INVINCIBLE (Fight #2)

by London Casey

  “I didn’t try…”

  More tears fell from Rose’s eyes. This was my curse. My ability to destroy life all around me. Including my own. I shouldn’t have taken the picture. I shouldn’t have went to the address. I shouldn’t have done anything for Rose. My throbbing shoulder proved it. My throbbing heart. My throbbing dick.

  And as if things could get any more fucked up, my apartment door exploded open, sending both myself and Rose stumbling to the ground. When I turned my head, two men were standing there with guns.

  ~

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Tommy pointed to Rose but kept his gun on me. I climbed to my feet and grabbed Tommy by the wrist. I broke his hold on the gun and then took out the clip.

  “Can’t you fucking knock?” I asked.

  “No. Not when my ass is about to get fried. What the fuck is she doing here?”

  Rose kicked back, shaking her head.

  The other guy - someone I’ve never seen before - walked over to Rose and kept his weapon on her.

  “Hey, hey,” I yelled. “Stop this. This isn’t happening.”

  Tommy eyed my shoulder. “Where the fuck is your shirt? And what happened to your shoulder?”

  “Just an accident,” I said. “None of your damn business. Leave Rose alone right now. Call Aton. Let me talk to him.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Tommy said. He then grabbed my shoulder, and squeezed, sending fresh wild pain through my body. “You can talk to him after I talk to him first. Tell him that the woman who was supposed to be killed was in your apartment. How are you going to explain that one?”

  “Please,” Rose said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Get her the fuck up and out of here!” Tommy yelled.

  The other guy grabbed Rose by the hair. I turned and ran for the guy. My natural instinct was always fight mode which was survival mode, meaning I’d hurt myself to stay alive. My shoulder barreled into the guy. I speared him to the ground, but then felt a paralyzing pain as I had hit him with my bad shoulder. I tried to swing, but I couldn’t move my arm at the moment.

  “Wes!” Tommy yelled. “I’ll fucking put a bullet in the back of your head.”

  I rolled over and sat up. Tommy was there, his gun reloaded, pointed at me. There was an evil fire in his eyes. He took his work personally, just like I did when I was in the circle, fighting. So if Rose’s car blew up, that was good, but the fact that she wasn’t in it made it very bad.

  The other guy got to his feet and went for Rose again.

  “Don’t fucking touch her hair,” Tommy said. “Bring her in alive and well. Let Aton finish it. So he can see I did my job.” Tommy then looked at me and clicked his teeth together. “You fucking rat, Wes. You’re going to get flushed down a sewer.”

  I held my shoulder and watched as they forced Rose out of my apartment.

  A day ago, I was supposed to kill Rose.

  Now… I had to find a way to save her.

  7.

  (Rose)

  I didn’t know what to do. My car was supposed to explode with me inside it. Luke had completely lost his mind and gone off the deep end. Two men tried to shoot at me - hitting Wes instead. Then I was taken by Wes, promised safety, only to be taken by two different men.

  They put me in the back of a black car, leaving my hands and feet unrestrained.

  The one guy - Tommy - got into the driver’s seat.

  He turned, smiled, and showed me his gun. “Look at it this way. You’re supposed to be dead. So enjoy your last ride. If you make a fucking move, say a fucking word, or just generally piss me off at all, I’m going to shoot you and kill you. So it’s really up to you. This is your chance to extend your life by a few hours. Got it?”

  I didn’t say a word. I looked out the window.

  They took me to a building, much like the buildings I used to go to all the time. I half expected to find a fight ready to go inside, but it was eerily empty. The door slammed shut with an echoing thud. The place smelled of age and rust. The two guys were close to me, bumping their shoulders to mine, leaving me feeling icky. I hated them. I hated everything. I hated Wes, too. Why did he even bother to help me? Just so I could get caught? Is that what it was? An even bigger set up?

  I swallowed hard, processing it all.

  I was supposed to be in the car. I was supposed to blow up. If Wes found out I wasn’t in the car, he tracked me down. Tricked me into going with him. Just so I could get caught and taken here. Whatever this was.

