Falling for Colton (Falling #5)

by Jasinda Wilder

  It’s a knock-down, drag-out brawl, a brutal thrashing for all three of us. Me, mostly.

  I have to end it.

  I dodge one uppercut, dance and pivot, duck and weave and deliver a hammering blow to a diaphragm. The other one is behind me, battering at me mercilessly, but I call on all my will, all my determination, and gut through the pain. The diaphragm blow creates a momentary opening, a torso exposed as he gasps for breath. I rocket my fist straight in, my knuckles hit throat and he’s down, gurgling, gasping and gagging, rolling away. I spin, in a clinch with the other one, long enough to catch my breath, and then shove him away and hook a fist to his gut to buy myself more time. The other one is still down, still gagging. I move for him, stand over him, meet his gaze. He’s wide-eyed, terrified that he’ll asphyxiate. Shakes his head, holds up a hand—no more; I’m out.

  One on one, now.

  I spit out a gobbet of bloody saliva as I face my remaining opponent. He’s an enraged beast, breathing hard, one hand on his knee, drooling blood. Eyeing me with hate as he catches his breath. I stride in, straight on, chin high, chest swelling with vengeful breath. Two on one?

  I fuckin’ got this.

  But he’s fast. Faster than I thought. So fucking fast. Lunges under my swing and buries his fist in my gut, doubling me over with a hit so powerful I nearly vomit. Head-butts me, breaking my nose. Hammers three lightning punches to my liver.

  I’m dizzy, reeling, sagging. He’s on me, feral and frightening, brutalizing me until I’m ready to beg for him to stop, but I don’t, I stay on my feet through sheer force of will. I stagger, then fall to one knee.

  I’m done.

  He’s over me, a position I know too well, prepared to deliver the finisher, that angling downward fist of fury, to end me. Crush me.

  I’ve got one chance left, one last burst of power, maybe.

  I wait for it.

  He eyes the crowd, smelling victory. I’m gagging on my snot and saliva and blood, and every fiber of my being hurts. I can barely breathe. My ribs are damn near broken again, I think, bruised from endless battering. My legs are weak and my heart is pounding from over-exertion. Vomit pools in my throat, hot and burning, acidic, bile behind my teeth. Sweat pours, blood coats my face and my chest and my fists. The crowd is screaming, they are wild, and hoping for my downfall.

  He swings, a vicious arcing blow meant for my skull.

  I hurl myself forward, feel the rough concrete under my shoulder shred my skin as I roll. I dive for him, catch him at the knees with my shoulder. He’s barreled off his feet, and I hear his head crack on the ground. He’s dazed, but not down. Taken harder knocks, I’m sure, a tough-ass motherfucker like this don’t go down easy. No fucking way.

  I haul myself onto him and straddle his chest, batter his face with both fists, one-two, one-two, to the shrill manic wild howling of the crowd, and then Ruiz and Eli and Rhino are pulling me away, and the moment I’m off him, I go limp.

  They release me, and I sag to my knees, vomit bile and blood. I spit and cough and sob. Unable to get up, I collapse forward and feel the cold concrete smash my face, but I don’t care. I can’t breathe, can’t move.

  “Gotta be on your feet to win, Colt.” Ruiz, as always. Calm.

  I can’t stand up. I’m drooling and there’s a pool of blood under my face. I cough again, tasting bile and the metallic tang of blood. I get my knees under me, and then scramble with my palms on the gritty cement floor. It’s messy and sloppy and undignified, but I’m fucking hamburger. I make it to hands and knees. Breathing hard, I struggle to get a foot planted on the floor. I have to groan and pull deep, as if I’m trying to power that last rep on the bench press. No one will help me. They can’t, they won’t, and I wouldn’t let them. I have to stand up on my own, or it doesn’t count.

  Eli watches, Rhino watches. Ruiz waits. No counting, just the wait.

  The crowd has quieted.

  I sag back to my hands and knees. I can’t fucking do it. I hurt too badly. I fucking hurt. I want to cry, it hurts so bad. I’m screaming through clenched teeth as I strain, push…

  “COLT! COLT! COLT!” The crowd is chanting, pumping their fists in the air. They want this.

  “Get on your fucking feet, white boy,” Rhino grumbles.

