Love Cursed

by Julia Derek

  After I’d given Dante a piece of my mind, I’d switch gyms because there was no way I’d be able to continue training with Gabi at Crunch, no matter how much I enjoyed training with her. Maybe she could train me at some private gym. I honestly thought that I might throw a dumbbell on Dante’s head if I saw him again after tonight, and I didn’t want to be responsible for possibly cracking his skull.

  Tailing Dante wasn’t as hard as I’d expected it to be, despite that it was dark out and that we were heading somewhere much farther away than I’d imagined. Somewhere downtown L.A. it seemed, as we were on the 101 freeway, heading in that direction. After we had been driving for about thirty minutes, he finally signaled to get off. I did the same. We were driving away from the center of downtown, heading east.

  I looked around the shoddy areas we were driving through. Where the hell are we going? One thing was for sure, if you asked me—Dante was definitely not about to train some client here. I very much doubted someone who lived in these poor, rundown neighborhoods could afford any type of trainer. He must be heading to see his other girlfriend then… The realization sent a cramp through my stomach that made me gasp it hurt so much.

  All of a sudden he slowed down and pulled to the curb where he parked his bike, getting off. Half a block away from him, I slowed down, too, not sure what to do next. I really didn’t feel like walking around on the streets in this shady area, but what choice did I have? Was I really going to turn around and drive home, not find out exactly what Dante was up to after having gotten this far? I knew he wasn’t in the gang still unless he was lying to everyone,

  including his probation officer, who I’d met with him the other day. Ms. Donaldson didn’t seem like the type of woman you fooled easily. No, he must have come down here to meet some girl, just like I’d suspected all along.

  Determined to find out and reveal him, I steeled myself and left my car parked at the curb, a block away from Dante’s bike. Then I followed him, watching as he walked into a dive bar.

  Is he meeting the girl in there? I debated whether or not I should also go inside, see if I could spot them. But what if the bar was small? Chances were Dante would discover me coming in then. I finally decided that it was better if I first tried to get a glimpse of the insides through one of the windows that seemed to be part of the bar. It was dark outside, so he probably wouldn’t see me looking in. After some time, I crossed the street to where the bar was, keeping my head hunched. My heart pounded like crazy in my chest. I really didn’t feel comfortable walking around in this shoddy area all alone…

  I couldn’t see much through any of the windows despite trying hard for several minutes. As I was about to give up and actually walk into the bar instead, Dante suddenly left it and headed away from where I was standing. I didn’t see what else to do but to follow him. If I’d gotten this far, I might as well continue.

  When we reached crowds of people in what looked like a public basketball court—a huge one—he stopped and jumped on top of a very large garbage bin where other people already sat. What is going on here? I didn’t know what to believe any more. I was no longer thinking that he was about to meet up with some girl. It seemed he’d have done so by now if that was the case. No, he was up to something else.

  The crowds were watching something that was happening inside the court, something I couldn’t see myself. I was hiding behind the corner of a building, too scared to join all the people and try to see what was going on. They definitely looked like they were part of some gang.

  Dante

  The public basketball court was very old and poorly maintained, so it was rarely used by anyone, making it the ideal place for gang settlements. The cops hadn’t even caught on to it yet, leaving the gangs in peace to deal with matters their own way.

  It was ten to nine, only minutes remaining before the fight would start, when I approached all the people standing in the basketball court. The air was so thick with excitement and anticipation I felt as though I could slice it if I had a knife. The beer I’d just drunk at the bar was churning in my gut, threatening to come up. My pulse had picked up speed, and it would only become faster the closer to nine we got. I didn’t even want to think about how freaked out Jose must be right now.

  At this point, I wasn’t worried that anyone from the Devils would spot me and wonder what the hell I was doing here. A jump out was such a big, not to mention rare event, which meant it wasn’t weird if I showed up to watch it. The word was out all around town in our circles, so I was likely to have found out about it through the grapevine somehow. Tons of blood thirsty people in the area—and not just gang members—were here to watch. Still, I was wearing a black baseball cap pulled down low over my eyes to hide my face. The less I had to interact with any of my former compadres, the better.

  Glad I had yet to run into someone from the gang, I jumped up on a huge garbage bin from where I’d hopefully get a good enough view. A couple of Devil members were already sitting there, and I recognized the one farthest away from me as being Carlos. My heart skipped a beat, but then I relaxed again. His attention was on the people in the middle of the court, so he didn’t seem to notice me. No wonder he’d picked this spot—you did in fact get a great view from it. Jose was already in place, as well as four other guys. I knew the boss would participate in the jump out—he always did—but I was hoping there wouldn’t be another member joining. Having only to fight five guys instead of six, Jose had at least a chance of surviving. If he was focused and did what I’d taught him. I held my breath, praying that he would be focused.

  Despite that my heart was jacked at the thought of what was about to happen, Ricki’s face flashed through my mind. I pictured her the way she’d looked as I left her outside her apartment building after dinner last night.

