by Holly Hart
I lowered my head, cowed. "Yes, father."
"And besides, it's not your place to tell me what I can and cannot do…" He said, leaving the comment trailing in the air. It hung heavy between us, and I realized that I was walking a very fine line.
I nodded.
"No – he will head the family one day, and I can't have him weak like you. But then," he said, stroking his chin, "if I take you from him, will he resent me?"
I've never seen him like this. He’s letting me see how he controls, how he manipulates. What does that mean?
He doesn’t see me as a threat. I’m nothing to him.
"Dad, he's four! He's not a gangster, he's just a child. He's only just learned to tie his own laces."
My father shot me and irritated glare. "Don't be ridiculous, Maya – I'm not going to put a gun in his hand. Not yet, anyway. You're just like your mother." He said it without feeling – as though he could simply ignore the emotional baggage a comment like that carried with it. I couldn't. Wouldn't even if I could.
"I've had twenty years to mold you into something more than you are – and I failed. Perhaps I need to start earlier with the boy."
"Eamon," I corrected automatically.
"Eamon," he mocked. "What kind of name is that for a man, anyway?"
It's Irish, I wanted to scream. I knew I never could. I'd said I didn't know who the father was, but that had been a lie. The truth was, I wasn't the slut my father thought I was – I'd only ever given myself to one man. Conor.
"So here's how this is going to go." He continued, without waiting for an answer. "You're going to deal with this Irish fighter. You're going to spend every waking minute with him, if that's what it takes, but you're going to get him into tiptop shape. The next fight's in one month, and I'm going to put him in the octagon with a fighter he could beat in his sleep. And he's going to throw it."
"Why me?" I gasped.
"Because," he grinned. "Once he's made me my money, I'll have Sergei drive him to the outskirts of town and put a bullet in the back of his head. If you'd just kept your mouth shut in that room I'd have let him live. Hell, I'd have thrown him a hundred thousand bucks just to keep his lips sealed. But this works, too."
"I don't get it!" I croaked.
He leaned in so his face was pushed up against mine, the pungent aroma of his breath assaulting me. "I want you to live with your mistake, Maya. I want you to see what it means to have killed someone. I can't have Eamon growing up soft."
"Yes, father."
I turned to leave, my skin already crawling from having to spend so long in my father's presence. I despised him, and everything he stood for. I despised the fact that he corrupted everything he touched, and I despised that he still thought he could corrupt me as well.
"And Maya?"
I looked back to see my father's prideful, smirking face staring back at me.
"If you try to warn him, or if he doesn’t fight – whatever the reason, I'll take your boy."
12
Conor
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Okay, sure, it wasn't exactly the friendliest way to answer the door, but I wasn't exactly in the friendliest of moods – and that was putting it lightly. Besides, Maya was flanked on either side by a pair of nameless Russian gangsters – and I wasn't really in the mood to deal with guys like them right now.
I poked my chin angrily at her companions. "And who the hell are they?"
She turned her head and looked at the gangsters, as if noticing them for the first time. I guessed that after a lifetime of being followed around by men just like them, she was probably just used to it. "Dad said I had to bring them. Around you, you know."
"They stay outside." I grunted. I was in no mood to have guys like that around – especially not since my stomach was bruised black and purple as a result of their boss's attentions. Its protesting screams of pain were the only reminder I needed of what had gone down in that basement.
"Fine," she agreed quickly. I thought I detected a hint of relief in her eyes, like she was happy I'd given her an excuse to send them away.
"Boris, Chekhov," she said. And then she said something else, but it was in Russian, and I'm not even going to pretend like I knew what the hell she was saying. It sounded like gobbledygook, to be honest, but I had to admit, it sounded kind of sexy coming from her.
Her bodyguards blinked in unison, then looked at each other, as if trying to work out whether their new orders computed. The one to her right – Chekhov, I think – he looked at me funny, like he was worried about leaving the boss's daughter in a room with a half-dressed Irishman, but as I stared him down he seemed to think better of fighting his corner.
That’s right, you pussy.
"Da," they said. I knew that one – it meant yes. They walked back toward the gray, concrete stairwell with the swagger of men who'd spent far too much time working out in the weight room, and not enough in school. Their massive bulk made it impossible to walk side-by-side without their shoulders touching each other, so Boris walked a pace behind.
I wondered how they'd worked that out – maybe an arm wrestle.
Yeah, that fits.
I shook my head, baffled that anyone would bother spending enough time in the gym to get that big. Men like Boris and Chekhov always did – they were too stupid to understand that size wasn't everything. I wasn't a small guy by any means – or in any department.
Standing at six foot two and a hundred and seventy pounds, I was taller than most welterweights. But I knew what they didn't – in a fight, speed always matters more than size. I wasn’t just a master of landing a killer right jab, I was whippet quick too, and that was what mattered. When it came down to it, I knew without a doubt that these guys wouldn't put up much of a fight.
"You're hurt." Maya said, looking down at my bare torso, her hands flying to her face as, in the absence of her watchful bodyguards, she finally relaxed her control over her emotions.
