GRIFFIN

by Paula Cox

  Still she ignored him.

  “I want to know his name, slut.”

  Tiana lashed him with her gaze. How dare the prick call her that after what he’d done.

  “Aha, there she is. There she is. There’s my vengeful little slut. Won’t admit it with words, but everything else about her tells me exactly what she got up to last night.”

  “Shut up, Thad.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Just let me pack my things and get out. There’s nothing else to say.”

  “You’ve already said it all. You left the party early last night. You’re still in the dress you were wearing, so you haven’t been back long from whoever’s house you stayed at all night. You haven’t fixed your hair. You haven’t washed; I can smell the prick on you. And you’re staying silent because you’re a guilty little crack whore who fucked some random fighter you only met last night. So you see…you’ve already said it all. You’ve just not admitted it.” He took his first step toward her. “Who is he?”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He took another step. “Is it the first time?”

  “No, it’s the last time. The last time I’ll ever have to put up with your shit.” Tiana jammed her trainers into the loaded suitcase, then almost ripped the zip as she yanked it shut.

  “You’re not leaving this room until you admit it.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Someone your diseased brain has dreamed up.” She flinched when he raised his arm to massage his neck. A false alarm, but the veins in his neck were starting to bulge. “Just go away, Thad. Leave me alone.”

  “When you admit what you did and tell me his name, then you can go.”

  Tiana couldn’t, both for her own sake and for Dax’s. She had to think of a way out of this without telling him anything. “First let me get my things out of here, then I’ll explain what happened. When the cab’s outside, and I’m outside, I’ll tell you.”

  “Nice try. But you’re telling me now, Tiana. I mean it. I want to know who the fuck was whom you went home with last night and I want to know now.”

  She couldn’t hide the fact that she was shaking. Ring Whore’s perfume was strong and expensive; it was all over him. He gripped her by the arms from behind. His breath touched her ear.

  “Tiana, just tell me. Then you can go.”

  “No. Not until I’m outside.”

  “Fucking tell me!”

  It made her jump. Her ears rang. Thad squeezed her upper arms.

  “That hurts,” she said.

  “His name.”

  “Okay! Let go and I’ll tell you.”

  He spun her around to face him, then he let go. His eyes were bugging out as he asked, as calmly as he could, “Who is he?”

  “This guy I met.”

  He slapped her hard across the cheek. It stung like a whip. Then the pain throbbed and smarted through her skull.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I-I didn’t get it. He gave a fake name.”

  Another slap, even more venomous. “I can do this all day,” he said.

  As the pain flared so did her fury. Tiana saw red and spat in his face. “Fuck you, Section Eight!”

  This time he backhanded her across her other cheek. She immediately tasted blood in her mouth. The idea terrified her, almost made her cry.

  “Who did you screw last night?”

  She mumbled, “Dax Easterling.”

  “Who? I didn’t get…say it again.” Thad leaned in close. Another rush of anger got the better of her, maybe fueled by how brave and defiant Dax had encouraged her to be. Even thinking of him made her stand tall.

  “Dax Easterling!”

  He pulled back slowly, as if he was on a wind-up spring. There was more than hate in his face now; he looked hurt, desperately hurt, as if she’d wounded him some place he’d never thought he could be wounded.

  “There. I’ve said it. So we’re even. You told me about Adi; I’ve told you about Dax.” She shuffled away from him, watching him carefully, her face throbbing like hell. “Now let me go.”

  He stood there, in shock, staring at the bed. Tiana didn’t bother filling the already half-full second suitcase. She’d just have to make do with what she’d already packed. All she wanted now was to get outside and walk away, put as much distance as she could between her and Thad.

  “I would never have done that,” he said quietly, as though he was convincing himself of something.

  She stayed silent.

  “I’d never have fucked one of your enemies like that.”

  “I don’t have enemies. Except you.”

  “Dax Easterling?”

  “Adi?”

  He sucked in a long, livid breath. “You let my worst enemy get inside you?”

  Tiana grabbed both cases and made for the door. Crap! She’d left her purse on the bedside table. All her cards and cash and her cell phone were in there. She put her head down and marched around him. Best make this quick.

  He snatched her wrist. She tried pulling away, but he was too strong. “Get off me, Thad. I mean—”

  Before she could finish, he slapped her as hard as he could. This time she careered across the room and crashed into the armoire. Her knees wobbled, but she didn’t go down. He had his back to her, but she could see he was balling his right fist, over and over, balling then relaxing, as though he couldn’t decide whether to use his palm or his knuckles to inflict further damage on her. After the initial shock had worn off, Tiana staggered out of the bedroom, knocking the suitcases over as she went. She was too weak to grab them but too scared to stay, so she made her way to the nearest room with a lock on the inside: the bathroom. There she bolted herself in and curled into a ball on the floor against the tub, sobbing. There wasn’t a single spot on her body that didn’t smart or throb or ache. Inside, she had nothing left.

