Fight or Fall

by Anne Leigh

I didn’t reply.

  Leif: Saw her at a charity event with Stone. She says ur not picking up her calls.

  Again, I didn’t text back.

  Leif: She misses u buddy.

  Me: I’m just sorting my shit out.

  Leif: She’s happy. He’s taking good care of her.

  His statement brought unexplainable comfort and peace to my messed-up head. Unintentionally, I’d seen a some of the media coverage about Kieran when I flipped through sports stations. During a particular interview with Camryn Michaels, he dedicated his win to my sister. I’d never known him to be vocal about his feelings on TV, but I saw how much he loved her. He spoke of Bee like she was his world. And it made me feel more like a piece of shit than I already was. I deserved to be banned from the sport that I loved, the sport that I needed like I need my next breath. Kieran didn’t deserve the shit I put him through.

  Leif: U there?

  Me: Yeah.

  Leif: Talk to her.

  Me: In time.

  Leif: K

  Me: K

  I stretched myself on the couch, folding my right arm under my head. Leif was right. I should talk to Bee. I just needed time. Time to find myself, because sometimes I don’t even know who I am anymore. I wasn’t the man that my parents raised me to be, causing dishonor to my family name. My dad came from an esteemed family in Italy, and he raised me to be an honorable man. Where’s my honor now? Where are the morals, the values that Grisella and Amadeo Tanner drilled into me since I was a kid?

  A beeping noise interrupted my thoughts.

  It was another text. From Dia, letting me know that she already booked a flight for the next fight.

  I ignored it.

  Too bad Prissy Princess didn’t call or text me. But what if she did? What would happen then? Ava and I – we’re never going to happen. It doesn’t matter if she kissed me like I’ve never been kissed. Looked at me like I’ve never been looked at. She had a momentary lapse of sanity, of judgment, which was what made her do what she did. And as long as I’m under her father’s payroll, I couldn’t, shouldn’t chance becoming anything to her. I’d been warned by Maxwell, the man who holds the fate of the foundation that I built for my sister, for my family’s legacy in his hands to stay away from his daughter, the heiress to his empire.

  For the past three weeks I’d been flying non-stop. Madrid. Germany. Ireland. My father’s main business hub might be in Vegas, but his power reached all over the world. And he had to maintain that power, that presence, so he would continue to be relevant. I dined with a member of the royal family in Spain, mingled with the business people at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and attended a fundraising event to promote sustainable resources in Dublin. Each event was a publicized event. All directed, controlled, and orchestrated by my father.

  I had fun at most of them. Meeting new people and traveling to different countries and locales was exhilarating. I just wished my father was considerate enough to ask for my availability so I didn’t have to cancel my previous plans of working at the hospital or spending time with my mom. But he didn’t care about that. He never did. To him education wasn’t an important asset. Good thing my mom fought for me to go to a public school instead of being home-schooled. If not I wouldn’t have met Brynn in first grade.

  “Did you have fun on your trip?” Emmett asked, his blue eyes a shade darker, as he leaned across his chair to get close to my ear. He had no clue that the last thing I wanted was to combine the pleasant memories of my trip with this.

  “I did.” I gave him a dismissive smile, trying to hold the churn of bile forming inside my stomach.

  I hated being here. I hated witnessing this. It went against my principles, my moral codes. But I had no choice.

  “She loves to travel.” My father, who I thought wasn’t listening to my conversation with Emmett, expanded on my answer. The lights had dimmed a few minutes ago, but I saw the glimmer, the unwavering sheen of gray in his eyes. His voice was modulated, giving the impression that he was happy, even when it wasn’t true. He practically had to shackle me into attending this again. I knew he was furious.

  The first time I watched something like this, I had my head down most of the fight. I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear to see the man I loved, the only man I’ve loved, get beaten to a pulp, being reduced to participate in such a demeaning sport. If my father hadn’t whispered harshly in my left ear, “You will do this for her,” I would have ran out of this stadium in a matter of minutes, with or without my shoes on, but with all my dignity intact.

  The chillingly white arena made of glass was a modern marvel. My father had boasted to Emmett’s dad that it took a year to build it. With all the technology and all the intricacies that went into it…it was a huge project for my father’s company.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Next Generation Fighting Arena,” a computer-generated voice announced, silencing the whispers and mindless chatter inside the arena. It was supposed to seat more than two thousand spectators, but during the first year or so, only the richest of the rich, the millionaires who could spare at least five hundred thousand dollars without batting an eye were invited.

  My father had exclaimed to his friends, if he could call them friends, “This is the inception of a new era in fighting. There are minimal rules, no visible referees. A fighter could drop out, quit by pressing on the red button on his corner. Until then, they’d fight until the end, until there’s a winner. Of course, we can’t have anyone dying, because that would be illegal.” To which he had shrugged his shoulder as if it wasn’t important. “But the computer will determine if the vital signs and injuries are okay before the safety latch would be opened. Other than that, the fight could last for hours, with the temperatures in the room varying depending on the commands of the computer.”

