Hawk

She knows more about the murder of that women’s MMA coach nine years ago than she’s telling me. She flinched and paled when I showed her the article, then froze completely while she read it. I’ve spent years getting information from people who’d rather not give it, so I know that reaction for what it is. Besides she can’t hide much. Every mood she’s in is plain on her face. When she’s focused and angry, she looks like a cat about to strike. When she’s embarrassed she blushes, and when she’s surprised or scared her gorgeous, grey-green eyes widen and she breathes with her lips parted. She does that when she’s turned on too.

This basic honesty of hers is plain in her videos and even more pronounced in real life. She’s like this wholesome, simple country girl, innocent and pure and unspoiled, and completely unlike any girl I’ve ever met, in this life or the one I was born into. I always preferred simple, salt-of the earth kind of people, like our housekeeper or my dad’s chauffer, or any of the other people who worked on his huge estate in Long Island. They raised me more than my father did, since he wasn’t around much, and my mother died when I was a baby. It’s them I missed the most when I left home, not my extended family or the rich arrogant friends I grew up with. Our family is as close to royalty as this country ever got, so my father can’t really be blamed for looking down on them, since it’s all he knows. But I knew early on I didn’t want to be a part of his world. Just as I knew early on that I want to be a part of Yanna’s. My father taught me his ways well though. I’ll lie when I need to, conceal things when it suits me, but I don’t like being lied to. I wish she’d just trust me.

I also wish I’d looked her up while she wasn’t in the middle of a tournament, because I’m starting to have a real hard time keeping it friendly and professional, distraction or not. Half the time when I’m with her, I’m thinking about grabbing her and showing her exactly why I’m willing to help her. I also want to give her every inch of the distraction she’s trying to avoid. The rest of the time, I’m thinking about having those plump pastel pink lips of hers wrapped around my dick. In between all that, there’s a tiny window where I’m thinking about gathering intel on the Russians for Cross.

That’s why I spent half the night setting up a tracking system for them. Our guys are following them, but only outside, since I told them to stay out of places where they’d stick out, which is inside most of the establishments these businessmen-wannabes hang out in. So I’ve been hacking various hotel and casino security systems, without much luck.

Vegas is locked up tighter than Fort Knox when it comes to security, and I’m not exactly on my A game these days, because all I do is think about fucking Yanna. It’s a weird sort of high, and not like anything I’ve ever experienced. I kinda like it, but it’s starting to get too much.

I did manage to hack the traffic cams, and later today, I’ll tell the guys to start putting GPS trackers on the Russians’ cars. That should be enough to at least tell us where they all are at any given moment.

Yuri, Mikhail and the rest of the inner circle, spent the last three nights partying it up at the Russian Room, a fancy upscale place where you can find most of the local Russian businessmen and gangsters on any given night. Even the whores in that place are all Russian. It’s a total cliché, but it makes my job easier.

I’ve been parked outside the place since six PM, waiting for Yuri or Mikhail to come out so I can personally follow them around for awhile. Yanna has her meet-and-greet until nine or ten, and I have Ink keeping an eye on her. He’s the only one I can trust not to ask too many questions, or go around telling everyone I have him trailing a gorgeous blonde. I plan to tell Cross about my arrangement with Yanna soon, but I wanna do that in a package with giving him good intel on them at the same time. I don’t have that yet.

All Russians do the same thing. It’s like they have a playbook or something. I don’t even have to be inside that place to know what’s going on. Vodka, cigars, sausages and gorgeous stripper/whores serving them in any way they want. The place is probably decorated like the restaurants in their country were about a century ago. I’m certain that at this very moment, there’s at least one fat man smoking a cigar and laughing too loud in there. My father called that guy the Igor. He was always complaining about all the traditional things he had to endure to close a deal with the Russians, and he took me along to some of the meetings when I got older. Some of his business was with the mob, since in Russia the legit is damn hard to separate from the criminal, and it’s all good business.

It’s boring sitting at this diner watching the place, but at least I get to eat real food. That healthy, unsalted crap Yanna eats all the time only goes so far. The sun’s starting to set now. Yuri and Mikhail are probably staying put in there for tonight, so I’ll have to follow them around some other night. I’ll stick around for another fifteen minutes then go meet Yanna. I wave the waitress over to pay, and call Gears at the same time.

“All ten of them are in there,” I say after I tell him where to meet me so he can take over. “I’m thinking they’ll stay put all night, so you won’t have much to do. But don’t take a nap or anything, because we need them watched 24/7.”

He grumbles something and he’s probably cursing me out, but this isn’t a vacation. We’re working now. Playtime comes after. And it’ll be easier once we get the reinforcements in tomorrow. I’d tell him all that, but he already knows it and he didn’t ask.

