by Holly Hart
She was gone before I could ask why.
I stepped into the octagon, next to the man I despised, the man who'd ruined my life, the man whose life I was going to ruin in return.
Payback's a bitch.
Mikhail plastered a fake grin on his face and reached out to grasp my hand. I knew I had to play along, so I let him take mine. He grasped it firmly and drew me in for a big, Russian bear hug.
He squeezed tight. It wasn't a hug, it was a display of dominance. My hackles bristled, the hair on my neck stood up. I felt like laying him out right then and there.
Maya. The voice in my head whispered.
I relaxed.
He whispered darkly into my ear. Once again, my nose wrinkled from his putrid breath's assault.
"Throw it in the fifth round. You screw me on this, Irishman, it'll be the last thing you ever do."
26
Maya
Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
My heart wasn't beating as fast as I had expected, but it was fast enough. My eyeballs had examined every inch of my bedroom's white ceiling a hundred times over the previous night as I lay awake for hours, unable to sleep and dreading the thought of what I might have to do.
But when it came to it, Sergei went down like a sack of potatoes.
I thought he might fall like those guys in the movies with his entire body going rigid, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. His eyeballs bulged, his body went slack, and he crumpled like I'd kicked his leg out from underneath him.
Simple as that.
And now he was lying on his front, his mouth sealed tight with duct tape to prevent him screaming out for help, and his hands cuffed behind his back.
It's almost like I've done this before.
The only thing that wasn't simple was finding the keys to the armored truck sitting and taunting me in the loading bay.
"Fuck!" I swore, sweeping a pile of hundred dollar bills off one of the counting tables in frustration. It was more money than most people in this city would see in their entire lives, but I knew I couldn't savor it, I just didn't have the time. The moment Sergei’s men made it upstairs and discovered the truth behind my ruse, the game would be up.
I looked over to where Sergei was lying hogtied on the floor. He was too quiet for my liking. The man was a barely contained ball of fury at the best of times, the kind of man who'd sooner chew off his own arm to free himself than lie meekly in captivity. It didn't fit.
Why isn't he doing anything?
It was disconcerting, but I didn't have time to worry about it. I needed to find the damn keys, because if I didn't, then this had all been for nothing. My head started spinning as the consequences of what I was doing became absolutely, terrifyingly, clear. There was no going back from this. Either my father would kill me, or Sergei would. A man like him wouldn't be able to take an insult like this sitting down.
I stood up, looking desperately around the loading bay for inspiration. The area was bare, even spartan. The walls were dull, gray industrial concrete, as were the floors, except those at least were mottled and cracked with black tire rubber, oil stains and the other remnants of decades of hard use.
Other than the four tables, piled high with cash, and the locked armored car that was the reason for my panicked search, the loading bay was utterly bare. And that was a problem.
You didn't check Sergei!
I could have slapped my own forehead for being such an idiot. I knelt down by his side and snarled in his face. "Where the fuck are they?"
The weight of the Taser in my hand suddenly reminded me I was still holding it, and I pulled it level with his ear and thumbed the button threateningly, discharging a burst of blue electricity half an inch from his unprotected earlobe. The person I was being forced to be wasn't me, but I knew I had to do it for Eamon's sake. I was becoming the person I needed to be.
"If you don't tell me where the keys are." I hissed into his ear. "I'm going to hold this against your head and not let go until the battery dies. Is that what you want?"
The voice I heard wasn't mine: it was hard and unflinching. It was the voice of someone who would do whatever it took to get her own way. It was a mother's voice – but a mother who had been pushed to the brink.
It was terrifying.
Sergei's body suddenly sprang into motion, like a bearded, beached, flopping salmon, and I had to resist the urge to jump away from him. He struggled vainly against his handcuffs for a few seconds, his muscles bulging and popping as he struggled against his restraints. I eyed them nervously, hoping that they would hold.
If they don't, I thought. You're screwed.
I knelt on Sergei's back and held the Taser's button down for half a second. He went completely still the second he heard the electricity crackle.
"Good," I hissed. "You've got five seconds."
I didn't trust my voice not to betray me, which forced me to say little as I could get away with. Maybe that was a good thing, perhaps it made me sound more threatening.
I watched as Sergei's eyes swiveled in their sockets, desperately straining to look right and left to get a good look at me. I wondered what he would see. Sergei was a man who had been in more than his fair share of scrapes.
But has he ever come up against a mom with her back against the wall?
"Five." I was amazed by how calm and crisp my voice sounded. It didn't betray a hint of the nervous tension that was eating up my insides. Sergei seemed surprised, too, because he stopped straining his neck to look at me and took on the nervous expression of a man whop knew he was out of options.
"Four."
"Three."
"Two." I hit the Taser's button and singed the gangster's left ear to remind him who was in charge.
I didn't get to make it to one. Sergei squealed like a stuck pig, and shook his head from side to side.
I leaned close. "Ready to talk?"
Who are you, and what have you done with the real Maya?
He nodded frantically with the wild-eyed, terrified look on his face of an exhausted animal after a long hunt. "Good." I said menacingly, or as menacingly as I could manage, at least, and peeled back the duct tape covering his lips. I did it as unsympathetically as I could, and crackled the Taser one last time to make sure he didn't have second thoughts.