  The entire next day I’d been so tense I totally forgot to check in with her in the morning like I had promised. I only realized this because she texted me, asking me what was going on. I told her I needed to train an outside client when I was done later and that I probably wouldn’t be able to see her later after all. She hadn’t responded to that text with a smiley face like she usually did. She didn’t respond at all. I sighed. Well, when this was over, I’d tell her everything. It struck me that maybe it would have been better if I’d just told her the truth from the beginning. I shrugged, dismissing the tension in my gut. It was too late now anyway.

  The boss appeared then and the crowds stopped their chattering. I checked the time—nine sharp, as expected. I exhaled a sigh of relief when I realized there was no one else joining. The boss was a stickler for punctuality when it came to initiations and jump outs. He was also always the last person to arrive.

  They did not suspect any foul play on Jose’s part then.

  The jump out began with the boss giving Jose the first punch to his head. Another member followed up by kicking Jose in the stomach. Two others punched him with their fists. Jose’s knees buckled and he fell to the ground, but he rolled away so the blows that were soon raining over him didn’t have quite the impact they normally would. Our goal was to keep him conscious for as long as possible. He kept his hands in front of his face, protecting his head, like I’d taught him.

  “Stay down, Jose,” I kept repeating under my breath. “Stay down and you’ll make it.”

  I’d instructed him to take a few blows at first, not try to defend himself too much so the members wouldn’t get suspicious that he’d been training. This way they wouldn’t beat him very hard, thinking it wasn’t needed to finish him. The boss and the members didn’t want to fuck up their fists, shins and feet any more than necessary, which meant they’d only pick up the intensity toward the end of the jump out. Jose was only supposed to get in a few key moves then, when it was almost over. If he was still alive when the five minutes had ended, the boss would not have a choice but to let Jose leave the gang. He couldn’t suddenly change the rules of a jump out in front of all these people just because it hadn’t gone as he’d expected.r />
  Ricki

  Several minutes later, during which the crowds had been cheering off and on, it got quiet. I still had no clue what was going on. Suddenly, all the people began to scatter—many of them in my direction. Only then did I decide that it was best that I got the hell out of there. What had I been thinking when I’d gotten out of my car in the first place? This was not a safe neighborhood at all. Tomorrow I’d confront Dante, ask him what it was that he was hiding from me. I was glad it didn’t seem like it involved some other girl at least.

  But before I could turn around and head back to my car, someone grabbed my arm.

  “ Hola rubia…” a raspy voice said close to my ear. I swiveled around to face the person. A bald man whose face and neck were full of tattoos was holding onto my arm. His gleaming dark eyes coupled with all the ink that covered his skin made me think of a lizard. Two other men were flanking him, one of them wearing a red and black bandana and the other one had cropped black hair. They were leering at me in the same way as the lizard attached to my arm did, like they were imagining me with my clothes off.

  I stifled a gasp that was about to escape my lips at the same time as I jerked my arm in an attempt to get free. But lizard man only grasped it tighter, nodding in my direction to the one with the bandana. He came up to me and pulled down my sleeveless top, using one powerful move. This time I couldn’t stop the cry that came out of my mouth, and it sounded loud even to my own ears. Another pair of hands grabbed onto my other arm and I was on the ground suddenly, on my back. I wanted to cry again, cry for help, but someone put a hand over my mouth before I could. Somehow, I didn’t think anyone would help me anyway. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that people were walking by. Or maybe it was just me imagining that, hoping one of them would discover what was about to happen to me and help me. I was panicking so much I couldn’t be sure what was real and what was not.

  All of a sudden someone else shouted something and what sounded like a heavy body crashing to the ground reached my ears. The hand over my mouth was yanked away and a tall man with a black baseball cap was standing before me, slamming lizard man’s head against the head of bandana man. Lizard man stumbled backward while the other fell to the ground, looking like he’d lost consciousness. The man in the baseball cap struck lizard man several more times, and then lizard man, too, collapsed to the ground, his head bleeding profusely.

  Only when my savior sank down beside me and looked into my eyes did I realize who it was— Dante. His face contained so many emotions I wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Automatically, he pulled together my ripped top to cover me. Then he nearly yelled, despair in his gaze, “What are you doing here, Ricki? What are you doing here…?”

  Before I could answer him, he seemed to snap out of whatever stupor he’d entered and he looked worried instead. His gaze lowered to my ripped top that he was still holding together. “Are you okay? What… what did they do to you?”

  I pushed myself up into a sitting position, Dante helping me up. I wasn’t hurt, only shocked. “Nothing,” I managed to say. “All they did was grab my arms and push me down to the ground. I’m fine. Really.”

  Except for the fact that I was totally traumatized, I really was okay. But I knew that I was lucky, that it could have been much worse. Police sirens sounded in the background then, getting closer to the alley where Dante and I had remained, the three men scattered around us on the ground.

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here,” he said sternly.

  He didn’t have to ask me twice.

  Dante

  “How do you feel?” I asked Jose. I was standing beside his bed at the hospital where he’d been for the last four days. Visiting hours were about to end and only because my last client had canceled, I’d made it over today.

  “Not bad,” Jose said and grinned at me. “Getting better.”

