Chapter 7 - The Poison in the Water
Three days before the fight, Marcus Vance played his final, desperate card.
It happened on a rainy Thursday afternoon.
Sarah and I were walking out of the grocery store near our house, carrying two bags of lean chicken, sweet potatoes, and electrolyte water for the final weight cut.
Two men in dark windbreakers stepped out from between two parked delivery vans, blocking our path to the Subaru.
One of them was Jake Reynolds.
He wasn't wearing his compression collar anymore. His neck was thick, swollen with water retention, his jaw covered in cystic acne that screamed of a massive, black-market steroid cycle rushed over the last three weeks. His eyes were wide, twitching, the pupil dilation giving away a cocktail of stimulants and unchecked panic.
The second man was Marcus Vance’s personal enforcer, a scarred heavyweight named Miller who had spent six years in federal prison for witness intimidation.
"Lily," Jake said, his voice deep, raspy, chemically altered. "We need to talk about the contract."
I pushed Sarah behind me with my left arm, resting my right hand flat against the grocery cart. "You have thirty seconds to clear this parking lot before I put your other shoulder through the asphalt, Jake."
Miller stepped forward, unzipping his windbreaker just enough to reveal the black polymer grip of an autoloader tucked into his waistband.
"Nobody's fighting here, Mrs. Carter," Miller said, his voice flat, professional, and chillingly quiet. "Mr. Vance just wants you to understand the script for Saturday night."
He pulled an envelope from his pocket and dropped it into the front of my shopping cart.
"That's fifty thousand cash," Miller said. "Non-traceable. You take the walk into the arena. You give the fans two minutes of entertaining movement. In the second round, Jake catches you with a clean liver shot. You go down, you stay down through the count, and the referee stops the contest for medical caution."
Jake leaned in, grinning with chemically induced mania. "You get to walk away healthy, Lily. You get the charity money for your dead brother, and I get my dojo back. Everyone wins."
I looked down at the envelope of dirty money sitting on top of my sweet potatoes.
Then I looked up at Miller's cold, dead eyes.
"And if I refuse?" I asked softly.
Miller glanced sideways at Sarah, who was standing behind my hip, her fingers clenched into tiny, white-knuckled fists.
"Accidents happen during weight cuts, Mrs. Carter," Miller said quietly. "Houses catch fire. Brakes fail on old Subarus. A pretty little girl like that could slip on the wet stairs at middle school and never walk right again. Mr. Vance just wants to make sure everyone stays safe."
The world went completely, terrifyingly still.
The rain tapping against the plastic grocery bags sounded like stones falling on a coffin.
I didn't reach for Miller. I didn't shout.
I took half a step forward, closing the distance until Miller could see the reflection of his own gun in the pupils of my eyes.
"Miller," I whispered.
My voice was so low, so stripped of human fear, that the two-hundred-and-forty-pound felon actually blinked, his hand twitching involuntarily away from his waistband.
"I have buried my brother," I said, every syllable carved out of ancient, subterranean granite. "I have buried my career. I have lived thirteen years in the dark, and there is not a single room in hell that terrifies me. If you or Marcus Vance come within a hundred yards of my daughter again, I won't call the police. I will hunt you through this city like a wounded animal, and there is not enough steel in Milwaukee to keep me off your throat."
Miller stared at me. He had spent his entire life bullying street punks and small-time debtors, men who begged and bargained.
He had never stood in front of someone who had looked death in the face and decided it was an acceptable price for victory.
His mouth opened, but no words came out. He took half a step backward, his boots slipping on the wet asphalt.
"Take the money, Jake," Miller muttered, not taking his eyes off me. "Let's go."
Jake looked between Miller and me, his steroid-fueled bravado crumbling into confused panic. He snatched the envelope from the cart and backed away toward their sedan, nearly tripping over the curb.
I watched them pull out of the lot, their tires hissing against the rain.
Then I turned to Sarah.
She was pale, but she wasn't crying. Her chin was up, her eyes burning with an unshakeable, fierce resolve that made her look twenty years older.
"Mom?" she asked.
"Yeah, Bug?"
"Don't tap him out in the first round," Sarah said, her voice clear and hard as diamonds. "Make him suffer."
May you like
I reached out, smoothed back her wet hair, and smiled.
"That's the plan, sweetheart."
