent on the jaw with a right hook, sending him crumpling to the ground. Out like a light. I could have told the guys betting on the dude in red how it was gonna go down three seconds after the fighters stepped into the ring. Yeah, the dude in red was taller, with a longer reach and more muscle mass, but his guard was sloppy and his footwork even sloppier. The shorter guy took a full minute to test out the other guy’s range. He watched him. He was light on his feet, and he didn’t fall for the feinting and dodging the other guy kept throwing out there.
The second fight is over even quicker. Three minutes even. Doesn’t even make it out of the first round. I don’t watch the third and fourth fights. I watch Genevieve on the dais. She seems relaxed enough, leaning back in her chair, smiling brightly whenever Alex turns to talk to her, but I can sense the uneasiness in her. I think Alex can as well. He smiles at her often, too, pointing at the men in the octagon, obviously telling her what’s going on, explaining the fights to her (as if she needs them explaining), but he’s suspicious of her, I can tell.
The final fight eventually arrives, and David elbows me hard in the ribs. “Get ready. Once the bout is over, he’ll head into the cage to announce the overall winner. We’re gonna need to move fast.”
I feel like snapping at him, telling him I know how this whole thing fucking works, but it would be a waste of energy that I’m probably going to need really soon if the shit hits the fan. I’m tense, but I’m in control. I bite my tongue. A few years back, I would have popped him for trying to tell me what to do. Now I rule my temper with an iron fist.
“—think you’re doing? Get…get your hands off me, motherfucker.”
Oh, God. Here we go.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her: Nikita, being mauled by three huge guys, their hands roving all over her body. The men are tall and stacked, but they’re not big enough to be Alex’s guys. Alex only hires ex-fighters and retired body builders, and these guys are just gym rats, hopped up on steroids by the looks of things. All of their heads are shaved, and all three of them are wearing wife beaters, displaying an array of terrible tattoos. Tattoos that look like a monkey drew them with a ballpoint pen. Dog shit, faded, green and blue tattoos that are so badly smudged and distorted that you can’t even tell what they are anymore.
Nikita looks furious. She rips her arm free from one of the guys and slaps him across the cheek. Hard. “I’m telling you now, you do not want to fuck with me, asshole.”
He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, pressing his thumb to his mouth, checking for blood. He has a dangerous look in his eyes that I’ve seen before. “Oh, sure I do. I want to fuck with you real bad.”
“Things are about to escalate,” David says, his voice going up at the end in a sing-song way. “You sure you’re gonna stand right next to me and watch three dudes hammer the shit out of a girl? Because I know you, bro, and I have a horrible feeling you’re going to try and ignore what’s going on here until you absolutely can’t anymore. And then, when we reach that point, you’re going to go nuclear.”
I shrug, arms folded across my chest. My teeth are gritted together hard enough to grind the enamel into dust. “I said we shouldn’t get involved. We’re not getting involved.”
“All right, man.” David’s tone of voice clearly says he doesn’t believe me, not even for a second. “All right. Just give me a heads-up before the fireworks go off, okay? I wanna be ready for this shit.”
“Just watch the dais. Watch Genevieve. Keep your head down and mind your business.”
The three guys continue to paw at Nikita. They’re testing her, seeing how far they can go before she lashes out. All three of them laugh as they grope at her, one at a time, hands darting out to grab at her. I’ve never understood why groups of men find it entertaining to gang up on a single woman. I’ve seen it so many times before, and it makes zero sense. One of them is bigger and stronger than Nikita. One of them is powerful enough to restrain her and take what he wants. So three?
They need each other’s participation in order to do what they’re doing right now, because they know it’s fucking wrong. They need accomplices, other guys who’ll act out along with them, to make it okay, so it’s not a big deal. So that their consciences don’t give them hell. If he’s doing it, then it must be fine. If both these other guys think it’s okay to harass, molest and rape a woman, it can’t be a problem. Right?
They all know, though. They all know, just under the surface, below the bravado, the laughing, the poking and the teasing, that what they’re doing is an evil act.
I try to follow my own advice: watch Genevieve, and mind my own damn business. It’s not an easy thing to do, though. Not when the woman’s standing less than five feet away from me, and now more guys have turned away from the cage and are watching what’s going down.
Alex really did pour gasoline on this fire by making it clear that Nikita wasn’t protected as his guest. I can feel a sour, violent, aggression building in the air—the kind that comes from a group of men already fired up by the sight of blood, suddenly all interested in a vulnerable woman. As a rule, the fights don’t attract morally upstanding members of the community. And even if a percentage of the crowd are typically good guys just looking for a surge of adrenaline, it’s amazing how quickly a group mentality can change even your basic views on right and wrong.
The fight in the cage ends. I don’t know who wins. The MC makes an announcement over the rattling PA system, and there’s a low rumble that travels through the crowd. A group of five guys beside us turn and look toward the dais, and I can hear Alex speaking but I’m not really listening. I’m watching the situation to my right, arms folded across my chest, my heart rate quickening with every passing second. It’s getting harder and harder to remember why I shouldn’t be stepping into the middle of this cluster fuck, and David isn’t helping.
“Fuck,” he grinds out. “What the fuck is he doing?”
