Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2017 1:08:41 GMT -5
San Diego, California
Tuesday, Midnight
Tuesday, Midnight
Even the tequila hadn't been enough to overcome the sobering sight of Bobby there on the roof of the So-Cal Ultraviolent complex. Two thousand miles from home, she had never in a million years expected to see him there. Half an hour later now and not another word had been spoken between them. Her heart was quivering in her chest and her palms were clammy where they rested against her jeans. She didn't recognize the route, only knew that it wasn't toward the airport or her hotel.
“Where are we going?” she tried to demand, only to find her voice at barely more than a whisper.
He didn't so much as spare a glance in her direction. “I already told you, I found something you're good at.”
“You're not... are you...” She tried to breathe past the tensing of the muscles in her neck. “Are you going to kill me?”
The nearly hysterical laugh he gave in response might have been infuriating if it weren't for the current situation. “I don't make any more money if you're dead, kid. I sure have shit wouldn't have shown up in the middle of an event where anyone could have seen me if I was going to. Don't be stupid.”
“God dammit, Bobby,” she shrieked as her composure broke, “tell me where the fuck we're going!”
Just like in the bathroom at her father's house, his movement was unexpectedly quick, and her own was slowed by the tequila. The handful of hair he had didn't hurt so much as the painful strain on her neck when he jerked her head back. “All this fucking time,” he snarled, “and you still haven't figured out that you don't get to fucking ask the questions. You shut up, and you do what I tell you, when I tell you.”
“I've already paid you back,” she argued, feeling bolder than she should have. “Give me a number for this bullshit interest you've made up and I'll give it to you. I want to be done with this shit!”
“And I already told you that you'll be done when I say you're done. This has been easy so far, and it can keep being easy if you keep doing what the hell you're told.”
“You can't make me do anything, Bobby. I'll—”
“You'll what?” he cut her off. “Tell your daddy? I don't think so. You were too embarrassed to ask him for the money in the first place, and you've been lying to him about it ever since, telling him your boyfriend paid for your school. If there's one thing I know about you, I know that you'd never do anything that would make dear old Royce disappointed in you.”
“I can tell the police.”
He laughed, again, and she could feel the red of anger rising in her cheeks. “Tell them what, exactly? You have no idea what you've even been doing. You're going to tell them that you carried some envelopes around town and you've got no idea what was in them?”
She didn't have an answer, and his was only another snicker. When he finally released her hair, she rubbed at her scalp and leaned as far across the car away from him as she possibly could. The line on the side of the road was a blur, the street signs and lights whipped by at fifty or so miles and hour. Did people live through jumping out of cars at that speed? They did in the movies...
She pulled on the little handle and pushed with her elbow... ...but nothing happened. Even when she leaned her weight into the door, it didn't budge.
“You won't be unlocking that from in here,” Bobby still sounded amused, and it stoked the heat of her anger, but there was nothing she could do about it. “But if you really, really want, I can throw you out of the car into traffic.”
The parking garage was not the destination she had expected. The rowdy crowd that had gathered was not what she had expected. The two men circling another in the middle of said crowd fired off another few swings at one another. She couldn't see them, but she could hear the impact.
“...Fight club shit, Bobby?” Was this even real? This couldn't be real, right? People didn't really do this.
“I told you,” he said with no small amount of annoyance as he paused counting the stack of bills in his hand, “I found something you're good at.”
Fight and wrestling weren't the same thing. Surely he knew that? “But I'm not—”
“You lose spectacularly,” he interrupted. “Over and over, so do it again, just be convincing.”
“...You want me to throw the fight?” How was it that she found that more of an insult than his jab at her wrestling record?
“It's not exactly throwing the fight when you can't win to begin with, is it? Now shut up. Do what you do to get ready, yoga or whatever.”
The fight going on in the middle of the crowd didn't last much longer. She heard a few sickening cracks, and then the onlookers parted as one of the men was dragged away, barely conscious. His faced was bloody, one eye almost swollen shut. She couldn't go back to Braxton looking like that...
“Bobby,” she pleaded, hating herself for it, “I can't do this.”
He shoved her forward, and everything else happened so quickly that she couldn't keep track of it all. The gap in the crowd closed and she was staring at the only other person inside the “ring” of onlookers. He was muscular in a lean sort of way, but not very big. Filipino, if she had to guess. He looked as unsure as she felt, for a moment, shooting a glance at who must have been his coach or something like it. Whatever the other man said, the little guy seemed to accept it.