I didn't think he would. I could smell the acrid scent of fear in his sweat, and I didn't think that that was something someone could fake.
"The truck," he said quickly, his tongue stumbling over his words in his haste to escape the fate I was offering him.
"I know," I growled into his air. "That's what I'm asking for."
"No," he gasped as I brushed the Taser gently up against his hair. "They’re taped under the wheel arch. The left one, at the front," he finished hurriedly.
I stuck the duct tape back over his mouth carelessly and sprang to my feet, grabbing a plastic crate from next to one of the tables and stacked it full of bundles of hundred dollar bills as I moved from table to table. I didn't have much time, so I knew I had to make every second count. In a place like this, every second was worth tens of thousands of dollars.
If you get it out…
"They better be." I muttered darkly as I carried the crate of cash toward the truck. The monologue was mainly for Sergei's benefit, though, because behind the manufactured front of confidence that I was putting on, I was elated. The plan was working, and all Conor had to do was keep my dad distracted long enough for me to get away with the cash.
I reached the armored truck in seconds and set the crate of money down next to the rear doors. I ran light-footed to the left wheel, knelt down and thrust my arm into the wheel arch. My nostrils were too close to the thick, worn rubber tires to ignore the metallic smell of burnt oil as I fished around for the keys.
As my hand got filthier and filthier, the hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle as my mind buzzed out a warning that Sergei had lied, that he was just stalling me. I was just about to give up when I hit
the jackpot. My fingers felt the hard, jagged edge of a large metal key, then closed around the ring holding the bunch together.
"Score!" I celebrated, feeling a cooling wave of relief put out the fires of worry that had begun to spring up on the edges of my consciousness. I began to realize that I didn't just want to get out of this alive, I to do it in style. I wanted to impress Conor, not disappoint him.
Again.
I sprinted to the back of the armored truck and fumbled with the keys, resisting the urge to ask Sergei which of the five almost identical spikes of metal I needed. Finally, one went in. I almost threw my arms up with exhilaration and cheered.
Almost.
Because when the doors swung open on either side of me, I wasn't greeted with the sight that I'd expected: a compartment filled with crate upon crate filled with of crisp bundles of dollar bills.
Well, I wasn't just greeted with the sight of stacks of cash. It was there, all right, millions of dollars stacked up and taunting me about how far I'd made it, only for everything to fall apart at the final hurdle.
Because there was a man in there, too.
His hair was filthy, and matted with blood. He looked like he hadn't bathed in weeks, maybe even months, and he was clothed in a massive greatcoat that was mottled a dull gray through hard use.
I've seen that coat before.
The man raised his head up, inch by inch, as if the effort was costing him every ounce of strength he had left. His face was bloodied, and black with bruises, but I'd have recognized him anywhere. His face was seared into my brain.
It was the man I'd nearly shot.
He stared at me with dull, hopeless eyes and mouthed something at me. I couldn't be sure, but it looked a lot like, "help me."
There was no chance of that. Not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't. I'd walked into a trap, and I didn't know what to do.
The only sound that broke through my brain's stunned paralysis and the crushing, almost overpowering realization that I'd failed, was a strange, coughing yelp that seemed to be coming from Sergei's prone figure on the floor. As my head sank into my hands, I realized what it was.
Behind the duct tape, Sergei was laughing. He'd known what was coming all along.
Dad played me.
And then another, far more terrifying thought popped into my mind. If dad had known that this was our plan all along, then it wasn’t just me who was screwed.
Conor was about to walk into a trap. And there was nothing I could do to warn him.
I sank to my knees as the way to failure threatens to overwhelm me. I didn't even bother turning my head as the loading bay door crashed open.
27
Conor
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I tuned everything out – the roar of the crowd, the announcer on the loudspeaker, everything except the heartbeat reverberating through my eardrums.
Remember why you're doing this.
Eamon. My son, and the woman I wanted to marry. The longer I allowed my brain to wander, so close to our plan's fruition, the more I realized that I didn't care that Maya had hidden things from me. I knew that I would've done the same, if someone like me had strolled into my life.
When I first arrived in Alexandria, I'd been a different man. The kind of person who did not have thought twice about leaving an ex-girlfriend behind.
The bell rang in the distance. I blinked. The fight had started and I hadn't even realized.
Get it together, Conor.
I let my opponent tag me just above the right eyebrow, but I misjudged the force behind his punch, and my eyebrow split open.
"Shit," I swore.
The Hispanic fighter bouncing lightly on his toes a couple of yards in front of me grinned maniacally. "Not so tough now, are you, Irishman?"
Why does everyone call me that?
I looked at the big neon-red countdown clock. Fifteen seconds left in the fourth round. I was tired, just beginning to get the painful ache in my muscles that came before me slowing down.
I pretended to stumble and tripped over my own wayward foot, scrambling backward to the other side of the ring before I got back to my feet, and now I dragged my left foot behind me as if I'd injured it. I made sure to cast nervous looks at the clock, which now read 10 seconds to go. I wanted him to think I was hurt. Misdirection, the key to success in the ring.
