Dull pain throbs through my back, my legs. I hear the limousine drive off, but my head is spinning from hitting the ground. Blood drips off my chin.
The hardest hits I’ve ever taken in the cage don’t compare to this, but I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to find a way to get back to Dee.
I roll over, see Glass kneeling beside me. He takes the gun out of my hand, unloads it in front of me, then pulls back the slide. The bullet in the chamber is spit out, clinks on the concrete floor.
Then he smiles nastily at me, flashing gold teeth.
“Is this the first time you’ve ever been on the ground with your opponent above you, Duncan?” he asks. “I don’t recall ever seeing you in this position. It’s sad. Such a short fighting prime.”
I try to get up, wince, rub my rib cage.
“I wouldn’t move,” he says. “Don’t know if you’ve broken any bones. Broken rib might pierce your lung, kill you right here.”
I control my anger, and instead focus on my body. I shut my eyes, listen to the pings of pain pulsing up my nervous system.
I wiggle my toes, move my legs. Nothing feels wobbly, out of place. Then I suck in a breath of air, rub my hands down one side of my ribs and count. I do the other side, count. Nothing broken. Nothing misaligned. Everything is there where it should be.
I touch my head, feel the cut, my hand comes away sticky and red.
“Don’t worry, it’s not deep,” Glass says, taking a fistful of my hair and jerking my head to the side. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a handkerchief, and presses it against the wound. “But we should stop the bleeding.”
“Where did you take Dee?” I ask.
“Don’t worry. She’ll be safe. She’s my daughter, Duncan. Family is everything. I would never hurt my own daughter.”
I grimace, push back from him, sit up against the pillar. I see the glint of gunmetal. He’s taken out his own gun. It’s a huge revolver.
“This’ll take your head clean off,” he says, jamming the barrel under my chin. “Your neck will just be a bloody stump if I pull this trigger. I’ll keep your head, too, put it in a jar of that preserving liquid, keep it in my office, you fucking prick.”
I look into his eyes, force my racing heart to calm, then give him a big, bloody-mouthed grin. “You said you had something special planned for me, Glass?”
“Oh, yes,” he says, sneering at me. “After all I did for you, Duncan. Look at what you’ve become. I should have known it would all be a waste. But now I’m going to have a grandson. I don’t need you anymore.”
I widen my eyes.
“Of course I know it’s a boy, you dumb fuck. You think we couldn’t get to a fucking obstetrician? I also know you’re the father, as if that wasn’t obvious. You defiled my daughter under my own roof after I rescued you, you fucking mongrel,” he says, venom in his voice. “You fucking dog, you fucking dirty piece of shit. You put shame on my family; you gave me no choice.”
“You shame yourself,” I say.
“There is one consolation. With my genes in the bloodline, and yours? My grandson will be a champion fighter. I’ll make him the best there ever was.”
“You can’t outrun your history,” I tell him. “You’ll always be the prize-fighter who couldn’t. Your legacy can never change.”
“Youth!” Glass barks, looking toward the white Mercedes. “So fucking stupid. Come on, get up.”
He steps backward, gestures at me to get to my feet with the gun. I climb up slowly, back against the pillar. My chest feels like it is on fire, like I’ve been drowning in boiling water.
“Good, good,” Glass says. “You’re still in fighting shape.”
I narrow my eyes at him. Fighting shape?
It clicks. The huge man, something special planned.
Glass is going to make me fight the brute, and in this condition, I’ll probably lose.
“One last fight, eh?” Glass says. “For old time’s sake.”
“Nobody betting on this one.”
“Oh, it’s not for me. Well, that’s a lie. It is for me. But it’s for Deidre, too.”
I nod, calm myself down even more. Good. If he’s going to take me to her, then that just simplifies things. It’s a long shot, but I have to play it.
“You’re going to make her watch?”
“Bullock over here is from Ukraine. He’s something of a legend over there. I can’t pronounce his real name so I gave him that nickname. I was going to call him Bruticus, but then I realized he kind of looks like a fucking bull, doesn’t he?”
“He probably prefers his own name, Glass.”
“Big fucking head, might as well have horns. Bullock.” He nods, sucks on his upper lip for a moment. “What a good name. I’m proud of that one. And his balls! This man has some big fucking balls on him. He ain’t afraid of nothing.”
I turn to the huge man now sitting in the Mercedes. The two-door sports car looks comically small around him.
“He’ll break you,” Glass says. “He’ll snap every bone in your fucking body. He’ll tear your vertebrae from each other. Then, while you’re still barely alive, I’ll fucking kill you. The last thing you see will be my face before you go to hell for what you’ve done to my daughter.”