I blinked.
It was hard not to show some sort of surprise at a statement like that.
Of course I’m sodding hurt, I thought, sounding even more Irish in the confines of my own head. Your father had me beaten half to death!
"Well, yeah," I said in an incredulous tone of voice. "Of course I'm bloody hurt. It's not often that someone drives a rifle butt into my stomach on a Tuesday evening…"
"I'm sorry," Maya apologized. "I didn't mean –."
I took a deep breath. I was screwing this up, and I knew it. The girl was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I wasn't helping. It wasn't Maya's fault that her father was a psychopath. It wasn't Maya's fault that my stomach looked more like someone had spilled a can of purple paint on it, and it sure as hell wasn't Maya's fault that I was in a foul, foul mood.
"Why are you here, Maya?" I asked, more calmly than I had earlier. I was wrestling to get control over my emotions, to stop the bubbling rage that was inside me from building up and boiling over. It had been a long time since I'd bothered to control myself like this, tamping down my anger instead of just going out and starting a bar brawl to work it out.
But then – it had been a long time since I'd needed to.
Maya seemed nervous. I worried that the anger I felt inside was beginning to bleed through, and I worried that she thought that it was directed at her, not this screwed up situation we were in. I just didn't know how to tell her that.
She looked at the floor as she spoke, and the wall – in fact, she looked everywhere except my eyes. "Did my father tell you what he wants you to do?"
Wrong topic. If you want to keep me calm, that is.
"He did. I won't do it. I'm not going to lose the fight – never have, never will."
Maya's eyes narrowed anxiously on her strained, pale face. "You have to!"
"Says who?" I growled. I was pissed off – more than pissed off, I was angry! I'd been humiliated in that basement – humiliated by a bunch of men who wouldn't last a second in a ring with me i
f they weren't holding guns like cowards, and now she was telling me I had to go along with it!
Sure, I'd agreed to it when her father's man had the barrel of a gun pointed at my head, but this was the real world, and doing something like throwing a fight had consequences – real consequences. And none of them of them were good for me.
"Trust me, if you don't throw the fight the way my father wants, you're a dead man walking." She said. "Him and his buddies will put hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars down on you losing. If you don't…" She trailed off, shuddering as she imagined what they’d do to me.
I couldn't contain myself. "What are they going to do, kill me?"
Maya blanched. I hadn't thought she could get any paler, but apparently I was wrong. "That's exactly what he'll do!" She exclaimed. "Are you crazy? You’ve seen him, haven't you? He won't just kill you – he'll tear you apart, rip you limb from limb and-".
I raised my hand and cut her off. "Alright, alright! I get it!"
I wasn't queasy. Violence didn't worry me, at least not to the same extent that it seemed to affect Maya, but the more she talked about it, the more I began to worry that she might have a heart attack. As pissed off as I was right now, that was still the last thing I wanted to happen…
I glanced out the window, making sure that neither of the bruisers posted on the motel's balcony had decided to get nosy and check up on what we were doing. They weren’t, and I could see the faint haze of a cloud of cigarette smoke by the stairwell. They didn't seem like the kind of hard-working employees who'd go above and beyond for their boss – especially not if my suspicion about Mikhail was correct.
I was pretty sure that Mikhail's men were with him out of fear, not trust or respect, and in my experience, that didn't instill much loyalty. We could screw like rabbits in here, and as long as we kept the noise down, they'd never bother checking up on us.
"Please, Conor," she said, her knee trembling anxiously. "Can't you just do it, this once? For me, if not for yourself. I don’t want him to make an example of you."
I sat down heavily on the cheap, old mattress and winced as the sudden movement jarred against my protesting stomach. "You know what you're asking?"
"Yes!" She burst out, the most animated I'd seen her since she arrived at my door. "I'm trying to save your life, Conor. You don't do this, you die –."
"And if I do," I bit back. "You know what happens then?"
Chill, Conor. Don't lose it, not on her – it's not her fault.
She shook her head, looking surprised at the vehemence of my reply. I could understand that. After all, from her perspective what could be worse than dying? She'd had a tough life, but I could hardly believe that living in the kind of luxury she'd enjoyed all these years, while I'd been scrapping to pull myself up off the streets, was that great of a hardship.
Maybe some of that bitterness colored what I said next – and if not what I said, then definitely how I said it.
"Best case, I lose and no one's the wiser. I won't be undefeated any longer, and I'll have to spend the rest of my life fighting for scraps." I said. "But if I throw this fight, and someone finds out, which they will, I'll never work again. Not in this city, not in any city. I'll be blacklisted, and then the only fights I'll be able to get myself into will be dumb bar brawls when all I’ve got left in my life is the drink. You want that?"
The entire time I'd been talking, Maya had looked as if she wanted to say something. Her chest had puffed up with a deep intake of air, as she prepared to speak and she was practically vibrating with a righteous zeal. I knew that whatever she was about to say, it'd make sense – and I didn't want to hear it.
"What is it?" I pressed, my voice harsh, perhaps harsher than I'd intended.