  “C’mon, man,” Eli says. “Don’t puss out on me now, dog.”

  “Fuck…you…” I gag, though drool and blood and sobs of effort.

  One foot.

  I shove myself back onto my knee with both hands, shaking, grunting as if I’m lifting the world onto my shoulders.

  My second foot plants on concrete, and I’m up.

  Fuck yes, hell yes, I’m up.

  A hundred fucking grand, baby.

  I stagger backward, bounce off Rhino, who grabs onto my bicep and holds me in place. I’m woozy, dizzy, seeing double, barely staying on my feet.

  “Colt wins,” Ruiz says. “Pay up, losers.”

  Jermaine and Irving are still on the ground. I push off Rhino and stumble over to them. Lean down and extend my hand to the one whose throat I crushed. He claps a hand to mine, and I haul him up. He doesn’t say anything, and even if he could, what do you say? There was no beef between us, this is just what we do: hammer the shit out of each other for money. Crazy motherfuckers, we are. I lurch unsteadily to the other one, and he’s blinking up at me through bloodshot, swelling eyes, drools through puffy, split lips. I extend my hand to him.

  He hesitates. Doesn’t want to take my hand or accept my help to get to his feet. There is enmity here, because you can’t fight and not feel the rage burn through you. It’s how you win, that rage. It’s what we all have in common, a baseline rage that fuels us. But in the end, his eyes search mine. Palm slaps palm, and I haul him to his feet. He pushes me away, wraps an arm around his friend or brother, and they stagger away together. Leaning on each other, muttering to each other.

  I watch their easy, familiar camaraderie with envy.

  Eli and Rhino are pulling me away. They’ve both got stacks of rubber-banded bundles of cash in their hands. They banked huge on my win.

  They leave me leaning against the front quarter panel of Rhino’s black Escalade, stack their winnings on the hood and count through it, always with an eye for their surroundings. Wouldn’t put it past someone to make a play for it. It’s a hell of a lot of money.

  “That was a close one, dog,” Eli says.

  And in that moment, I realize something: Eli feels zero loyalty to me. I’m a cash cow for him. He makes tens of thousands of dollars on me every fight, every week, and I’m his boy as long as I win. The moment I lose, he’ll ditch me.

  I see Rhino eyeing me, eyeing Eli.

  He sees it, sees me realize it.

  Shakes his head: not here, not now.

  I say nothing to Eli for a few minutes, gathering my sense so I don’t spit out something reckless. “But I won, though,” is what I say.

  “Barely.” He hands me ten bundles of cash. There’s at least twenty left, maybe even more. If each bundle is ten grand, he made easily two hundred grand off me, and is giving me less than half, which is a much larger percentage than normal.

  I made a hundred grand off this fight, which is just my take from what Eli and Rhino netted. I’ve got a hundred and eighty grand banked, now. That’s a hell of a lot of money; I could probably get that stake in Diego’s garage, but then I’d be working for him, and that’s not what I want. I need my own place. I’ll keep banking every cent until I can afford more than a stake in someone else’s shop. Not much else to do with the money, anyway.

  He places his hands on the pile of cash stacks, eyes cold and hard on me. “Take a break, Colt. Coupla weeks, maybe.” His eyes roam over my face, and even he winces. “Man, you are fucked up. Took some of the pretty outta you.”

  “Thanks.” I say it drily.

  Eli ignores my sarcastic jab, extends a palm to me, and I slap it with mine. No shoulder bump here. “I’m out, man.” He turns to Rhino and they thug-hug.
“Take care of my boy. Get him back on his feet.”

  “I am on my feet,” I protest.

  Eli just laughs. “A six-year-old could knock you down, dog.”

  I’m angry. At myself, at him. I wonder how much I’ve made him over the last two-plus years that I’ve been fighting for him. I’m angry that it took me so long to realize he feels no loyalty to me. Eli carries his cash to his Buick, and the engine catches with that gorgeous throaty rumble. He’s gone in a cloud of exhaust and a receding trail of red taillights.

  “Let’s get out of here, Colt. You need some stitches, at least.” Rhino scoops up his money and tosses it carelessly onto the backseat, then hops into the driver’s seat.