I hope to Christ Yanna gives me some playtime soon, because damn it, with every thought of her I have, it’s getting harder to keep my hands off her when I see her. I’m doing my best to keep it professional and distraction free like she wants, and I’m good when I’m at my best, but it ain’t gonna last much longer. I also know that.

I shoot her a text, asking if she’s already finishing up, but predictably don’t get a reply right away. I’ve sent her a couple of texts already, and always had to wait at least 30 minutes for a reply. She’s clearly really into this meet-and-greet and I wish I was there with her. In the audience, so I could ask her stuff. I want to know everything about her.

I call Ink to tell him I’m on my way and he can take off. But just as I hang up a black BMW pulls up in front of the restaurant. It’s the same one that met Yanna in the parking lot, I remember the license plate number, because I memorize that kinda thing automatically. It sits there for five minutes, then Yuri and Mikhail come out, followed by one of the bigger guys, whose name I don’t know. He’s just their bodyguard, though, I do know that. I’m about to call Ace back with this change of plans, since someone has to follow the Russians, but then realize it has to be me. I’ve done so little on this job it’s becoming a problem.

So I take off after them. Yanna won’t be done for another hour at least, and I doubt Yuri and Mikhail are going anywhere far.

About twenty minutes later I’m proven right about that. They pull into the parking lot in front of the community center Yanna rented for her meet-and-greet.

Yuri and Mikhail enter the building, while the bodyguard and driver stay in the car. I keep going past the building and park on the other side of it, behind some bushes. I stay out of sight as I approach the building from the side. The wall I’m facing is lined with big windows, and all the lights are on. The room is filled with more than a hundred of Yanna’s fans, but all I really see is the tight, scared look on her face, see her parted lips and know she’s frightened. Yuri and Mikhail are in the room too, flanking the exit.

I don’t like seeing her this scared, but I’m gonna let them do what they came here to do tonight without showing my face. It’s the only way to really know what they want from her. And I need to know that to prevent it.

* * *

Yanna

“Thanks for meeting with us, Yanna!” one of my guy fans yells when I ask if they have any more questions.

His online nickname is Skullcandy and he’s been following me since pretty much the day I started posting stuff about my life and this journey I’m on online. I’ve done meet-and-greets before, but only in NYC and Hoboken so my West Coast fans didn’t get a chance to meet me before tonight. One-hundred and twenty came, which is more than I expected, so the people who rented me the conference room of this community center let me use the cafeteria instead. It’s almost nine thirty and I should be wrapping up, although I really don’t want to go home yet. I so rarely get that feeling of having a family, but it’s strong tonight from seeing all these people who love me sitting here smiling. Well, I also get that feeling when me and Hawk are alone in my kitchen, but I’ve been ignoring that, since it makes no sense, and I have no time to get involved with a guy. When he’s not around I remember that. When he is, I remember very little. Mostly just my name.

“I couldn’t forget about my West Coast peeps, now could I?” I ask in answer. “And you’ll be seeing a lot more of me now that I’ve moved here. I think we should make meetings like this a regular thing, don’t you?”

The applause and woots of approval I get in answer to that question feels just about as good as watching those funny cat videos. Or being real close to Hawk with him smiling at me. It’s not like he’s the first attractive guy I’ve ever met. But he’s definitely the first I just can’t get out of my head. I wish he was here now, that would make this night even more perfect. I keep glancing at the door, waiting for him to walk in, since he said he’d be here by the end of the meet-and-greet, which was officially half and hour ago.

“You’ll win this tournament, I know you will! “Another of my fans yells, a girl called Black&WhiteLily.

When I first started making the videos, it was almost exclusively guys watching, but now it’s half and half, and I get daily emails from girls telling me how empowered I make them feel through my videos. I talk a lot about a woman’s role in traditional society, how in my birth country that’s even more pronounced than here in the US, especially in the countryside where I was born, and how I’m not that and never was. There are struggles involved if you’re a female MMA fighter, since it’s such a man’s sport, and I talk about those too, as well as just about anything that happens to me on a day to day basis. I never in my wildest dreams thought that what I was doing empowering, but here you go. And I couldn’t be happier that what I’m doing and saying has a positive impact on people.

“I have some seriously good opponents,” I reply. “It’s gonna be a tough one.”

“You can do it!” more than one of them say at the same time.

“I hope so,” I say.

“You’re always so modest,” Black&WhiteLily tells me and a lot of them nod in agreement.

“But I love that about you,” she adds right after. “I can’t stand stuck-up and arrogant people.”

That gets even more yells of agreement.

“Thanks!” I say once it dies down. “If I’m perfectly honest, I’m planning on winning this one! And I love you all for the support and love you’ve given me over the years. So I’m gonna do it for you too.”