  While Jose had made it out of the gang alive, he’d have more lasting consequences from the beating he’d taken than I’d gotten from mine. According to the doctors, he was likely to always have a severe limp in one of his legs and he was now blind in one eye. Once in a while he was stuttering, too. Something had happened to his brain that made it hard for him to form words. But he was alive and that was what was most important. We’d made it. He now had a chance to live a normal life.

  As soon as the jump out was over I’d called 911. I reported that a man had been assaulted in a basketball court and proceeded to give the address. I’d known that the cops would arrive shortly and that they’d take Jose to a hospital when they found him. The crowds had scattered when the fight was deemed completed, leaving Jose to die on the ground if he was still alive. As I’d expected, no one had paid me any attention, giving me an opportunity to make the phone call as I took off myself. Staying around was too risky. Someone might spot me going up to Jose and figure out that I’d had something to do with his surprisingly strong performance. And then all that we’d trained for would have been a waste. Besides, there wasn’t anything I could do for him anyway at the moment. He needed to quickly get to a hospital in order to have a chance of surviving.

  I was grateful that I’d taken off when I had. If not, I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to Ricki. Not only would those fucking bastards have gang-raped her, but they would probably have killed her afterward, too. The Devils didn’t like to leave any civil rape casualties around. The risk was too big she’d go to the police and tell on them. Female gang members knew better than to rat out any gang members who raped them.

  After I’d made sure she was okay, she and I took her car and drove home. She refused to go to any hospital and I didn’t keep badgering her about it. She really did seem okay except for the fact that she’d been terrified. So I spent the night with her at her house, holding her in my arms until she fell asleep and made sure she stayed asleep. The next day I left to go to work before she woke up. I put a note on her nightstand, telling her to text me as soon as she saw it so I knew that she was okay.

  I did receive a long text a couple of hours later:

  I’m fine. Really. Thank you again for rescuing me. I should never have gone down there. Sorry for not trusting you. It was all my own fault.

  I hated that she blamed herself for what had happened. If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine for having kept her in the dark. For having thought that she wouldn’t be able to handle the truth. Now I knew that she would have. Had I suspected that she thought I was seeing some other girl—exactly the way Lara had done—I would have told her. Risking Ricki leaving me because she thought I was too much trouble was far better than having her suspect I was fooling around on her. Now I’d have to suffer the consequences of my misguided decision. After what had happened with Lara, I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t been more careful and open.

  I texted Ricki back that I would be very busy the next few days because of Jose. I wanted to be with him when he woke up from all the sedatives the doctors had put him on, make sure he was all right. I’d contact her as soon as his condition was stabilized. She’d told me that she completely understood, to take my time and only get back in touch when I was ready to see her again.

  I was now finally ready to see her again. As I left the hospital an hour later, I called her. She picked up almost instantly.

  “Hi Dante,” she said, sounding happy. “How are you? How’s Jose?”

  “I’m good,” I replied. “He’s doing pretty good, too, all things considered.”

  “Well, thank God for that.”

  I cleared my throat. “How are you doing? I hope I didn’t call at a bad time.”

  “No, not at all. I’m only chilling out on my couch, reading a book.”

  “That’s good. I haven’t seen you at the gym. Have you been there?”

  “Yeah, but only once since… since that night. I had a session with Gabi last night at seven. I felt I needed a break from training for a few days.”

  “I ca
n totally see that. I must have been training on another floor when you were there. So you feel okay otherwise?”

  “Yeah, I do. I really do.”

  “That’s good.”

  An awkward pause followed.

  “Hey,” I said, “are you available to see me tomorrow night? Maybe we could have dinner?”

  “Sure.” It sounded like Ricki was smiling big. It broke my heart because I knew she wouldn’t be smiling when I left her afterward. I would not be spending the night at her house after dinner.

  “Great,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound upbeat. “How about I pick you up at eight thirty?”

  “Yes, that’s good. Are we going on your bike?”

  “Is that okay with you?”

  “Definitely. I have to admit that I really enjoy riding on your Harley. Maybe I’ll get one of my own one day.”

  I laughed. “Really? Hey, any time you wanna borrow mine and practice, you just let me know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I told her again that I’d see her tomorrow at eight thirty and then we disconnected. I sighed and took off on my Harley, feeling miserable. Tomorrow when I saw Ricki I would have to give her some bad news. Definitely not the kind I’d been able to tell that she was expecting. I wasn’t looking forward to doing this, but it needed to be done and I wanted to do it in person.

  The sooner I could take care of it, the better.

  Ricki

  The last five days had been a roller coaster of emotions for me. I remained in shock from the moment Dante rescued me from those three horrible guys who assaulted me until we got to my place. Then, as Dante held me in his arms and told me all that he’d been doing with Jose the last several weeks, the shock had faded and instead shame took over. I felt like a total psycho, having stalked Dante all the way down to Jose’s jump out. How could I just have assumed Dante was seeing someone else with so little proof? Why hadn’t I just asked him about it straight out? Well, I knew the answer to that question. It was because I’d been too scared to hear what I’d been sure he’d reply—that there was some other girl in his life. I didn’t think I’d be able to deal with it.