  I’m slowly, gingerly, climbing into the passenger seat when a figure lopes out of the warehouse, heading for me. At first I think it’s Raquel or one of the other girls, and in my current condition I’m not sure I can physically handle anything, as much as it pains me to admit.

  “Yo, hold up.” Turns out to be a black guy, maybe five-eight, five-nine, slim, lean, razor-sharp. Skin like ink, like unfiltered shadows.

  “What up, Split?” Rhino says. Sounds…almost apprehensive.

  “Can I get a minute with ya boy Colt?”

  “Real quick.”

  They’re trading me around like I’m a kid, or a possession. Irritating. Split walks away and stands with his back to the cinderblock wall of the warehouse, waiting for me. He establishes authority by making me come to him. I hobble over, hurt, irritated, tired, ready to crash.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  Split pulls out a pre-rolled joint, lights it, and passes it to me. This is business, then. “I’m with the Five-One Bishops.”

  We pass the joint back and forth as we talk.

  “Okay.”

  “You want out of the ring.” It’s not a question.

  “I might.”

  “Quit playin’. I seen that shit. You won that fight by the skin of your teeth. I think there’s a better use for your skills.”

  “Which would be what?”

  “Helping me out. I need someone at my back who ain’t…familiar. Push people around who ain’t steppin’ up the way they should.”

  “Enforcer, basically.”

  “I need a soldier.” He indicates Rhino with a subtle gesture only I can see. “You quit fighting, he’s gonna find someone else. No hard feelings, but it’s what he does. Eli? Man, you lose once, you’re done. You all alone out here. You got no friends. Rhino ain’t your friend. Eli sure as hell ain’t your friend.”

  “And you are?”

  “Could be. My boys could be.” I meet his gaze, finally, and what I see scares me.

  He’s not cold; there’s a life in his eyes, but it’s that of a true warrior. He’s seen shit. He’s known death and violence, and bloodshed, and loss. His eyes are piercing. There’s a razor-sharp intelligence in his eyes, a trust-your-gut ability to assess someone with a single glance. His eyes are light, light brown, almost khaki. Fierce, piercing, penetrating.

  “I ain’t offerin’ you a job, man. I’m offering you a life.” He jerks a thumb backward, at the interior of the warehouse and the fights still happening within. “That ain’t a life.”

  “Why me?”

  “Cause you’re a survivor. A winner. I watched that fight, man, and you was done. You was done. But you pulled it out. That’s a quality wasted in there.”

  And it’s not wasted running in a gang? I don’t say this, but I think it. And yet… he presents a temptation.

  I hate fighting. I like winning, and I like the money, but it’s taking a toll. And the beating I just took…I don’t know if I have it in me to do it again. It brought me money but, like Split says, I barely pulled it off. And if I hadn’t, I’d be in debt to Eli and Rhino. Debt I’d never pay off. I’d never get ahead. I’m making killer bank, fighting for Eli and Rhino, but it’s a losing game. Eventually someone will take me down, and I’ll be done. Maybe it’s time to get out of the game while I’m ahead. I could have friends, somebody to watch my back. A life where I’m not waking up in pain, with bruised ribs and bloody saliva and a broken nose. Won’t make as much money, might take longer to get my shop, but I’m starting to realize that maybe there’s a better way, a better life out there for me than pounding faces and getting my ass kicked week after week.

  “Lemme tell you something,” Split says. “You earn my loyalty, I’ll have your back for life. You earn the loyalty of my boys, we got your back for life.”

  “How do I earn your loyalty?”

  “Have our backs. Never back down. Do what you gotta do. Loyalty to the Bishops before anything. Every single time.”

  “I need to think about it.”

  “Don’t think too long. Offer only stands for so long.” He pinches the cherry off the quarter-inch long roach.

  “How do I find you?”

  “I know where you at. I’ll stop by.”

  “All right.”

  Split ambles away, dropping the roach into the bottom of a pack of cigarettes. I watch him go, and when he’s out of sight, I head back to Rhino’s SUV. He’s leaning back in the driver’s seat, the flat brim of his Yankees ball cap pulled low over his eyes. When I climb in, slowly and with grunts of pain, he flicks the brim up and eyes me.

  “So. Gonna run with the Bishops, huh?” He starts the truck and pulls away from the warehouse.

  “Might.”