  How was this even sanctioned? But before I could even ask that, I looked around the room – senators, congressmen, governors, A-list celebrities, and Wall Street giants were chatting and sipping on their choice of drinks, busy scrolling over the menu at their individual computer screens. It wasn’t difficult to deduce that my father had enlisted their cooperation, their support in this new venture without difficulty. This was humanity at its sickest, lowest form. The menu consisted of fighters, men who were former athletes and somehow were disgraced in their chosen sports. A Ukrainian weightlifter who was found positive for performance-enhancing drugs. A Chinese gymnast who said some racially insensitive remarks to a fellow competitor. An Israeli judoist who attacked a referee. Men who were at their prime but have made mistakes, knowingly or unknowingly, and were banned from competing in their sport. My father was a cruel, brilliant man; a wily genius – he knew that these men would lap up and drool at his offer. But then again, if he could do what he did, what he does to my own mother, a woman he said he’d loved, then what was to stop him from making a profit from the hopelessness, greed, and the promise of glory to these disgraced athletes?

  “Why aren’t you picking a contestant?” Emmett inquired, pointing at the screen in front of me, which had now gone to sleep.

  I swallowed. “My stomach hasn’t been feeling good all day.” Maybe this time my father would let me out. Surely there was no reason for me to stay. Why I was needed here puzzled me. He had anyone and everyone who might have signed and approved these disgusting matches here.

  “Oh no,” Emmett’s sympathetically mumbled. “You wanna go?” He was really a nice guy. One day a girl would be lucky to have him.

  “She’s feeling nervous, just like the first time,” my father’s cold voice interrupted us. “Now take your pick, Ava, so the show can start.” According to the voice of gloom, the computer, the fight wouldn’t start until all of members of the audience had picked a fighter. The top two fighters picked by the audience would be battling it out in the cube, where only us, outside of the cube, could see them. They had no way of knowing how many and who were watching them fight.

  “If she’s not feeling okay, Maxwell, I can take
her home,” Emmett offered, his left hand tapping on my right arm soothingly.

  “My father’s right, Emmett,” I stated, trying to sound as okay as I could. As a gambler, my father knew how to bluff; I fell for it every time. If I went home with Emmett right now, I would not be allowed access to my mom for a few days. A few days that meant endless amount of worrying and not being able to feel her touch. Those days could be longer if I had to fly out of the country again.

  The thought of not being able to see my mom wiped away any remnants of anxiety. I lifted my finger and randomly picked someone, I didn’t even bother to look at the contestant’s photo, his stats, or what type of martial arts or fighting form he used. He was a man whom I was sending to the guillotine, to be kicked and punched over and over and over again.

  One day, father, I hope you see the errors of your ways. She loved you. She always has. Just like I have.

  I just wished it would not be too late for him when that time comes.

  The fight had been set.

  All around me the room has gone completely dark. I didn’t live in a cave. I’d seen videos of people fighting, boxing, kicking each other in the ring. The crowds in those types of events were loud, boisterous, egging, cheering one fighter against the other. I just couldn’t find it in me as to the reason why people would bet to watch a bludgeoning match that usually ended in blood and gore. But who was I to judge? I’m here now. Watching the same thing. Against my own wishes, but still watching.

  In between the computer-generated voice’s announcement of how the fight was to proceed, I blanketed my thoughts with fuzzy warm memories of my mom. How she thought that the feel of cashmere was the most comforting feeling in the world. How she laughed at the most random, silliest things – a funny-shaped cloud, a weird street name, a crooked road sign.

  I reached for the orange flavored Tic Tacs inside my evening clutch. “If you can taste the tangy, refreshing feeling, the burst of that flavor, the coolness of the mint hitting the back of your throat – that means you’re alive, my dear Ava.” Something so small, innocuous, insignificant to many, but those small, hard, oblong-shaped candies gave me so much. It brings me back to myself; my confidence, my strength, my armor. As long as I could taste them, I was alive.

  “He’s a crowd favorite…” The announcement rang through the muted air. “You want him back? Heeeee’s baaaack! In the blue corner – Milo Tanner!”

  Ohgodohgodohgod.

  My hands started feeling clammy, cold, hot, sweaty, all at the same time. I rubbed my hands against the plush leather seats. Everyone must love watching him fight. Against the giant glass screen, a screen that also served as the one-way mirror barrier separating the fighters from seeing us and hearing us, his statistics flashed.

  MILO TANNER, Height: 6’4”, Weight: 220, Fighting skill: Taekwondo, Kickboxing. Probability of winning: 50%.

  He was standing in his blue kickboxing shorts. The cameras inside the cube zoomed in on his face, the image larger, looming against all the four-corners of the cube. He looked calm. Deadly calm. No hint of emotion showed on his face, not even a twitch in his jaw, his mouth held in a tight, straight line…but his eyes…his eyes flashed black. When Milo was happy, as I’d seen him many times throughout the years, his eyes were the color of the greenest grass against the summer skies. When he was sad, like the day of his parents’ funerals, they were ashy, dull, the colors diluted by his emotions. I’d seen him irritated at me, but even then, his eyes were fiery, taunting green. To see his face transformed like this was an impending warning of the rage he was about to deliver.