Maya deflated like I'd just popped a balloon, and I regretted it the second I said it. I felt like an asshole, because her response told me that I wasn't just wrong about what her life was like in Alexandria – I was dead wrong.
Look at her. She’s not living the high life. She’s reacting like a kicked dog – and that’s not the kind of damage that happens overnight.
Far from it.
She sank back, folding in on herself, and her eyes went glossy – almost glazed over. It was like she was there in body, but not in spirit; like her mind had shut down to protect itself, leaving only an empty shell behind.
I knew two things. First – whatever Maya's secret was, she was hiding something. And it was big. Second – I needed to get a grip on myself. Her life was tough enough right now without me adding to her problems.
"I'm sorry…" I said helplessly, patting the bed next to me in the vain hope that it would get through to her.
"I didn't mean to hurt you. It's just… I don't know what I'll do if I can't fight anymore. I don't know who I am without it. You don't understand what it's like, being in that cage. Everyone's eyes are on you, and you know – for that moment, at least – that you're the most important person–."
I trailed off. Nothing I said seemed to be getting through Maya's waking coma, and my words sounded hollow even to me.
So what if I lost my undefeated record? Telling Maya that I'd be reduced to fighting for scraps was true – in a way. Mostly, it was a white lie. I knew I was too good to be down for long. I might not get fight purses in the tens of thousands of dollars for a few months, even years, but I'd get them back eventually.
The part about throwing the fight, though – that was true. If anyone ever found out, I really wouldn't ever fight again. And enough degenerates, mobsters, triad members and powerful people you really wouldn't want to mess with gambled on MMA fights that whether I threw the fight or not, I'd still spend the rest of my life waiting for a bullet – whether from one of them, or Mikhail and his friends.
I was in a bind, and I didn't know what the hell to do about it.
But when I looked at Maya none of that mattered. It was a miracle that she'd stumbled back into my life at all, especially after I'd given up searching for her, and started trying to find solace at the end of a bottle. The last thing I wanted to do now was screw things up. The thing was, screwing things up was sort of my specialty.
I reached out toward her gently, careful to move calmly, like I was handling a nervous animal or an unstable chemical. I'd seen her glassy expression before – growing up on the streets of inner-city Dublin, most everyone had problems.
Domestic abuse, drug addiction, people whose kids had been taken away by the state, I'd seen it all before. It was the look of a person shutting themselves off from emotional pain. Whatever Maya's was, it ran deep. It was the kind of emotional damage that couldn't simply be washed away with a hug and a kiss.
The last thing she needs from me right now is more pain.
The problem was, every facet of my personality was wrong, all wrong, for situations like this. That emotional armor – not helpful. But if I couldn’t talk through it, then maybe there was something else I could do.
"Come here." I said gently, pulling her down slowly toward the bed.
Maya moved, but she may as well have been a zombie. She looked glassy eyed and was barely paying any attention to her surroundings. As far as she was concerned, she could have been anywhere, doing anything, at any time. I lay down, kicked off my shoes and pulled her into me, until her head was resting on top of my toned, naked chest. She was as stiff as a board.
He’s really done a number on you, I thought.
I didn’t say a word, just hugged Maya tight. It was enough, to me at least, that she was here at all, in my life, when I’d given her up for dead.
The rest of it? It was just window dressing.
And after a while, when her body relaxed and her breathing slowed, I felt the soft, hot wetness of silent tears falling on my bare chest.
I didn’t say a word.
I’m here for you now.
13
Maya
Should I tell Conor that he is Eamon's father?
Of course I should.
> Could I?
That was another question entirely, and it was one that had been keeping me up at night ever since Conor had breezed back into my life with every ounce of the swagger and cocky confidence that I remembered. It wasn't the actual telling him part that I was nervous about, that bit I was sure I could handle.
Sure, forcing those words out of my mouth would be painfully awkward, maybe even hard. But harder than raising Eamon alone as a single mom?
I doubt it.
No, what was keeping me up at night was that I didn’t know how Conor would react to the news. He wasn't the same guy I'd fallen in love with back in Dublin – that was for sure.
He'd matured some, and was harder too. It was as though some of the softness in his soul had been scoured away by the harsh realities of the real world, the things he'd had to do to survive, and the things that people had done to him.
People like me.
But had growing up, and all the scouring and polishing that entailed, left behind a diamond in the rough?
Or was the opposite true?
There was an anger in Conor these days. It was unmistakable, a powerful and discordant scream of rage against a world that had treated him so poorly.
And anger, as I'd learned from my own trials, was the most powerful of all human emotions. More powerful than grief, more powerful than fear, perhaps even more potent than love – because while love can be used to build something, anger can only tear things apart.
Then again, sometimes anger was necessary. There were some things so evil they simply didn’t deserve to survive.
Conor had, once, been the best thing that ever happened to me. I'd always have those memories. But those days were a long time ago, and we were both very different people. Eamon was the best thing that had ever happened to me now, and he wasn't just a toy to be played with, he was my responsibility.
That's true, sure. But what are you lying to yourself about?
