A Fighting Chance (23 page)

“You okay?” I shout.

“Depends on your definition,” she says with a wavering smile but it falls quickly, and a repulsed look replaces it. “Wait…do you hear that? Is that barking?”

The hair
s on my arms bristle and I frown, too. “Yeah…they do dog fights here some nights.” Taking my hand again, she leads us to the wall where other fighters have congregated. Once we’re out of the mass, she pulls water, gloves, and hand wraps out of the bag. When she’s in a standing position, she wipes her forehead with her arm, and I notice just how much I’m sweating, too. It’s already dripping off both of us.

I stick my ear
buds in and Drake’s “Up All Night” flows out. “Last fight,” I say to Drew as she wraps my hands and wrists.

“Yeah. Mine. Not yours.”

“You’re really worried, huh?”

“Yes,” she admits. Her hands
shake as she secures the last loose end of the wrap. When her gaze collides with mine, even a room this dim can’t camouflage her intense anxiety.

“About tonight
?”

“About leaving you here,
period, and I’m afraid I’ll change my mind every time I focus on it, so I start thinking about those ugly shutters on the Stetson house. I’m going to rip them off as soon as I get back. They said we can make improvements while we’re staying there.”

“Well, to be honest, the
whole
house is ugly as fuck, Drew…”

“Really ugly.” She laughs and her mood lightens. “But
the rent is cheap, and Buck and I are determined to make it a home.” Right now, everything in me wants to beg her to stay. But she needs to go, even though just the thought of her leaving is mincing my heart.

“It’ll be a great home,” I add as I caress
her cheek. We’ve been good with each other the last few days, joking around and being faux-platonic. It’s almost like what happened a week ago didn’t happen. But I still want to kiss her every time her face is near mine. I just don’t try.

“Do you remember a lot about the Stetson house?”
she asks.

“Some...”

“Then, how would you make it better? If money didn’t matter.”

“Bay windows in the dining room for starters. The back of the house is facing east
, I think, so beautiful sunrises. It would give you a place to put all the plants you insist on killing…” I pause when she laughs. “Or even a window seat. You always preferred natural light. With that huge backyard, you could probably put in a gazebo, and it would give you a place to play guitar.”

“T
hat sounds amazing,” she says. I shrug, trying to act nonchalant about my description, but I’ve designed Drew’s dream house in my head a million times. For some reason it feels like she knows as she stares at me in silence, and my heart bangs around in my chest cavity. Her look gets wistful and she opens her mouth, as if to speak, but I see the confidence to say what she is planning to say leave her eyes.

“
How do you feel about tonight?” she asks instead, massaging my shoulders. Heat from where she’s touching me sprints down into my shorts, and I concentrate as hard as I can on anything else. My mind conjures up a factory that slaughters puppies.
Or dog fighting.
Instant limp dick.

After nearly whooping Carlos’s ass, I feel untouchable, invincible. And if Drew weren’t here I probably would’ve signed up for more fights. “Good. I feel like tonight’s gonna be really good.” This is
a fact and not a hope.

Her hands
move up to my chin. “I want you to call me and update me on how things are going, okay?” I want her to get back to her regular life and never have to worry about me again, even if that desire is at war with how much I need her to stay.

B
efore I can respond, Sandrine saunters over to where we are. Tonight she’s dressed in gray slacks and a thin, dark purple blouse with a peek of her bra showing through. “I checked you in.” The loud murmuring around us shifts to a booming roar, and people rush to the right. “Killian just got here,” Sandrine explains, referring to the most well known opponent I’m fighting tonight. Daniel Killian, a former college football player, was once predicted to be an NFL first-round pick, but he blew his chances when he was expelled from school and never returned. I remember him best from his UFC days, but he’s an undefeated Durango cartel fighter now. He’s the fucking Energizer Bunny on Red Bull in the cage on account of a voracious appetite for meth, and he has a fondness for being a dickhead. His drug problem, and the more than one occasion when he failed to release an opponent from a submission after the other guy tapped out, got him a lifetime ban from the UFC. He was basically blacklisted by the whole licensed fighting industry after that. He doesn’t have that problem here, though.

“I’m gonna go scope him out. See what kind of mood he’s in tonight,” Drew says.

“Knock yourself out.” I’m uneasy about her roaming this place on her own, and my nerves fire up when she joins the stream of people.

“I’ve been getting so many calls about you. People really want to know where you’re fighting next, especially because Garcia is out for your blood,” Sandrine says.

“Oh? Why?” I say, smirking and knowing
exactly
why.

She
rolls her eyes at my arrogance. “You embarrassed him at
Las Sirenas
. I’ve heard Ramón Vega is unhappy, which is bad for Carlos and, ultimately, bad for you.” She taps away on her cell phone. “I hear he’s arranging upcoming fights. Miguel said you were interested. Actually, he’s incredibly excited about it. You
really
want in?”

“How much?”

“Bigger than both your fights tonight, combined.” Total, this is a low five-figure potential win. “Really decent five-figures for sure. Beat Killian and fifteen will be the minimum come fight night, and I’ll definitely negotiate for higher.” That’s good because after I’ve paid her, Miguel, Drew, and myself from the winnings, it feels like we’re not doing much toward the goal.

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

“Are you sure?” The edge of her mouth ticks up and her eyes narrow in uncertainty. “If you’re going up against a guy like Carlos, you cannot back out of the fight once a deal is made. Cull fights, especially of that caliber, are highly anticipated. You don’t want to piss these people off. They kill for way less. It’s your ass on the line but, more importantly, it’s
my ass.
Don’t fuck with my reputation or my money. Are we clear? Is ‘yes’ your final answer?”