  “Come on, princess,” Tommy said and dragged me to a set of steps.

  We went upstairs and Tommy knocked on a door.

  “What?” a voice yelled.

  “It’s me, Aton. I have something for you.”

  “Open the door.”

  The door opened and there was a man seated behind a large wooden desk with piles of cash. He had a cigar in his mouth. When he saw me, he stood up, eyes going wide.

  “What the hell is this?” the man asked - I assumed it was Aton - the cigar bouncing in his mouth. He took it out of his mouth and put it into an ashtray.

  “Aton, allow me to explain the situation,” Tommy said. “Your boy, Wes, is nothing but a filthy rat.”

  “What?” Aton asked.

  Tommy clicked his teeth, like he’d done at Wes’s apartment. “You heard me. I found this princess in his fucking apartment. And Wes wasn’t wearing a damn shirt.”

  Aton looked at me. He had small, dark eyes. He wasn’t tall, wider in the waist than in the shoulders, built nothing like Wes.

  “So you’re Rose,” Aton said.

  “How do you know my name?” I asked. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You should be. I don’t know how you pulled it off. Guess you didn’t need your car, huh?”

  “I knew about it,” I said. “Someone told me so I knew not to touch my car. How’s that sound?”

  Aton leaned against the desk. He knocked a stack of cash over but didn’t seem to care. “You know what you fucking did, princess. I know everything about you. Your family. Everything. What were you doing with Wes?”

  I swallowed hard. It became very clear that this whole thing was not a setup by Wes. He was in serious trouble because of me. Because he helped me.

  “Uh-oh,” Aton said. “You see that? She swallowed her tongue.”

  “I can make her talk,” Tommy said. “It would be my honor, Aton. Considering I fucked this whole thing. I’m sorry about that.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Aton said. “We have her now. We might be able to enjoy a little more right now. I wasn’t planning on starting a war for my family, but maybe it’s a good time for that.”

  “What do we do about Wes?” Tommy asked.

  “He’ll come,” Aton said. “Then we’ll make sure to handle that situation properly.”

  “Don’t hurt him,” I said. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “She remembered how to talk,” Aton said.

  “Fucking rat,” Tommy said. “I hate fucking rats.”

  “I’ll ask again… what were you doing with Wes?” Aton asked me.

  I couldn’t think of anything. My mind went blank. I had grown up and heard Ma and Dad talking about family wars. Talking about Irishmen and Italians going at it hard. How sometimes lines were blurred, crossed. How original blood families from the old country were getting mixed and ruined. I never took anything from it. Ma died, Dad never got over it, and I was thrust as a moneymaker into the circles of fights to lure men into betting more and more money.

  But this all seemed way too real. I was the one in harm’s way now. I had no idea what to think or who to trust. Sadly, the only person who had been telling me the truth was Wes. He said he’d get me to his place safely and he did. He told me he had been there when my car was wired. He told me he had to check on me. He asked about my family, my father, my brother.

  Wes wasn’t there with me though.

  “Throw her in a room until I figure this out,” Aton
said. “I have to finish the money and pay tribute before the family comes down here and kills everyone.”

  I did what anyone would have done a long time ago.

  I screamed.

  A second later, a hand was over my mouth and a gun to my head.

  ~

  The door slowly opened. There wasn’t a lightbulb in the socket dangling from the ceiling. I was left to rely on the natural light coming in from the two windows that were cracked and half boarded up. It was some kind of unused office I was in now. There was a desk missing all its drawers and a chair ripped to pieces with springs hanging out like messy, curly hair.

  “You hungry, princess?” Tommy asked.

  Light flooded the office from behind him.

  I figured it was some kind of crude sex joke or something. So I didn’t respond.

  “Brought you a peanut butter and jelly. My favorite.”

  “It shows,” I said. “Maybe you should switch to whole wheat bread.”

