My uncle throws back his head and laughs. I have no clue what he thinks is funny. I’m far from amused, even more so when he swings his eyes to me. I assume he’s about to reference something along the lines of my mouth not tasting as sugary as my mother’s, but I forget we’re in public. He can’t share his incest inclinations here.
“Do you truly think one fight gives you unlimited access to my niece? She’s mafia royalty. Her blood is worth something.” He stares me straight in the face while adding, “As is her cunt.” He smirks at the narrowing of my eyes before continuing, “This is a month-to-month agreement.” He tsks himself before stating again, “Or should I say match-to-match agreement. You have her until the next round. If you win that fight, she’s yours again until the next round. And so on, and so on, and so on, until you get so bored of her, you’ll beg me to slit her throat.”
Maddox’s words sound like they’re delivered straight from hell when he spits out, “I’m not playing your games, Col.” It’s a throaty, heated reply that reveals his persona changed the instant he snapped Igor’s neck.
“You’re not?” My uncle steps up to Maddox until the thrusts of their chests compete for space. “Because to me, it looks as if you walked straight into my trap.” His smug grin doubles when he drifts his eyes to the door Maddox was staring at most of his fight. He stares into the pitch-black night, laughing as if he has the world at his feet before he eventually returns his focus to Maddox. “You now know what I’m capable of. Don’t underestimate me again.”
When he tilts in to whisper something into Maddox’s ear, I miss the majority of what he says, but I’m confident it’s something along the lines of Maddox being a snitch since ‘snitches’ was vocalized loud enough for everyone to hear.
The tension in the room turns ghastly when Maddox and my uncle stand across from each other for several long seconds. I want to say something, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth. I’m not only shocked by the turn of events tonight, I’m stunned by Maddox bobbing down to collect my uncle’s business card from the floor. He doesn’t hand it back to him as I’m hoping, he slides it into the pocket of his gym shorts before he heads for the exit that was nearly responsible for his demise. Since he’s clasping my wrist, I fall into step behind him.
“I guess we’re done?” my uncle says, his tone pompous. “Her cunt is yours until the next round. Who knows whose it will be after that?”
After coming to a dead halt in the middle of the eyeballing crowd, Maddox drags his eyes over my face. His pupils are massively dilated, making his eyes appear as deadly as the South China Sea in the middle of a typhoon, but they darken even more when his baby blues drink in the fresh bruises on my face.
“One last thing,” Maddox eventually replies, his voice unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
Before anyone has time to respond, Maddox releases my wrist from his grip, takes one step back, then plants a perfectly structured right-swung hit to my uncle’s cheek. It jolts my uncle back so forcefully, even with Mario always at his six, his tumble to the floor is brutal. He hits the dirty concrete with a grunt so loud, it projects over the shocked hisses of men who have wished to do the same but will never have the courage.
“Stay the fuck away from Demi,” Maddox snarls over my uncle lying flat on the floor, dazed and confused, and quite possibly knocked out. “I earned her, that makes her mine.”
I’ve previously said I don’t want to be claimed, but I’m okay with it this time around. Maddox killed for me. He went against everything he’s ever believed in and turned them on their heads for me.
That makes me his.
With my uncle too bewildered to order otherwise, Maddox regrips my hand, then recommences our exit. Shockingly, it’s done without any interference.
I don’t see that being the case when my uncle comes to.
18
Maddox
I killed a man.
Me.
I snapped his neck.
Don’t let the simplicity of my statement fool you. His murder wasn’t easy by any feat. It isn’t like you see in the movies. To snap someone’s neck, you have to do more than contort their neck. The body usually follows any twisty movements you do, so you have to torque the neck away from the body before snapping it.
When the body is as big as the brute I was fighting, it would have taken everything I had to do that, so I went for something simpler—an age-old trick. I used force instead. I won’t give you all the details. It isn’t something that will leave me anytime soon, so I have plenty of time to share, but it also isn’t something I want publicly acknowledged.
I didn’t have a choice. Demi had a gun pointed at the back of her head. Her uncle looked seconds away from murdering her, and from what the brute was spurting while crushing me like I was a bug, murder would have been the only kind thing to happen to Demi tonight.
Once he had me wrapped up in a bear hug, he told me how he dibbed Col’s seconds, that he was going to rape Demi after she was sodomized by her uncle in front of the men surging toward the ring, chanting for more blood.
His confession caused something inside me to snap.
I held off for as long as I could. I tried to be the bigger man, but as I’m learning faster than I care to admit, there are barely any decent men in the world anymore. I put my faith in one far too much tonight, and my hope he was a decent man swung back and hit me square in the face.
I’m riding away from a crime scene with the girl I’ve had a crush on for over a decade on the back of my bike. Some would say that’s a victory. To me, it isn’t close to the truth. I should have never been in the predicament I was in. Demi should have never been in the predicament she was in. Yet, we were both there because of one man.
That’s all set to change now.
I can’t hold in the rage anymore. I can’t brush it off with a cocky grin and a couple of well-rehearsed lines. I’m a murderer. Those advantages are no longer mine to use. I can only hope my new title won’t change how Demi looks at me because, if it does, I may as well have let my opponent kill me. I was only there for her, just like I’m only here for her now too.
“I need you to wait here, okay?” I say to Demi after parking my bike at the side of a rusted bar on the outskirts of Hopeton. It’s attached to a twenty-four-hour service station that looks like it went out of business in the eighties.
Before Demi can answer me, I lift my shirt to my midsection, stealing her words. She isn’t just gawking at my bruised abs, she’s stunned into silence by the wires strapped to my chest.
“You were wearing a wire?” she asks after a couple of hearty swallows. “Oh my God, Maddox, if they find out you were wearing a wire, they’ll kill you…” The stomping of my boot into the recording device steals the rest of her reply.
The ancient equipment agent Moses wired me with should have been the first indication I was being played. Regretfully, Saint was right when he said I have tunnel vision when it comes to Demi. That was his excuse for keeping us apart this long. He thought it was the only way he could protect me.
If the last twenty-four hours are anything to go by, I hate admitting he was right.