I lick my lips, grin at him. “The devil will be a welcome sight compared to your ugly mug.”
Glass bursts out laughing. “You always were a little crazy, you know that, Duncan? I liked that about you.” He points toward the Mercedes. “In the back.”
I walk around, wary of the huge revolver pointed straight at my head, and open the passenger side door. I move the seat forward, climb into the tiny back seats, and Glass gets in after. I’ve got to lift my legs up onto the seat.
“To the school, Bullock,” he says. “We have an audience waiting.”
The drive is short. Glass takes me to some high school in the suburbs. Once we stop, he meets my eyes in the rearview mirror, and a flash of lightning makes his shine like a demon’s.
“It’s so hard to find a good fighting surface in the streets,” he says, sneering. “We’re going to do this right.”
I’m ripped from the car by Glass, and I hold onto my chest, each breath sending throbbing pain right down to my toes. The cold rain is refreshing, and I look up for a moment, let some of it wet my eyes.
I shake free of his hand, and he raises the gun and points it at me. Rainwater pours off the tip of the barrel. “Walk.”
“Where?”
“Inside the school.”
I look at the front entrance, and there see the glass inlaid in the door shattered. Frank. I push open the unlocked door, and we walk down a school corridor – something only distantly familiar to me – past lockers and classrooms.
“Find the gym,” Glass orders. “We’ll need some space.”
I look up at the hanging signage, take a right turn, and then we step outside briefly before coming to the gymnasium. It’s two indoor basketball courts side-by-side, with bleachers surrounding them.
Where is Dee? I blink my eyes rapidly, adjusting to the darkness, before I spot her at the far end, sitting on the bleachers, Frank right behind her. He’s got a gun pressed into her back.
I grit my teeth, feel my blood boil.
“Move!” Glass barks.
Dee meets my eyes. They’re wide, shiny, scared. Her eyes go from me to Bullock, and it dawns on her what is about to happen. I stare into her eyes, shake my head a little. I hope she knows the message I’m trying to convey to her.
Don’t do anything stupid! Protect the baby!
Glass gestures at me with the gun to walk into the middle of the nearest basketball court. So I do, stand at half-court.
Bullock starts to remove his jacket, unbuttons his shirt and takes it off. He’s wearing nothing underneath, and when I see the disciplined lines of his body, I realize he’s built like a tank.
There’s no fucking outmuscling this guy.
“Fight,” Glass says to me, gesturing at Bullock. The huge man drops into a stance, starts to circle me. I watch him, then look back at Glass.
“I said fight!” Glass shouts, and he pulls the trigger on his gun. The bang is deafening, bounces around the gym, and the bullet splinters wood three feet from me.
“Damn it, Glass!” I roar, advancing on him, but he lifts the gun to my head. I stop in my tracks.
“Fight,” he says. “I’m eager to see you lose for once.”
I turn around, see Bullock approach me, skipping lightly on his feet. He’s leading with his right – he’s a southpaw. A left-hander. I’ve only fought two really good left-handers before, and they were tough. The timing is different, the positioning, everything.
I’m in no fucking state to fight.
I take off my jacket and pull off my shirt, throw it all onto the hardwood. The last thing I need is to give him something to grab onto, to tug me around by, to strangle me with.
“Come on you big bastard,” I growl at him, lifting my hands, getting into my stance. I can’t think of anything else to do at the moment. I’ll beat this fucking brute into the ground and then I’ll get after Glass. At least it’ll be one less man to deal with.
“You come,” he says to me.
He curls his fingers in front of me, beckons me. I straighten up, get out of my stance, laugh at his cockiness.
Bullock takes the bait. He lunges, a double hop, left foot out like a cobra ready to strike. I slap his foot, use my upright stance – my body-weight imbalance – to lead my spin around him. I almost fall, my body at forty-five degrees as I pivot, but regain my balance and throw an elbow into the back of his head.
That’s a big no-no in the cage, even in underground, but fuck fighter’s etiquette.
He stumbles forward, holding onto his head, turning his neck left and right. I hear his vertebrae click as pockets of air between his bones are released.
“You come,” I say to him, beckon with my fingers, flash him a grin.
“Get him, Bullock!” Glass shouts. He’s circling us manically, baring his teeth. The prospect of a beat down obviously gets him excited.