It’s no lie. I’m gonna win for Dima first and foremost, because he was the one to give me this chance. But it will also be for my fans who gave me the support I needed to do this on my own without him, by watching my videos and telling me to keep at it, to keep going, giving me the kind of support you can only really get from family.

“You guys are my family, you know that, right?” I tell them, so moved by the positive energy and love in the room, that I absolutely must say it. But all that love and positivity is gone, replaced by cold black fear as two men walk in.

I saw the door opening while I spoke. I was sure it was Hawk finally coming to join us, and was also sure some of the love flooding my chest was because of that. But it wasn’t Hawk. It’s the guy from the audience at my first fight and the one who spoke to me in the parking lot. They’re wearing suits and that, together with their slicked back hair is making them completely out of place here. More than a few of my fans are turning in their seats, checking them out, and probably thinking the same thing.

Some of them are also looking at me like they think something’s wrong. It is. These two could be here to kidnap me. Or kill me like that Russian fighter in London from Hawk’s article. Where is he?

“Yanna, is something wrong?” Black&WhiteLily asks, turning from the two guys at the door to me.

I shake my head and tell my heart to stop beating so very fast.

“No, sorry, I just remembered I forgot to do something earlier,” I lie with the first thing that comes to mind. Although I did, technically speaking, forget something. I forgot to tell the cops who killed Dima before I left Moscow. Not that telling them was ever an option, but still, maybe I should’ve done it. Maybe these two guys wouldn’t be standing here and scaring the shit out of me now if I had.

“What was that?” one of my guy fans asks.

I laugh, although it’s the last thing I feel like doing, because the two Russians are staring at me like they’re about to come over and tell me to throw the next fight or else, right here and now.

Where the hell is Hawk?

But no, I’ve come this far without him, and I don’t need him to get me out of this. My two coaches are the only two guys I’ve ever depended on in my life and even that only to train me to be the best fighter in the world. I can handle the Russians on my own, I can handle anything on my own.

Even though that’s always been true for me, and even though I’ve faced worse things than two strange guys in a room full of my friends, I’m not completely sure of that. I don’t know if I can handle the mob on my own.

And as much as I try to conjure up the awesome mood I was in before they walked in, and joke and have fun with my fans again, all I’m seeing is Dima’s eyes lose the light of life. The memory is so alive I feel like I’m there now. Hawk should be here! I hired him to keep these thugs away from me, not so he can smile at me and eat my food and distract me with his smiles and the dirty things he says that make me feel alive like I haven’t in I don’t know how long.

But there’s no new text from him and he’s not replying to mine asking him where he is. The meet-and-greet is almost over and the Russians are showing no signs of leaving. I could sneak out the window in the bathroom then run back to my house, because I’m sure they’re parked next to my bike again, like they were the other night.

But that would mean leaving my bike and showing I’m afraid of them. I don’t want to do either of those things.

* * *

I’m waiting for you in the hall outside. Hawk’s text reads. The meet-and-greet is over. Most of the people already left, but some are still mingling, asking for selfies and wishing me luck in my fight tomorrow one by one. The lady who rented me the space is standing near the two Russians who are still leaning on the wall by the door, both of them staring at me with almost identical arrogant, half-smiles on their faces. She wants me to wrap this up, I can see that clearly in her face.

The Russians are in here. I text back, even though I feel like a coward writing it, but he is my bodyguard and he should be here by my side to escort me out of the room. Right?

Just come outside. It’ll be fine.

It’ll be fine? Will it really? Didn’t we agree that the only reason I let him shadow me and live at my house is so he can make damn sure it’s fine? As in trail me around like real bodyguards do. But I don’t write any of that, and I stop thinking it as soon as I realize just how whiny it sounds. Of course it’ll be fine. I’ve dealt with these men before, and I’ll do it again.

But I’m all tense as I wait for my fans to leave the room so I can too, and I’m afraid it shows on my face and in the curt way I’m talking to the ones who still want to shake my hand and wish me good luck. I’m very bad at hiding what I truly feel inside and right now, what I feel is that I want to get as far away as I can from the Russians as fast as I can.

The Russians, the lady and the two fans are all that’s left now.

And then it’s just me, the lady and the Russians.

I walk up to her, offer her my hand and thank her for renting me this space, but don’t stop to chat as I follow close behind Black&WhiteLily who was the last to leave. She starts chatting to me, telling me all about how she joined a gym recently, and how she’s not really getting the quality of training that she wants. It makes it easier to ignore the two men whose arrogant eyes are now piercing me.

“I’m sure you will in time,” I tell her, amazed at myself that I can actually follow our conversation given how rigid with fear I am. “They usually just need to see you’re serious about it. That’s how it works.”

She stops just inside the door, forcing me to stop too—right next to the Russians—and gives me a sour smile. I’m sure my face must look like I ate something sour too. “Mostly they just think I’m a lesbian, to be honest. I wish I lived in a big city. My small town really isn’t ready for female MMA fighters.”