  “Think getting clear of the ring is hard? The Bishops’ll never let you go.”

  “Haven’t decided yet.” A few minutes pass in silence. And then I risk the question. “You know Split?”

  “Seen him around. The Bishops’ turf is close by. As for Split? Just don’t make him your enemy. All’s I got to say about that.”

  Coming from Rhino, that says something.

  * * *

  The decision is made for me, a few days later. Late at night, Rhino and I are pushing weight. Just him and me in the gym. Somewhere out on the street tires squeal. I don’t think anything of it. Rhino, though, hears something in the howling of burning rubber that I don’t. He drops the bar into the hooks, slides off the bench far faster than a man of his size should be capable of, and grabs my two-hundred-and-fifty pound barbell in his hands, settles it, and hauls me off the bench. All this takes less than fifteen seconds. Headlights flood the street beyond the plate glass window of the gym.

  There’s a desk in one corner, with a big gray metal filing cabinet beside it. Rhino shoves me across the room, hard enough that I hit the wall with a thud. He tips over the desk, and then with one violent shove he knocks the filing cabinet over onto its side. He jerks me down, shoves my head down so I’m parallel with the floor, then rips open a drawer of the desk and pulls out a massive black semi-automatic pistol, a Magnum, maybe. I don’t know much about guns. Big as fuck, that’s all I can tell for sure.

  “The hell is going on, Rhino?” I ask.

  “Keep your fuckin’ head down and shut the fuck up.” He’s behind the desk, his enormous bulk hunkered down into as small a package as possible behind the battered metal of the desk.

  In that moment, as I’m about to ask again what the fuck is happening, an old four-door sedan skids to a stop out front, nondescript, tan, maybe an early ’90s model Taurus or something similar. I duck down behind the filing cabinet as I realize what’s about to happen. A few feet away there’s a deafening blast, Rhino opening fire first. The plate glass shatters, and another thundering blast scuds through the air. And then it’s a war zone. Fully automatic gunfire rattles, a shotgun rips, handguns chatter. Rhino’s Magnum blasts slowly, methodically, and I hear a shout of pain, a second, a third.

  I see a chunk of wall explode over my head, and then the filing cabinet is dinging and thunking from the impact of bullets. I stop breathing and can only hope the rounds don’t make it through the metal. I hear a grunt from Rhino, and then three rapid-fire blasts from his pistol, a silence, then a thud-click as he reloads.

  Th
ere’s a fraught fraction of silence, and then I hear Rhino’s heavy footsteps thudding across the floor, boots crunching in the glass, and he’s blasting, blasting, shouting, and tires are squealing.

  “Get gone, mothafuckas! Can’t take me! I’ll kill all y’all!”

  Silence again.

  I raise my head, and assess. The plaster of the wall above my head is shredded, studs showing through. A couple of the studs are blasted apart. The cabinet I hid behind is riddled with dents. The desk is, too.

  Glass litters the floor and sidewalk around the window frame, and I see streetlights glinting off the glass, off the shells scattered on the pavement. Rhino is standing in the middle of the street, handgun dangling at his side. He’s wearing a wife-beater tank top; blood trickles down his arm, a gash in the bicep high up, near the shoulder. I step out into the street beside him.

  There’s three different pools of blood on the road, gleaming black.

  “Fuckin’ punks. Thinkin’ they can shoot my shit up and get away with it. They just signed they’s death warrants. Can’t drive-by a OG, mothafuckas. I’ll kill ’em all.”

  “You all right?” I ask.

  He whirls on me, and his palm smacks against my chest, sending me stumbling backward. “NO! No, I’m not fuckin’ all right. I’m shot, and my gym is fucked up. And it’s all because your dumb ass couldn’t turn down a fight you had no business steppin’ into. Shoulda said no, stupid ass white boy. Stupid ass. Fuckin’ stupid ass. Lucky those punks couldn’t shoot for shit.”

  “That was…what were their names…Irving and Jermaine?”

  “Yeah, them and the rest of the Trey-Nines come after you. Started some shit they can’t finish. I’m retired from that shit, but now they done pissed me off.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Get you back for embarrassin’ them in the fight. You shouldn’t’a won. They cain’t allow that shit.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “You got to get outta here. They’ll come back, and I’mma be gunnin’ for ’em.”