Though she couldn't make out what exactly was being said over the crowd, she heard some kind of “announcer” calling out the details of the fight. A name she couldn't have pronounced if she tried, then one that most certainly wasn't her own. The rather degrading backstory that followed wasn't her own either.
There was no bell, not even a call to start that she heard. No sort of referee either. Not that she had expected any of those things. The only thing that told her the fight had started was the little man advancing on her. She threw up her arms just in time to block most of the punch, but it staggered her a little.
He kept pressing forward, and she kept backing around the circle, looking for an escape that wasn't there. The little man was confident, not keeping his guard as high as he should have. He telegraphed his next shot by twisting his hips too soon and she ducked under his arm, throwing her knee into his stomach as hard as she could on the way past.
The little man was shocked. The crowed was shocked. For a split second she glimpsed Bobby, and he was shocked too.
Fuck it.
She pushed everything out of her head—the crowd, the betting, Bobby and his order—and looked at the lean Filipino like any other opponent, even if he wasn't. Bobby could go fuck himself. If she lost, it was going to be because she lost, not because she threw the fight.
The little man pressed her again and again. He landed a few shots, the kick to the ribs hurt the most. She learned his tells quickly. It was obvious when he was going to feint and when he was really going to take a shot, when he was going to throw a punch and when he was going to go for a kick. His reach was better, she had to stay defensive and get her shots in when he was open after making his own. He was inexperienced, too, and he tired easily.
When at last he threw another kick, this one quite sloppy because he was gassed, she trapped his leg against her side and then tackled him to the concrete with a single-leg takedown. Without hesitation she threw an elbow into his face. Her arm came away wet and she didn't know if it was his saliva or blood or if she'd cut herself open on his teeth. Her elbow collided with his skull again, and she felt the cracking of his nose before a spray of blood coated her skin.
He threw her off of her then, but she scrambled forward as he rolled to the side to try to stand up. Her forearm clamped across his neck in desperation, and she locked her other hand across it at the wrist, squeezing with all of the strength she had left. She'd only choked someone out once before, almost by accident, during training, but it seemed like her only option now.
He struggled. His fingernails scratched her when he tried to pry her arm loose. The force of his fingers bruised her, but she refused to let go. He tried to just stand, but he wasn't that much bigger than she was, and he was fading. The weight of him falling on top of her knocked the wind out of her, but she kept the hold.
She held on until he stopped moving. She held on until the crowd started cursing in frustration. She held on until the little man's “coach” and Bobby were suddenly there trying to pull the two of them apart.
“The fuck're you doing?!” Bobby yelled at her for the second time that night as he shoved her through a gap in the crowd.
Apparently there was no one left to fight, because everyone left with an unexpected quickness. In a blur of headlights and taillights, the garage emptied. She sagged back against a cement pillar, dropping too hard onto her ass as her muscles gave out. In spite of it all... she laughed. Something good was coursing through her veins amid all of the exhaustion and pain, something... something she wanted a little more of.
“What the fuck did I tell you to do?!”
Maddie threw her hands up, but Bobby stopped just short of actually slapping her across the face. For the briefest of moments she saw his expression, and she knew he was afraid to. She laughed again. “Fuck you, Bobby. I'm not fighting for you. I'm not throwing fights for you.”
“You stupid bitch!” His voice echoed in the parking garage. “Do you have any idea what you owe me now? You weren't supposed to win! No one fucking bet on you!”
“I did.”
Her blood went cold faster than Bobby ever could have made it. She looked past him, looked to where Braxton stood. She could tell every muscle in his body was tense beneath his shirt. The set of his jaw might have killed lesser men.
“Brax, no,” she squeaked, feeling tears begin to burn her eyes.
Her tall, chiseled god of a man strode forward, slapping a stack of bills into Bobby's chest, which Bobby was quick to take and appraise. After a few moments, now shaken at having been caught there, the older man looked to her with a shake of his head. “Be glad someone was here to rescue you, and don't ever defy me again.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Braxton demanded, turning his full attention on Bobby.
It was attention the weaselly fuck didn't want, apparently, because whatever he was about to say never left his mouth. He simmered for a few seconds, but he turned and stalked away. This wasn't over, she knew it. It was only going to be worse now.
“Brax, get out of here,” she gasped, trying to wipe her face. “Please, just go.”
“Get up, Maddie.”