The wind was knocked out of me and I thought I’d rather get punched a thousand times in the head than one good one right in the stomach. I managed to tie his arms up enough that he wasn’t able to keep on punching me, but I saw his friend about to re-enter the fight already, and I still couldn’t breathe.
This was about to get really bad for me.
Sarina
There was nothing in Ryan’s file linking him to the Cannibals street gang, so this was something to put in the report, at the very least. If it was them that was in charge of the manufacture and distribution of F in the city, it would have actually surprised me though.
The street gangs, of which the Cannibals were the undisputed Kings of Shit Mountain in Highston, operated on a lower level than the older, more organized, and better-funded Acardi family. It was hard to imagine they had the equipment and know-how to produce a product like F on the kind of scale the department was starting to uncover.
Still, if the rumors were true, The F King was one man, and if he decided to make a deal with the Cannibals, then that might be all it took, depending on who he was. So why in the hell were these two fighting Ryan? Did he sell somewhere he wasn’t supposed to sell? Turf dispute?
If only I could have heard what they were saying over the music, but the first thing Ryan had done was pull them out of earshot. Whatever it was, it sure went south quickly.
Ryan more or less held his own against the two of them by handling them one at a time, but once he caught a punch flush in the stomach, it looked like he wouldn’t be able to stave the first one off before the second rejoined the fight.
The second gang member had something in his hand. It looked like this was about to get nasty.
I’d been told in my brief that the men in this world liked their women to be seen and not heard, candy for the arm and the eye and out of the way of the men’s business. Ryan already thought I was acting unusual, and if I stepped into a fist fight with a Cannibal, I’d be acting even less like the kind of woman who could quietly slip into his network.
On the other hand, my investigation was pretty much up shit creek if he got killed within an hour of my meeting him. I grabbed the bottle of Champagne by the neck and pulled it out of the ice bucket.
It seemed like my heart had been working overtime ever since I’d first laid eyes on Ryan. As I approached the three of them, only a few steps behind the second gang member as he rejoined the fight, I told myself that this was all for the sake of my job.
And I didn’t want to see Ryan get hurt. That was the truth bubbling under the surface. The feel of his hands and his eyes on me was more exciting than any drug he might be peddling, and more exciting than I should have let it be, if I had any choice.
Arriving only a second after Ryan became outnumbered, I swung the bottle with everything I had in an overhead arc, bringing it down on the skull of the second Cannibal. The bottle shattered, spraying all four of us with glass and Champagne.
I christen this ship the S.S Fucked Investigation!
The heavily tattooed man went straight to the floor, hitting it even before all the green shards of glass and alcoholic spray, and a butterfly knife clattered to the ground next to him. Ryan and his remaining opponent looked at me incredulously, before the gang member’s expression changed. His face was a shrine to pure rage, with his bloodied nose as a high altar.
He took a wild swing at me, which I ducked, and I landed a jab on his chin while he was still off-balance. He swung with the other hand, and I ducked again. Better to miss the bus than stand in front of it.
I landed another jab to his chin, rocking his head back just as Ryan caught his breath and hit him with a harder punch than I could muster, sending him sprawling backwards. The Cannibal groaned for a second, and that was when I realized the music had stopped and everybody in the club was looking at us.
He was just crawling to his feet when Ryan punted him in the head and it was lights out. In the aftermath of the fight, libraries were quieter than this nightclub. I wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody shushed me because of how loud my heart sounded in my ears.
Everybody was looking at us like we might pull out guns if they moved a muscle. Security was nowhere in sight, and the lights kept on dancing as if the music hadn’t stopped. It was the most surreal moment of my life by a long shot.
Ryan’s eyes darted from the two bodies on the floor, to the knife, to me, and then through everything again as he tried to take it all in himself. Murmurs started around the edges of the room as people started to regain their nerve and test the waters.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Ryan said.
I nodded and he grabbed my hand, leading me out of the room like we were escaping a bank robbery. The colder outside air hit me when we came through the doors and blew away some of the cobwebs that seemed to have entangled my brain, but not all.