"I'm fine," I grunted, driving forward. I made sure moved sluggishly, favoring my right leg. I must have looked as though I'd topple over at any second, maybe even before my opponent landed another punch. I could see the hunger to win in his eyes. It ate up his natural wariness and caution, until all was lost in the flood of adrenaline pumping through his veins.
I'm tired, not useless, I thought sourly.
I landed a punch directly in my opponents gut, and left enough momentum in the right hook that he staggered back, slightly winded.
"Don't get cocky," I warned him. I wanted to let loose, to beat him until he turned fifty shades of blue. I was fed up of people telling me what to do, how to act and who to hit. It wasn't me.
None of this was me. But I knew what I had to do, now. I needed to bring this to an end before too long. I'd given Maya enough time to get the job done.
One more round, and then he'd meet the real Conor Regan.
My opponent looked at me angrily, his face set in an aggrieved snarl, and let loose a flurry of punches, but before any of them landed, the bell rang to call the round and the umpire pulled us apart.
"Get to the corner," he said, beads of sweat dripping off his wrinkled face under the hot lights. "You need that cut looked at."
I nodded, and switched off as I sat down on a stool someone had thrust into the octagon. I vaguely felt cool, rubber-covered fingers touching my face, but it was like I was experiencing it through a daydream.
"Are you okay?" Someone asked. It was Shannon. "Remember, you can tap out if you need to…"
I wrestled myself back out of my head. "I'm fine," I growled. "I don't tap out."
Shannon looked at me dubiously. "Okay then."
She didn't think I could do it. No one in this crowd did. Hell, there were at least four men in the front row – Mikhail, Arkady, Victor and Pyotr who all thought that this fight was already sewn up. I could tell by the sight of their smug faces that they were already counting their winnings.
We'll see. Chickens and eggs, boys.
The bell rang, signaling the start of the fifth round – the one I was supposed to throw. I stood up. The stool disappeared back out of the cage.
This was it.
I dragged my "injured" leg behind me as I moved toward the center of the octagon, gloves raised. My opponent had a grin stretched across his face, and I could tell that he was doing a victory lap in his head. I knew that look, I'd worn it a hundred times myself. The difference was, when I wore it, I won. He thought I was injured, and that the rest of this fight was just a formality.
You should have done your research, boy, I thought. If he had, he'd have known that deception was hardly a new addition to my box of tricks.
I fell back, heading toward Mikhail's side of the cage. I wanted him to see this.
I searched for Mikhail in the front row, and made eye contact with him. He nodded gracefully, as if to say, "it's time."
I bared my teeth, spat a wet rope of bloody saliva to the floor and snarled back at him, and for the first time all evening I saw a hint of worry creep into his otherwise unflappable demeanor. His lips moved imperceptibly, perhaps trying to tell me something. It finally became clear. "Don't do it," he mouthed.
I kept one eye trained on him, and the other on my opponent, who was closing in on me fast. I could tell he wanted to finish me off. I wasn't going to let him. He fired off a right hook, then a left, then a couple of body punches, but I rode each one, absorbing the power and landing a couple of my own shots in return.
He caught me in my midriff with a punch that would've ended the fight for most of the men in the crow
d.
Not for me. Still, I couldn't stop myself from sinking to my knees and gasping for air. My opponent circled me
"Tap out, gringo," he smiled, assuming he'd won. "I don't want to have to hurt you."
You couldn't if you tried.
I watched him warily from my position as he readied himself to strike. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the smile of smug satisfaction on Mikhail's face, and it gave me the spurt of energy I needed. I saw the punch coming in, but I ducked right and batted it out of the way, carried the momentum and spun my legs around, knocking my taunting opponent to the ground.
He swore as the wind was driven from his lungs, wiping the smug smile of his face and then I was on top of him, and punch after punch rained in on his stomach until he could barely breathe.
I stood up and jumped back, finding Mikhail again in the crowd. I didn't have to search hard, his eyes were already glued to me, filled with black, impotent rage. Arkady was staring at him accusingly, but he wasn't looking – he only had eyes for me.
The other fighter staggered to his feet. I felt sorry for him, and tried to give him a way out. "Give up, buddy," I said kindly. "You know you can't win this…"
He shrugged and launched himself forward.
I punched him in the temple.
"You thought I was going to let you win, didn't you?" I asked as the last glimmer of consciousness disappeared from his eyes. I wasn't sure who I was really talking to – him or Mikhail.
He sank back, out cold, and I caught his body before it hit the mat. I don’t know why I did it, I wouldn’t have just a couple of months before. Maybe I recognized that he wasn’t the enemy, I’m not sure.
I've got nothing against you, kid. You just never stood a chance.
I made it out of the arena in record time, found the cleaning closet in which I'd stashed a fresh change of clothes, just jogging pants and white tee, nothing too obvious, and changed.
I was still soaked in sweat from the fight, but at least the cut above my right eyebrow had closed up. I was glad I couldn't see myself in a mirror, because I was sure that I must look like a Halloween character. At least Eamon couldn't see me now.