  The pat-pat of water from the basin tap made her think of time: time wasted. She shouldn’t have spent so long packing. She shouldn’t have spent so long at Dax’s. But most important of all, she should never have stayed with Thad Hollis for so long.

  The guy she’d dated in high school was now a monster. A monster with revenge on his mind. And God help her, she’d just given him his next target.

  Chapter Ten

  Dax had never been great at talking his way out of trouble. His instincts just didn’t run like that. Being stuck in a sterile conference room with a bunch of bureaucrats and a guy he flat-out hated—it was everything he despised about life outside the Corps. This IMMAF tribunal had not been convened to mete out justice or even to get to the truth of what had happened that night. No, it was an underhanded way to sidestep both those things—justice and the truth—and they were using this private, “unofficial” venue to feel Dax out. To figure out what he wanted.

  Words. Fucking words. He just wasn’t trained to fight with language the way these people were. They were too subtle, their rules too bendable. By limiting him to this private tribunal and framing the events of that night the way they wanted, these IMMAF delegates seated around the generic, beige table had him in a corner. He might as well not say anything. Hell, they’d already decided what wasn’t going to happen after this meeting.

  But Dax Easterling had never backed down from a fight in his life. He wasn’t about to start now…not with that psychotic loose cannon, Thad Hollis, staring at him down the full length of the table. No way was he going to let that abusive prick get his own way without Dax first speaking his mind. But he had to be careful as well; he did, after all, have a career to protect. The only thing he knew how to do professionally outside the Corps was Mixed Martial Arts.

  Okay then. Bring ’em on.

  “I’m a bit confused,” he said, playing dumb for the time being. “Why hav
en’t you invited the others? Freitas and the referee? Why just the two of us.” He hated having to nod at the sick asshole across the table, but it was the only way to play the game—their way.

  “Like we said, Mr. Easterling, this is not a formal investigation. We felt it would be best to try to settle this personal dispute between the two of you before we even think about taking it further. It was an unfortunate incident for all involved, not least for the IMMAF, as I’m sure you’ll both understand. But we’d like to hear your reasons for doing what you did, Mr. Easterling, then give Mr. Hollis a chance to respond. If we can get to the bottom of this here today, and hopefully come to some agreement about what happened, and what, if anything, should be done about it, then we’re in business. If not, well, we’ll just have to take it from there. But I sincerely hope we can put all this behind us. The last thing the sport needs is a drawn-out formal investigation into the way bouts are conducted; I’m sure you’ll agree. And don’t worry, we plan to meet with the ring officials and Mr. Freitas separately. You have my word on that.”

  Langston, the tribunal chairman, a tanned, white-haired golfer type in his early sixties, was good in his role—clear spoken, congenial, even charming. But though he pretended to be neutral, it was clear to Dax that he was acting within very specific parameters here. Someone from on high had told him to nip this in the bud before it went any further, before the ring officials came under official scrutiny.

  The IMMAF did not want that can of worms opened.

  Dax nodded his acknowledgment of Langston’s explanation. “As long as I get to have my say, I’ll buy that.”

  “Good for you. And Mr. Hollis?”

  After sneering at Dax, Tiana’s ex scanned the faces around the table, paying closest attention to the stenographer, a willowy black girl of college age who kept looking away from his stare. Who could blame her? Hollis clearly wasn’t playing with a full deck. His eyes now seemed to droop a little whenever he turned his head. Whatever that meant. Nothing good.

  “Mr. Hollis?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah. Cool. I’m ready. Let’s hear this prick lie through his teeth.”

  “You got that?” Dax addressed the stenographer, who didn’t stop typing but looked to Langston for help.

  The chairman gave her the greenlight, then turned to Hollis. “Let’s try to keep personal remarks out of this. We want to know what happened and why it happened. Nothing more. So who wants to start us off…?” Langston glanced at his colleagues: three men and a redheaded woman, all in their forties or fifties.

  The small, dour-looking woman with a nasal voice spoke first, saying, “I’d like to ask what prompted you to intervene at such a crucial moment in the match, Mr. Easterling? I mean, you’ve already told us you considered Mr. Hollis to be suffering psychologically. But we have ring officials to make those sorts of calls, don’t we? What made you want to overrule the judgment of trained professional ring staff? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  And there it is! They want all my cards on the table. They want to know what I really think of professional referees in this sport. If they don’t know all about the corruption themselves, they’ve definitely heard the rumors, and they don’t want it splashed all over the media in a high-profile case. Maybe I have some clout here. But if I’m not careful, I could bury my career as well.

