After wetting his lips, my uncle whispers, “Do you want to play a game, Andi?” He only ever calls me Andi when he’s up to no good. My father was so desperate to please him, he christened me with the female version of his beloved son’s name. He can’t use that when he wants to forget we’re related by blood.
When he glares at me, demanding an answer, I tug on the door latch. No matter how I answer him, my response will produce the same result. I’ll either die from colliding with the pavement, too ashamed to remain living, or be strangled by the belt now hanging loosely down his splayed thighs when I tell him no.
My grip on the door handle loosens when my uncle’s temper gets the better of him. He lunges for me, his grip on my hair enough to spring tears to my eyes. “I asked you a question!”
The hand he raises to strike me across my cheek suspends midair when the revs of a motorbike sound over the roar of his words.
When my uncle jackknifes to investigate where the disturbance is coming from, he rips a chunk of hair out of my head. This is the exact reason I usually wear it up.
“What did I tell you, Andi? He wants to fuck you. Enough to risk his life for the chance? I’m not sure.” After returning his eyes from Maddox tailing us on his motorbike to me, he sneers a snarling grin. “But I’m always willing to push the boundaries.” He sleazily winks, so I can’t miss the double meaning of his comment.
I breathe for the first time in what feels like minutes when he signals to his driver to pull over. Once he has his belt looped back around his waist and his zipper sitting in its original spot, he dismisses me with a wave of his hand through the air.
I have my seat belt off and my door flung open in under a second, but I’m far from free of additional controversy.
“Are you forgetting something, Andi?” my uncle asks, his tone laced with an equal amount of humor and superiority. When I crank my neck to face him, he taps his cheek like I’m unaware of what he’s asking. “Did your father not teach you any manners?” The gleam his eyes held when he undid his belt returns full force when he mutters, “Perhaps I should spend the weekend teaching you? Sometimes the only way a child can learn respect is by having theirs stripped.”
“You can’t,” I stammer out, too frightened to care he’s using my ultimate fear against me. I’ve done everything he’s asked of me because I don’t want to end up like my mother. I gave him my soul, yet it still isn’t enough. I have to give him the one thing I’ve wanted for over half my life. I have to throw Maddox into the fire with me. “I have a fighter to sign.”
My reply pleases my uncle more than my fear of his threat. “That you do.”
When he taps his cheek for the second time, I tilt across to his side of the cabin. Kissing his cheek already makes me want to vomit, and doing it under Maddox’s watch is even worse, but it has nothing on the disgust that rains down on me when my uncle twists his head a mere nanosecond before my lips land on his cheek, forcing them onto his open mouth.
The growl that rumbles up his chest is horrific, much less what he says next, “Almost as sweet as your mother’s cunt.”
10
Maddox
I’ve seen some sick-fucking-shit in my life. Men fighting after they’ve had digits removed by their ‘owners’ for disobedience, my sister half-naked in the hot tub with a townie, one of my brothers balls-deep in his college professor, but the gleam in Col’s eyes when he forces his niece’s lips to land on his mouth cuts the fucking cake.
Ophelia was more friendly with the seniors at our high school than her female counterparts, but since it was brushed off as her wanting to gain their approval than her being too sexually advanced for her age, I didn’t think much of it.
I am now, though, and the thoughts are as ugly as I’m about to make Col Petretti’s face.
He wants to see me fight. Who am I to deny his every wish?
I’ll give him a front-row seat to the festivities, bloody nose and all.
At the same time I throw my leg over the leather seat of my motorbike, Demi stumbles out of the back of her uncle’s Audi. Her lips are cracked and dry, her eyes are brimming with tears, and blood is dribbling from both her nose and a cut in her cheek, yet her attention is far from herself. It isn’t even on her uncle. It’s solely devoted to me.
“Turn around, Maddox. This isn’t your fight.”
“Like fucking hell it isn’t.” My words sound as if they were delivered straight from the fiery underground I referenced, fueled by the annoyance Col is even more of a coward than predicted.
He’s such a weak prick when I climb into his car to drag him out by the lapels of his fancy suit, he doesn’t draw his gun on his niece. He orders one of his goons in the front seat to jab it under her ribs instead.
“One more crinkle to my suit will see you spending the weekend scraping her body parts off the asphalt so you’ll have something to bury.”
The brutal heave of my lungs is heard in my reply when I yell in his face, “She’s your fucking blood, you sick prick.”
His laugh is as evil as his soul. Unfortunately, it isn’t loud enough to drain out the sob that escapes from Demi’s mouth when she’s brutally clutched by Col’s head goon. Since I didn’t immediately jump to Col’s demand, Demi is being forced to endure the punishment of my disobedience. That’s almost as bad as me believing a single thing Agent Moses said about her. Deep down, I knew she wouldn’t have done the things he said, I was just worried my years’ long obsession had me refusing to absorb the truth.
That’s done with now.
After fixing Col’s crumpled suit in a manner that reveals I look forward to fucking it over more ways than Sunday once his niece is far from his reach, I climb out of the cabin of his car, then sling my narrowed eyes to the man fisting Demi’s hair so firmly, she has to balance on her tippy toes to save her glossy locks from being ripped from her scalp. “Let her go.”
The dumb fuck acts as if I didn’t speak. He maintains his arrogant stance, his grip on Demi’s hair only weakening when Col signals for him to stand down.
After watching me pull Demi behind me in a protective manner, Col clicks his fingers at the man seated behind the steering wheel. Two clicks and a business card is thrust over the privacy petition separating him from the two men in the front seat.
“Meet me at this address tomorrow night at nine o’clock sharp.”
Col jots down an address on the back of his business card before he passes it to a shuddering Demi peering at him over my shoulder. He’s smart. Even though the card is for me, he hands it to Demi because he knows not even the threat of being shot will stop me from getting in a punch when he’s within striking distance. That’s how much I despise this prick. I’ve never wanted to kill a man until now, and a quick, painless death isn’t at the top of my wish list.
I want to torture this fucker and smile while doing it.
After drinking in the pure rage reddening my face, Col says, “Wear white. The more blood, the more money you’ll pocket—”
“I’m not fighting for you,” I interrupt, my voice almost a growl. “I’d rather starve.”