I want to make a
Who Wants to be a Millionaire
joke, but Sandrine doesn’t strike me as someone who’s ever in a laughing mood.
“I said yeah, didn’t I?” I take off my shirt and shoes and stuff them into the bag. “Hey, how much do you know about Cocodrilo, anyway? Like his background.” I feel a worrisome connection to Carlos and I can’t seem to shake it. I don’t think we’re kindred spirits, but I know the look of a man when something beyond the pure love of fighting is driving him. With him, it’s the
way
he fights, that desire to cause pain, the urge to punish. I’m certain a lot of us get into the cage because we’re angry—at ourselves, at the world—and we punch people because we can’t actually fight the root of our real problems.

Sandrine nods slowly. “Yeah, I know some. Truth and myth have come together and created a legend, but I’ll tell you what I’ve heard. He’s Francisco Acevedo’s nephew. His mother was Acevedo’s baby sister, and she was married to a man with tie
s to very brutal people in Juárez. Those ties soured apparently, and the whole family was terrorized one night—the parents, two teen brothers, three teen sisters, and Carlos. The women were raped repeatedly before they were killed. Everyone was bound and shot execution-style.

“
Carlos was the youngest, just a kid, and the only survivor. He was the only one without a headshot. He was shot in the abdomen. Some say the
sicario
couldn’t bring himself to shoot a kid that young, point blank, and he thought Garcia would just die from bleeding out. The thing with those guys is that they usually keep the original target alive the longest so that his dead family is the last thing he sees before he’s killed. But because Carlos survived, he was the one who ended up seeing his family slaughtered. He lay there for hours before neighbors came and found him. Acevedo reportedly took him in after that and raised him.”

“Shit…”

“I know. I can’t fathom what that does to a child.” She shakes her head in sympathy. “And then Acevedo probably exploited whatever was brewing inside him from the trauma and turned him into Cocodrilo, instead of getting him help and allowing him to heal. I’m sure witnessing the murder of his whole family was easy fuel, too. I heard Acevedo developed his training tactics for his fighters by researching guerrilla groups like the Colombian FARC and Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. He likes for them to be as ferocious as possible.

“
He had a knack for this business, you know. It’s why El Sindicato has made a killing off these fights. Acevedo found disillusioned, angry, broken young men, who wanted money, power, fame, and a reason to get up in the morning, and he gave them direction and something to live for. Ramón Vega is just carrying on the legacy. The one thing I will say about Vega, which is completely different from Acevedo, is that he covers his ass by doing good for impoverished communities. He has made Carlos a hero in their eyes, too—the orphaned, near-death child rises and becomes something great. Every young boy in a village or slum doesn’t have to join a cartel; now he can fight for one, instead. And Ramón Vega has made
himself
an even bigger hero. Any time there’s a hurricane, he brings in construction workers to repair homes and he hosts a food and bottled water drive. That’s probably why if Vega ever has to go underground, those people would protect him. He has so many in Mexico City in his pocket.
Mexico
, probably.”

My heart settles back into its regular rhythm when I see Drew coming toward us. “He’s high and moving like a jackhammer tonight,” she says. Standing between Sandrine and me,
she takes my hands. “Look, he likes to go for the kidneys. A lot. He’s put four guys in the hospital so far, and they are probably all peeing blood. And then there’s the kicking. He loves kicks to the head. His Achilles’ heel is ending up on the ground. He can get out of holds, but it takes him awhile to figure out how to do it.”

“How do you know all that?” Sandrine asks, putting her hand on her hip and cocking an eyebrow at Drew.

“I always know what I need to know, and I’d learn an entire encyclopedia of information on a fighter, if it meant keeping Jess safe and prepared,” Drew says matter-of-factly, never breaking eye contact with Sandrine.

Sandrine looks back and forth between us. “I don’t get you two.” She waves her hand in the air.

“Old friends,” Drew says.

Sandrine
huffs out a skeptical burst of laughter. Okay, so she actually does do that. Wrinkles form between her eyebrows. “But you’re in love with each other.”

I glare at her.
Subtle.
“Old friends,” I repeat, ignoring how her words push a chill down my spine. Drew clears her throat and puts some space between us.

“Sure. Ah
, well, it’s not for me to get, I suppose.” Sandrine sighs, the will to argue leaving her. She glances at her watch. “Shit. I should go before the doors shut. I haven’t been inside for one of these things in a long time. You guys remember the rules, right? No one leaves until the last fight is over. Raúl will get your money to me if you win. He already wired the amount to where you asked for it to be sent.”

But she only takes a few ste
ps before she pivots back and aims a dark look at us. “When Miguel first told me he had someone, an American, and a girl, interested in fights, I expected some nasty druggie and his junkie-bitch girlfriend—no offense—because that’s the type of Americans who come to me. People willing to do just about anything for their next fix, including getting their asses beat in public. But you two are just kids, pretty stupid kids if you ask me, and I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to figure out how the hell you got yourselves into this mess. I really hope there’s an endgame here…” Her stoic expression fizzles suddenly and compassion sinks in. “It’s easy to get stuck.
In this.
You don’t think you will but it can happen. Remember that
you don’t belong here.
You two don’t belong here.” In a flash, her face is stone again before she turns and walks away. Once the crowd swallows Sandrine, Drew and I exchange looks. Heh. She is not as indifferent as she seems.

A
wall of people closes in around us, and Nico Nuñez, another popular guy I’m fighting tonight, steps through. He’s probably about my age and he’s also about my size, with a completely shaved head, and tats on his face and torso. Members of his entourage flank him, and they’re big guys who soar over both of us and who are covered in some of the same tattoos that he is. I clench my fists at my sides, but he breaks into a warm smile.

“Qué pasa, Jesse
?” he says, holding out his hand. It takes me a moment to relax, but I shake it. He doesn’t try to crush my fingers, and he leaves me with a regular handshake before he swivels toward Drew.