  “It was a gut reaction, ma’am,” Dax replied. “Just like I’d have had in the Marine Corps if one of our men had been behaving erratically. In combat, it takes a soldier to tell if another soldier is struggling, if he’s a step or two behind. It’s no different in the ring. Only this time Thad Hollis was out on his feet. His legs had gone. He couldn’t defend himself properly. And he’d been acting strangely since early in the second round.”

  “Lies. Fucking lies!” snapped Hollis. “Did you hear that shit? ‘Acting strangely,’ he says, when even the ref didn’t see a goddamn thing, and he was right there, two feet away.”

  “Mr. Hollis. Thank you.” Langston turned back to Dax. “In what way was he acting strangely?”

  “I tell you what…run the video playback. Compare his behavior in the second and third rounds of that fight with any of his previous fights. Tell me his brain wasn’t freewheeling—all that showboating, missing his punches by a mile, making basic mistakes, no coordination. Either he took a hard knock to the head sometime in the late first or early second, or he just came unglued. Either way, if you don’t see that as erratic behavior, you’ve no business officiating a sport like this. And when his legs went, there was no reason to let the fight go on. None.”

  “So that’s why you intervened?” asked Langston. “Because you thought the officials hadn’t spotted that he was in serious trouble?”

  A leading question. The answer could bury me. And they’re steering the issue onto the officials, away from Hollis’s state of mind.

  “Obviously they hadn’t spotted it, or they’d have stopped the fight. But when Freitas slapped that sleeper on him, it was obvious he wasn’t going to tap out. There was nobody home. He couldn’t defend himself. It went on and on, the crowd cheering, the ref just watching. Hollis was blank.” He ignored the hateful scoff and the muttered diatribe from across the table. “Where I come from, when you can see someone’s life is at risk like that, you don’t sit back and watch…you get in there and do something.”

  “Again though, it is a dangerous sport, Mr. Easterling—as you know,” said the redhead, stating the obvious. “Why break ring protocol to intervene when there was a paid official right there, inches from Mr. Hollis, ready to make that call if required? I think that’s the crucial point here. What made you so certain Mr. Hollis’s life was in jeopardy?”

  The key phrase there is ‘paid official.’ They’re baiting me again, wanting me to cry corruption. Well, there’ll be a time for that. But it’s more important we get Hollis under the microscope here. Make them realize he’s a dangerous piece of shit.

  “Certain?” Dax glimpsed his enemy across the table. Hollis was watching intently, hanging on every word, as he palmed a few drips of sweat from his temples. The guy was struggling to keep his fury under wraps, but apart from a couple of outbursts, he’d more or less succeeded so far. Maybe it was time to draw him out a little, let the IMMAF see how unbalanced he really was. “I think ‘certain’ is a dangerous word to use in a sport like this, ma’am. All we can do is use our eyes and our intuition, right? I mean, to me it looked like he wasn’t in his right mind, that he’d lost control of his faculties. His coordination had gone. But short of giving the guy a CAT scan in the middle of the ring, no one could be certain.”

  “But isn’t that the point—”

  “The point is,” he interrupted her, “that in a situation like that, when a man’s life is on the line, you err on the side of caution. And the officials weren’t doing that. Even now, you’re still not doing that.”

  “Explain that, sir,” one of the other men said. He was curious, not angry.

  “I mean that you’ve got a genuine head case sitting at this table and you’re droning on about technicalities.” No reaction from Hollis, not even a raised eyebrow, so Dax went on. “The question you should be asking is, why would a professional fighter with more ring experience than everyone at this table risk his career to protect someone he doesn’t even like? What did I have to gain by jumping into the ring like that? Anyone?”

  No one responded.

  “Just like I thought,” he continued. “The ref didn’t make the call, so I made it for him. You people want to fuck around when there’s a psych job snapping right in front of you, be my guest. But don’t try to burn me for doing something about it.”

  Well, well. Not even that provoked a reaction from said nut job. Interesting. He knows how to cork it when he has to, but he is a time bomb. They have to know that.

  “Like I keep saying: replay the fight, compare it to his other fights. And if you still can’t see what I saw, give Hollis a full psych evaluation. It’s the only way to be c
ertain.” Dax thought about mentioning Tiana in a roundabout way. Not her name, but the fact that there was a witness who could testify as to Hollis’s mental instability, a witness whose details he could give them in private. Not a good idea. Hollis would know who that witness was, and he’d likely try to finish the job he’d started the other morning. The evil prick. Bad enough he’d hit her like that, but—and not for the first time—he’d also frightened her so much that she refused to file charges against him, for fear of what he’d do. Which made it unlikely she would testify in this case.

  Langston cleared his throat. “Mr. Hollis?”

  “Hmm?”