  “Now ladies and gentlemen, let’s see if your flavor of the moment will remain standing. In the black corner, heeeerrree is Marco “The Brazilian Bull” Escarcha!”

  The other fighter was lifted from beneath the floor into his own corner. The Brazilian guy’s stats displayed in the glass mirrors.

  MARCO ESCARCHA, Height: 6’6”, Weight: 245, Fighting skill: Capoeira. Probability of winning: 50%.

  The cube flashed black and blue, followed by a loud sound.

  Milo and the other guy stood in the middle of the cube and as soon as the sound went off, the signal to start the fight, the Brazilian guy threw the first punch.

  Milo easily deflected it, like he had the ability to predict what the other guy was thinking. His posture was relaxed. If I hadn’t caught a glimpse of his eyes earlier, I’d have been fooled by the air of eerie calmness that he was giving off.

  The other guy kept rocking back and forth around Milo, trying to put him into a corner. Milo kept moving around, evading the guy. Unlike other martial arts bouts, there were only a minimum set of rules for my father’s fights. I’d heard of them during the first time I was here. The rules, however, had to be observed, and at any point that the computer, in addition to the three judges in a hidden room, deemed a move to be past the point of safety or would cause severe injuries, the fight would be stopped by zapping the agressor with an electrical current embedded into the floors to disrupt the voluntary control of muscles, opening the glass cage, or having one of the judges enter the cage as a precaution.

  One of the rules I remembered was that you cannot hit the opponent on any part of the groin, spine, or back of the head. Milo swung his left hand and hit the other guy just below his shoulder, the knock of his punch causing the other fighter to lose balance.

  It wasn’t hard to believe that Milo would be successful at any sport that he chose. As a swimmer, sometimes he had looked out of place in the pool. Not because of his skills, but because of his body. Typically swimmers were lean and long-limbed. But Milo had always been bulky, his muscled body hiding his quickness and lightning fast reflexes.

  I snuck a quick glance at my dad and Emmett; both of their attentions were rapt, undivided, and on the fight. Emmett’s face winced and I turned my attention back to the stage, the modern fighting arena in front of me. I was literally twenty feet away. If there was no glass in between us, Milo would be able to see that I was watching him. If he cared.

  The other guy made these wide swirling kicks and delivered a strike to Milo’s left leg. Milo went down, his left hand holding on his leg like he was in pain. I had the strongest urge to insert a needle into the Brazilian guy’s neck that would make him slowly die in agony. I clutched my fists against my side, concern for Milo’s well-being was being overruled by the uncoiled fury I felt for the other guy who hurt him. How did mothers watch their sons fight? How could wives or their significant others watch the people they love get hit, punched, or kicked? I was nothing to Milo, but this was how I felt. I’d never felt this overwhelming rage, this simmering anger towards anyone, but now I felt it in full force towards the guy who attacked Milo, towards my father for allowing it to happen, towards Emmett for enjoying watching something like this.

  Emmett muttered, “I think Tanner has met his match.” I bit my cheek, unable to say anything.

  If I did, I probably would have said, “Why don’t you put yourself inside there with Milo, and I’d be happy to watch him punch you?”

  Milo was still holding his leg as the other guy continued attacking, striking, kicking him.

  “Make it stop,” I whispered, not knowing if anyone heard me. Make it stop, please. Make it stop.

  As the black-clad fighter looked like he was going to deliver his final blow, a direct kick to Milo’s face while Milo was crouched on the ground, Milo’s arms caught the guy’s leg and pulled him down for a takedown.

  My heart surged, my spirits lifted, relief and admiration spreading through my pores.

  It didn’t matter where life took me, who I ended up with, or what I did to make myself find happiness. As the isolated glass cube flashed green, the man standing in blue shorts, his face emotionless and his body held in a defiant stance, his arms raised in victory – I was nothing to him, but for me, he was, will always be, the man I loved…and the man who’d never see me the way I saw him.

  Digging on my black pumps, I hurriedly walked towards
the Men’s Shower Room. I had to see if he was okay. He looked like his leg was hurt badly. I excused myself from the party, telling my dad, Emmett, and a few men who were having a small talk about the state of the country’s economy, that I had to make a call. In truth I couldn’t wait to check on Milo.

  Rounding the corner, my head almost smashed into a man’s chest. I recognized him right away. He was dressed in his normal attire – black suit, black dress shirt, black shoes. The Man In Black. My father’s right hand man.

  “It’s not a good idea, Ms. Troudeau.” His brown eyes warned, his posture as stiff as the expression on his face.

  “I have to make a call, Daniel.” I gestured with my right hand, willing him to move out of my way. He was blocking me from advancing any farther.

  “I don’t want to put my hands on you, but I have orders.” His brown eyes were pleading, asking me to defer to what he was saying. Even if he said he was going to put his hands on me, I doubted he would. He followed my father’s orders to a tee, but he was a good person. I’d seen it in the countless times he has tried to deflect me, protect me from my father’s ire.