I force a laugh and precede her out the door. “We’ll just have to force them to be ready.”

That’s what Dima always said to me, and the rest of the girls he trained. He was right.

“Yeah, damn straight!” she says and pumps her fist into the air as she stops again, just outside the door in the hall.

We’re past the Russians now, but I still feel their gaze on me. The hall is empty. Hawk’s not here!

“You are not going to say hello to us, Yanna?” the man who spoke to me in the parking lot the other night says to me in broken English. “We came here just like everyone else to talk.”

I tense and freeze, but don’t look at them. Instead I look up and down the hall, hoping to spot Hawk. But it’s just me and Black&WhiteLily and the two Russians here. She casts them an angry, suspicious look, but I don’t even turn to them.

“Do you want me to stay?” she asks me.

“No, go ahead, I know you have a bus to catch,” I tell her and force a smile. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

She gives the two guys another wary look, but then smiles at me, says goodbye and walks off. The door leading to the parking lot opens and closes behind her by the time I finally find the courage and strength to face the two Russians. I can handle this. I’ll have to since Hawk’s not here. The lady who rented me the room is still somewhere in the building, so I doubt the Russians will kill me right here. Plus, I’m sure there’s security cameras in this hall and I doubt they have the police bought here the way they do in Moscow, so I’m probably safe here. For now.

“What do you want from me?” I ask in Russian.

“Wow, check out that fierce look on her face. No wonder they call her a cat,” the guy says to the other one, and they share a nasty little chuckle.

“I would like you to leave me alone,” I tell them even more firmly.

“And we would like to get to know you a whole lot better,” the guy says.

“For what?” I snap.

“Because I’ve been looking for a girl like you for a very long time,” the other man says, and it sends an ice cold current of something electric right through my core. I didn’t recognize his face but I recognize his voice.

This is the man who killed Dima. The man who made fun of him before and after he stabbed him. This is Yuri Kazarov. I never got a good look at him, not when he stabbed Dima or before, when he used to come watch me train, which is probably why I didn’t recognize him right away, but I’d recognize his voice anywhere.

And the way he said that…does he know that I know they killed Dima?

“Why?” I manage to ask, somehow forcing my voice out of my constricted throat.

“Because I’m a big fan of watching ladies fight,” he says. “I loved watching you fight the other night. You’re the best I’ve seen in a long time. And the prettiest too.”

Hearing that just adds several more layers to my fear, because he makes it sound like he’s infatuated with me. Almost like he’s in love with me. I know how the mob guys from my country think. Anything they want they will get. There’s no saying no to them. You go along or you are dead. And being this man’s mistress would be even worse than being a fighter he controls. He might even want both.

“So you’re telling me you’re just a fan that came to say hello to me?” I ask, since I need to know why he’s really here and how much I have to fear him.

“For now,” he says and that’s all the answer I need, but he keeps talking. ”Though soon we’ll make you an offer and you’d be wise to hear us out then.“

My heart is beating faster than it ever has and no air is making it to my lungs.

“But not tonight though,” the guy adds. “Tonight I just wanted to come and introduce myself. “ He extends his hand out to me. “I am Yuri Kazarov and I wish you the best of luck in tomorrow’s fight.”

I hope it doesn’t show on my face that I already know who he is as I shake his hand, which I grabbed automatically. But it probably does.

“I will see you soon,” he says and only then releases my hand.

Then their patent leather shoes are clicking against the tiles of the hallway floor. Soon the door to the parking lot opens and closes and I still can’t breathe.

“What did they want?” Hawk asks, emerging from the shadows at the end of the hall.

I’m relieved he’s here, his presence is like a refreshing gust of warm wind blowing the worst of my panic away. But that just makes room for my anger to come through. Meeting that man forced me to relive Dima’s death all over again in vivid detail, and shake his killer’s hand besides. I want to go scrub my right hand so hard it stings. But first I want to know why Hawk didn’t stop it.

“Where were you?” I snap at him.

“I was right here like I told you. You had nothing to worry about. But I need them to show their hand once and for all, because I want to know what we’re dealing with,” he explains as calmly as you like and as though my chest isn’t burning in a fiery mixture of fear, sadness, and anger, which I know must be showing on my face because everything I’m feeling always shows on my face. That’s why I practice feeling nothing to achieve the expressionless look in the cage, just like I practice the punches and kicks.

I start to say a few things, but stop, because I know that one of the things could be me firing him. And I don’t want him gone. No matter how angry this stunt of his tonight made me, I don’t want that.

“We’ll talk at home,” I say and walk away from him, because that’s all I can manage.

In the parking lot, I just get on my bike and don’t wait for him before I drive off. He knows the way to my house, and I need the clear air and space.