Submission Specialist(Still a Bad Boy #2)(57)

Fuck. That was ten seconds gone already and all I’d succeeded in doing was tipping my hand about what little strategy I had.

Brenton looked as smug as he had during the promotional spots, talking about how if I knew what was good for me then I’d do my best to get the fight on the ground rather than try to stand with him, a superior striker. With my back against the fence, Southgate peppered me with a combination of punches to the body and around the head, only one of which made it through my guard and partially landed after glancing off my shoulder.

He capped it off with a leg kick that I checked, before I managed to push him back and escape to the side. Thirty fucking seconds.

My opponent immediately came after me and I felt a surge of hope. He thought his goading had worked. He thought I was committed to standing with him and that elusive knockout… but if I could get him to the ground, there was still time for a submission.

I stepped backwards… and… he chased me! Faking a punch that brought his hands up to guard his head, I launched into a double-leg takedown fast enough that I caught even the great Brenton Southgate off guard.

He tried to scramble backwards, tried to keep his balance long enough to brace himself against the fence, but I drove forward, steering him to the side just enough that he missed it and landed heavily on his back with me on top of him. The crowd went wild, but I could barely hear them over the thundering in my ears.

I spun to what was known as a north-south position on top of him, trapping one of his arms and forcing it across his own throat as I continued to spin. He tried to escape, tried to get me out of position as I locked my arm behind his head, putting more pressure on his neck.

It was in! The submission was locked in! Holy fucking shit. I arched my body up, pushing off the mat with my feet and driving my shoulder into the other side of his neck as he tried to twist and take the pressure off.

I squeezed with everything I had, hard enough that if he was any less well-conditioned than he was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if his head popped right off. With my face burning bright red and my eyes watering with the strain, I turned my head to seek out the clock.

Fifty seconds.

Twang!

I grunted in pain as some muscle or ligament seemed to snap between my neck and shoulder, but only redoubled my efforts to squeeze the consciousness out of my opponent. By this time he had to know he was fucked. It was over.

Fifty five seconds.

“Tap! Tap you cunt!” I screamed.

Fifty eight seconds.

“Check him! He’s out! Fucking check him!” I shrieked at the ref, who moved about as quickly as molasses.

One minute.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck no.

Even the voice of my internal monologue spoke in complete agony, drawing out the last word into a cry that sounded almost insane. I had failed, and the love of my life might have just ceased to exist.

Half-blind with grief that welled up from the pit of my stomach, I desperately tried to funnel it into some kind of action. I let go of Southgate and sprang to my feet, heading to the edge of the cage and vaulting over the side before I had any conscious thought about what to do.

It wasn’t until I was literally outside the event center that I had a plan, if you could be so charitable as to call it that. Go to the Bertolini mansion and kill as many of them as I could before I died. That was it.

If Skylar got sick, I got sick. That’s what I told her, and now it didn’t matter if Jace had time to work his fucking magic or not. It was time to get sick.

Some asshole on a custom-painted motorcycle with full matching protective gear was at the side of the road, posing for some giggling bitches. I ran over to them.

“Get off the bike.”

He flipped the visor up on his helmet and gave me a look up and down, then glanced at the chicks he was trying to impress.

“Sorry brah, no shirt, no shoes, no……. waaaaaaaah-oof!”

I grabbed him and sent the poser flying low and hard until he went head-first into the side of a taxi. He was lucky he was wearing a helmet.

The bike was brand new and state of the art. I almost went to drag the guy over and enlist him to start it for me before I got the right sequence of shit done and the bike, with “Arion” painted down the side, came to life with an unsatisfying whir.

It may have sounded like it was apologizing, but that motherfucker could move. Almost as fast as I could see them coming, each intersection was upon me, and I had to devote all the concentration I could muster to handling the space-age machine between my legs.

I welcomed the diversion, because this was the easy part. The hard part would come when I had to figure out how to take as many Mafiosos down with me as possible. The impossible part would come if I had to face the reality of Skylar’s death.