The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(62)

It was a gruesome mess in my head, no matter what.

I'd arrived home late last night to find the front door wide open and  Skylar's shoe rack knocked over, but the rest of the place seemed to be  undisturbed. I stared at that small mess for a fucking hour solid, only  to find something in the bathroom that brought me to the ground, where I  ended up passing out for a few hours.

It was still there on the floor when I woke up, having dropped out of my  hand. It was no hallucination brought on by stress. A home pregnancy  kit, still showing the double lines of a positive result.

Skylar had given herself to me, all the way, everything that she was.  She already gave me more than I deserved, and now she was carrying my  child. The words hadn't yet been invented for the things I would do to  the Bertolinis, and the Picollis.

When I stepped out of my front door in the morning, half delirious from  the stress and exhaustion, and sporting a pounding headache, I found a  little package on my doorstep, with a note from Jace.

‘Here's something to give you an edge tonight. People are calling it  ‘F-Pro', since it's based on that new drug ‘F' that's starting to take  over the market, but this is aimed at the sporting sector. It should  give you a hell of a kick. Good luck. J'

With whatever reasoning I had left, I decided not to take it. What  happened if I won the fight, but then failed drug-testing? Gavino and  his lackeys would slaughter Skylar. My life, my future.         

     



 

More to the point, my mind was already screwed up enough as it was. I didn't need speed, power or energy, I had all that.

I needed to see clearly. What Southgate was doing, any windows of  opportunity, every fucking move he made. Dealing with the side-effects  of "F" or "F-Pro" or whatever the fuck that green powder was, wasn't  going to give me what this fight required of me.

"Are you ready?" The ref asked Southgate, who nodded.

I braced myself, prepared to launch at the absolute worst person in the  entire fucking world I could have been facing in this situation. For the  sake of his family, I hoped I didn't fuck him up so bad that he died.  For the sake of Skylar, I couldn't afford to hold back.

Either way, I hoped I had enough in me to do this.

"Are you ready?"

I nodded.

"Alright let's do this! Fight!"

The ref swung his arm in a downward arc and I never even heard the bell.  I would have been halfway across the cage by the time the soundwaves  hit me.

Faking with a push-kick to Southgate's lead leg, I went for a  Superman-Punch instead. Until the last fraction of a second, I thought I  might just have done the impossible.

Shifting his weight to the side, my skull-caving punch whistled through  mostly thin air, maybe catching the very edge of his ear with my glove,  it was that fucking close. His knee came up and impacted my stomach with  a meaty thunk that had the crowd on its feet and screaming for more.

My momentum carried me past Southgate, and I caught myself against the  fence in his corner before spinning around with a backfist that also  missed. It did at least do the job of forcing him to pause, rather than  taking advantage of that knee he landed.

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.





Skylar





It was almost as if hell itself had been waiting for the signal from the  referee in the New Ashby event center. The bell rang and then the room I  was held captive in shook with an explosion.

The lights flickered for a second and the TV signal cut out, replacing  the feed from Austin's fight with nothing but static. A second after  that, I heard gunshots.

"What the fuck?" said Enrico.

"Come with me! Renato, watch this fuckin' whore," said Gavino.

The two Bertolinis swiftly exited the room, closing the door behind them  and leaving me with Renato, who cursed through his teeth. Outside, it  sounded like open warfare.

People screamed and shouted, footsteps sprinted all over the place, and  all the while the steady crackle of gunfire reported the scale of the  assault that must be happening out there. It sounded like pitched  battles were being waged on numerous fronts, some closer than others.

Renato pulled his own gun out and shoved it against my head. "Thehmufucka goh smmmtdo wihish, bich?" he asked.