Bullock approaches me more carefully now. He’s dancing on his feet, shifting his weight back and forth in quick rhythm. He does it so he can easily switch pivot foots to dodge or counter, but I turtle up, lift my hands protectively, gaze at him from the gap between my two arms like a boxer.
Glass should recognize this, the fucking bastard.
“Get him!” Glass yells again, forcing Bullock to charge.
Bullock tests a jab, I sidestep it. He tries again, again, this time feints but I see it coming. His right jabs, his left swings wide for a hook. I dodge the jab, duck the hook, thump him in the gut with a quick one-two, then send a heel right onto his kneecap.
He drops to one knee, and I lift my own, trying to catch him on the chin, knock him out. But he sees it coming, forms a net with his interlocked fingers to catch my knee, then twists.
I slap against hardwood, my whole body pivoted like I was a mere fucking garden rake. Fuck, this guy is strong.
He tries to clamber on top of me, tries to get his arm around my neck, but I twist out, roll backward over my head onto my feet, and I’m up faster than he is.
I swing a kick at his head; he takes the full impact. Any other fighter and he’d be out, but Bullock just grunts, gets to his feet, rubs blood from his mouth.
I mimic his move, double-hop, except this time I go southpaw. I hop with my right, kick with my left, he doesn’t anticipate it.
He takes it on the other side of his head, right against his ear, and his brain’s automatic response to the impact is to relax every muscle in his body. His legs give out, he falls back down, and I clamber on top of him, get his neck into the nook of my arm, hold on to my fist, and pull.
Bullock throws elbows wildly behind him, catching me in the ribs again and again. I wince, hold on, and when he tries to get up I stab my heel into his calf over and over, numbing the muscle so he can no longer use it.
“You lost this one, you big fuck,” I growl into his ear. I heel-kick his other calf muscle, then aim for his ankle on the one leg he’s carrying both of our weight. It gives, bends grotesquely to the side, and he flops over. I wrap up his legs in my own, pull his legs back, stretch him out, leverage his own bodyweight against him, tightening my chokehold.
I choke him with all the motherfucking strength I have left in my body. He’s gasping for air, his eyes are bloodshot, his lips are turning blue.
He’s tapping the hardwood rapidly out of habit, but this isn’t a fucking cage fight, and I’m not going to let go of this fucking beast.
“Fuck you,” I breathe. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
The world is white-hot around me. My skin feels on fire. Something distantly is telling me to let go or he’s going to die, but all I want is to choke this motherfucking cunt, choke the fucking life out of him for threatening my family, for—
His words echo through my head: I have family.
I let go, throw him away from me in disgust. He lies, curled up on the floor, sucking in lungfulls of air.
He’s not the one I should be fighting. He’s only being made to do this, just like me. Glass is holding his family above his head, just like me.
I get up, rub my side. I’m sure he cracked a rib with one of those thunderous elbows.
“There,” I say to Glass, who looks astonished. His eyes are wide and his mouth open. His gold teeth glint. “One last fight, right?”
I start moving toward him slowly, knowing that I have to close the distance between me and him, knowing that I need to get myself to within arm’s reach of that fucking gun.
I glance up at Dee, meet her eyes. She’s signing me something with her fingers. She lifts her thumb up, extends her forefinger, then darts her eyes toward her side.
No! I shake my head at her, hope to God she can see my eyes, see what I mean: Do not try to get Frank’s gun!
“Stay, boy,” Glass says, lifting his revolver again, pointing it at me.
I freeze on the spot, not having come close enough to him yet to even attempt to reach for the weapon. I know I’m quicker than Glass, and I know I could do it, hold it down, if I was just a few feet closer.
“You thought you could find someone better than me, Glass?” I taunt him. “You thought, what, that I wouldn’t fight the best I ever fucking fought when you’ve got a gun to the mother of my child?” I bellow the last words at him, and I see his whole body jolt.
He looks past me at Bullock, and I turn to follow his line of sight. The huge man is getting up, rubbing the deep-purple bruise on his neck. He is one tough son of a bitch.
I hear the sound of metal, snap my head back to Glass to see him holding a butterfly knife. He lifts it up in front of me. “Remember this, Duncan?”
It was the knife I took from Danny, which Glass then took from me. It was the very first time I met Johnny fucking Marino.
It was the day that changed my life, that led to me meeting Dee.
He tosses it to Bullock, who catches it mid-air, then carefully opens it up.
“Fight,” Glass says.
“You dirty fuck!” I bark. “This ain’t no fucking fight anymore.”
“Fight,” he tells me, pointing the gun at my left leg. “Before I decide to handicap you even more.”