  Tommy snorted. “You’re funny, princess. I kind of like you. Too bad things are going to get bad for you real soon. I honestly think you were better off getting into that car. You know? Quick. Painless. Boom. I’m really good at what I do.”

  “Except making sure the person is in the car,” I said with a smile.

  “Bitch,” Tommy said. He took the sandwich and lifted it to his mouth. He took a monster bite out of it and then dropped the plate and sandwich to the ground. The plate broke and sandwich flopped. “Whoops,” he said with a mouth full of peanut butter and jelly. “Nnjoyurluch…”

  Tommy shut the door and I was alone, again.

  They took my cellphone. They left my bag back at Wes’s apartment. I should have been at a shoot, wearing clothes, posing, living that fantasy of being normal.

  Then again, looking around the dark office, this truly represented my normal. Darkness.

  8.

  (Wes)

  I wore my leather jacket over my wounded shoulder and arm. I drove like fire to get to somewhere, anywhere. The only place I could think of going was the main office. An abandoned office building that Aton used to count money and train fighters. Sometimes he liked to have his own private fights, to see how the guys were doing. He’d let us fight until blood and then break it off before anyone was hurt or killed.

  Sometimes it was done for training. Sometimes for punishment. Or sometimes just for fun if Aton had a few women he wanted to impress by showing us off.

  As I turned into the parking lot I knew that if Aton was here, my life was going to be over. But if I could get ten words in with Aton. Explain that I went to look for Rose. That I got her to safety because someone else was trying to kill her. If she was wanted dead so badly that meant she had to be worth something alive.

  I threw open the car door and hurried toward the building. I opened the side door and ran to the middle of the floor. The door shut with an echo and I yelled for Aton.

  “Where are you?” I yelled. “It’s Wes! I’m here. I need to talk to you.”

  I walked to the middle of the room and stood there.

  I saw Shane on the floor, getting his brains smashed out of his head. That guy in the black mask. The assassin. There was a time when I heard Aton was making serious offers to bring the assassin on his crew but it never worked out. That made Shane the number one guy for Aton. Once Shane died, I then became the number one guy.

  And I still was. I was a guarantee.

  A door opened with a squeak and Aton appeared at one of the railings. He took an unlit cigar from his mouth.

  “You smell something, Wes?” he called down to me.

  “No.”

  “I think I smell a rat.”

  “Aton, it’s not what you think. You know me. Let me explain something.”

  “I’m sorry, Wes,” Aton said. “It’s too late. She’s gone. You’re next.”

  I jumped forward, not sure what I was going to do because of my distance from Aton. I didn’t even have the chance to scream before something knocked me in the back of the head. Then something was put over my face.

  Hey, it wasn’t the worst way to go out…

  ~

  I felt someone tear the cloth off my head. There were two men in suits, wearing rubber exam gloves. Aton was next to them. He held a wad of cash in his hand. He looked pissed. Rightfully so, I guess. Everything I’d dealt with lately involving him had gone really fucking wrong.

  “Aton,” I said.

  “Shut him up,” Aton said.

  One of the guys stuffed some cloth into my mouth. I was tied to a chair and gagged. Like some kind of kidnapped criminal or bad guy.

  All I could think about was Rose.

  Beautiful Rose.

  What the hell had I gotten myself into with this shit?

  “I want you to meet my cousin, Little Petey.”

  In walked a man four times the size of Aton but not much taller. He was a wide and round man. They had the same eyes and eyebrows, thick and furry. Little Petey had greasy, thinning hair.

  “This is your guy?” he asked, his Italian accent showing through.

  “He’s my best. I’m willing to put him up.”

  “Damn,” Little Petey said. He looked at me. “You must’a really fucked up good.”

  I shook my head.

  “Little dispute on things,” Aton said. “I’m putting five down on it. You matching?”

  “Of course, cuz,” Little Petey said. “I’ll get the gorilla ready.”

  The gorilla?

  Little Petey left the room.

  “Give me a minute here,” Aton said. The two men in gloves left the room. Aton stepped to me and touched my chin. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, Wes. I got Tommy telling me you’re a fucking rat. Why would I believe that? Well, the woman that was supposed to be taken care of is in your apartment. With a fucking bag.” He took the cloth from my mouth. “So now I need you to do something else for me. And I really hope you don’t fuck this up.”

  “Aton, let me talk,” I said. “There’s something about Rose.”

  “What’s wrong with your jacket?” Aton asked.

  “I was shot.”

  “What?”

  Aton slid my jacket down and peeled up my sleeve. His eyes went wide. “I got five thousand on you to win a fight and you have a bullet hole in your arm?”

  “Fight? I’m fighting right now?”

  “Goddamn straight,” Aton said. “Little Petey has been breaking my balls about his guy. He calls him the gorilla. I was thinking of tossing Tommy out there for fun. Then I thought about Ax. Maybe Henry. But then this fell right into my lap. Because if I lose you in this fight, what do I care? I’m going to have to kill you anyway.”

  “I was shot saving Rose,” I said. “Someone was after her. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  Aton stuffed the cloth back into my mouth. “Tell you what, Wes. You knock the gorilla down and keep him down long enough that I make an easy five off my fat fuck of a cousin, I’ll let you say anything you want. But you get a minute. Because then, Tommy is putting a bullet in the back of your head.”

  ~

  The gorilla.

  Holy fucking shit.

  That was my reaction as I stood there.

  He was tall, hunched, and had the longest arms I’d ever seen. His fists looked like boulders. The guy looked like a deformity, like he belonged in a circus or something. His face was scarred, his head bald, and when he saw me, he lifted his fists ready to fight.

  I never backed down from a fight. And this was no different. Well, a little different. I had to win to talk to Aton. I had to fight this big fuck of a guy and then convince Aton not to kill me.

  I wasn’t sure which one was going to be harder.

  The gorilla lumbered at me. He had thick black hair damn near everywhere. He was sweaty, his white sleeveless shirt almost had a yellow tint to it.

  “Take it to him!” Little Petey yelled.

  “Let’s go, Wes,” Aton said
. No emotion behind his words.

  Story of my life - fighting to survive. Literally fighting to survive. All the time.

  “What’s your real name?” I asked as the gorilla closed in on me.

  “Gary,” he growled.

  I put my fists up. “Ready?”

  “Always.”

  I gave a nod and stepped back.

  Gary quickly threw a right fist. His arm swung like a tree trunk at me. I moved out of the way and swatted at his arm. I threw a right and smashed him in the gut. He groaned and started to lean forward. But then he quickly backhanded my bad shoulder. It sent me backward and to the ground. The pain was white hot and I saw stars for a second.

  Stomping right at me, Gary was quick to start throwing more punches. I had no choice but to put my arms to my face and go with the punches. They hurt like hell and I thought the gorilla was going to shatter my arm bones into pieces.

  The worst part was the sweat splashing from him. He smelled really fucking bad.

  Dealing with big guys wasn’t easy, but you had to keep your mind straight and remember that the old cliche about them falling hard was very true.

  Not that I wanted to kick my way out of it, but I really had no choice.

  Gary’s eyes were wide and locked to my face. His teeth showed like a hungry animal. But his stance was all wrong. He had power but not all the power he could have. He stood with his feet together. So all I needed to do was get one good shot on one of his knees. Two kicks and I got him. The heel of my foot hit his right knee and that ended the punches long enough for me to make a move. I climbed up to my feet and went in on him. A left, a right, gut and then chin. Gary swung back a little, opening his arms. Another right to his mouth and I had him stumbling.

  “Fuck this!” Little Petey yelled. “Shake it off, you hairy fuck!”

  Little Petey and Aton were like two kids watching scripted wrestling. They loved it. The raw violence. Death always lingering in the air. Money on the line. It was like a drug for them. They could never fight. They could use their power to control the fights.

  It pissed me off.

  Gary looked at me and suddenly he didn’t seem so tough. Or strong. He was just some lanky guy with hairy arms and a hairy chest. But I knew if I held back, even for a second, he’d come at me.