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  Unbelievably, her words were accompanied by her trying to sit up.

  I chose my words carefully, wondering how to get her to stop moving so much. It couldn't be good for her. "He's in the ICU. He was badly hurt. No one can see him—"

  My body seized up in shock as her hand shot to her arm and brutally ripped out her IV.

  I started shaking. I couldn't seem to breathe. How could I stop her from hurting herself? I could only watch her, feeling helpless and futile.

  She sat up. "I need to see him now," she said vehemently.

  Two nurses had been hovering near enough to hear what was going on, and they snapped into action, wrestling her back down, two more nurses and a doctor joining in before they could get her IV back in.

  She met my eyes as the nurse worked on her arm. "Please, James. I have to see him."

  Eventually I nodded, not knowing what else to do. "Please don't do that again. I'll arrange for you to see him, but you must stay in your bed."

  She nodded, shutting her eyes, her tense body finally relaxing back into the hospital bed.

  Arrangements were made, and I walked with her as they wheeled her bed to his.

  She calmed after she saw him, though he was still unconscious.

  But sure enough, less than two hours later, he roused for the first time since the shooting.

  I told her the second she woke up. His vitals were improving. They were both going to live.

  Miracle on miracle. After all that had happened, I couldn't believe our good fortune.

  I made a vow then and there never to take even one single second of our life together for granted.

  "Have they buried my father?" she asked the next day.

  "Not yet, I don't believe," I answered, studying her face, trying to figure out why she wanted to know. "They will in the next day or so. Is there anything you'd like me to do?"

  "Could you please get me a pen and paper?"

  I had it fetched, watching in puzzlement as she scribbled a few sentences on the paper, then folded it carefully and handed it to me.

  "Could you please have that buried with him?"

  "Yes of course." I recalled a rather important detail. "He's actually being cremated, unless you object."

  "No, that's fine. Have it burned with him please."

  I agreed, still watching her blank face. "May I read it?"

  "Go ahead." No hesitation in her answer.

  I opened the neatly folded letter, brows rising as I read the brief scrawl.

  To the monster,

  Fuck you. You can't hurt us anymore. Oblivion is too good for you. Enjoy the fire. You've earned it.

  Your daughter

  I looked up, caught her eye.

  She gave me a rueful smile. "It's therapeutic."

  I smiled wryly, refolding the paper. "Indeed it is. Do you have any desire to . . . go to his funeral?"

  She shot me a look. "No. Never. It's bad luck to spit on someone's grave, and I'm not sure I could stop myself."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WORST NIGHTMARE

  PRESENT

  STEPHAN

  I awoke to bright lights and hospital sounds. And pain. Agony shooting through me with every breath.

  It all came back to me in a flood.

  The blood. The bodies. The unmitigated horror of it.

  Bianca.

  Bianca going limp, crumpling to the ground, blood in her hair, blood on her face.

  My worst nightmare come to life.

  Bianca.

  I'd seen her shot, seen her fall.

  No. No. No. No. I couldn't lose her. It was inconceivable.

  "Bianca," I wheezed, my chest burning like it was on fire with that one word.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I'M OKAY, YOU'RE OKAY, WE'RE OKAY

  PAST

  STEPHAN

  We didn't shake hands or touch gloves. Not that we got to wear gloves.

  It wasn't that kind of a fight. Some underground clubs had rules. Some of them even operated under a code. This wasn't one of those. That kind of ring wouldn't take an under-aged street kid into the mix, no matter how good he was at hurting people.

  We nodded at each other across the small space allotted us for this desperate bout of violence. I made the mistake of meeting his eyes.

  They were dead. He already thought he'd lost everything. He was about to lose more.

  I wanted to tell him just to fall with the first blow, that I never lost, so he shouldn't make me hurt him more than I had to, to get paid.

  I wanted to tell them all that. I didn't want to do more damage than I had to, but sometimes I couldn't help it.

  I never wanted to reach the place where I couldn't help it.

  I took a deep breath, letting my eyes move through the crowd to find the only face in the world that reassured me.

  Bianca's serene eyes met mine, and I felt instantly better.

  The place was packed, but there was an invisible barrier around her that no one dared to encroach on, thanks to me and my temper.

  Everyone here knew what I'd do if someone so much as bumped into her. It was a rough crowd, and I'd made a point of educating them with a few bloody examples.

  "Love you," she mouthed, looking utterly composed amidst this chaos. It was just what I needed. Her calm was the anchor that kept me grounded, always. I did the fighting, but she was the one that kept me safe and alive. I'd have lost the will to live a long time ago, if I hadn't found her.

  "Love you," I mouthed back.

  Of course, everyone assumed we were young lovers. We always let them assume. It was just easier than explaining that, though she'd never be my girlfriend, she was as essential to me as air, and I'd die before I'd let anyone hurt her.

  I focused back on the task at hand, my will renewed. I hated fighting, hated it more than just about anything, but it was a necessary evil, at the moment.

  And hate it or not, I was very good at it. Undefeated, in fact. Defending myself against someone four times my body weight from an early age was my training. And it was good training.

  The bell rang, and I went to work. He started dancing my way, light on his feet for such a big guy, and trained to box, I guessed.

  It wouldn't be enough.

  I was trained to survive, to fight dirty, no matter the means.

  I dodged his first quick blows, observing his moves before I made my own. He was quick, but I knew I was quicker. And more desperate. I didn't just have myself to win for.

  I stopped his fancy footwork with one brutal blow to the gut, followed through instantly with a vicious fist to his temple.

  He went down, but unfortunately, I hadn't knocked him out.

  He came at me again, and I blocked each of his blows easily. The blow to the head had made him slower, and I could see each hit coming.

  I clenched my jaw, cursed myself, and attacked, landing three quick-fire, savage punches, two to his midsection that I knew would leave him coughing up blood for days, the third an uppercut into his chin.

  He went down, and when he got back up, his eyes were dazed, feet stumbling. I'd messed him up good, and I wasn't done.

  He managed to clip me on the shoulder before I laid into him again, but it was nothing, certainly not compared to the damage I did to him that round.

  He just kept getting up. He'd barely managed to land a blow, but he wouldn't stay down. Either he had a death wish, or he didn't understand.

  We got a breather after a time, and I went to check on Bianca while the poor bastard went and licked his wounds in the corner.

  "You okay?" she asked, wiping my brow, her eyes as steady as her hands.

  I nodded. "I'm fine, but he won't be, if we keep this up. Guy doesn't know when to quit."

  "Be careful. He strikes me as desperate."

  I let her see the bleakness in my eyes. "We all are."

  She nodded. "I know, but I don't trust him. Just be extra careful, okay?"

  I agreed and kissed her on the forehead.


  She leaned into me, unmindful of the sweat, uncaring of the filth and blood on me.

  It was what I needed. It was all I'd ever needed.

  Acceptance.

  Such a simple concept, but I needed it like I needed air to breathe, and only one person had ever given it to me.

  I hugged her into my chest and breathed it in. It was more than salve to a wound.

  It was life-sustaining.

  I soaked up as much as I could before heading back into the ring.

  My girl had impeccable instincts.

  The guy pulled a knife on me for that round, jabbing me with it before I saw his intent.

  It wasn't serious, just a flesh wound, but it set me off.

  My vision went red, and so did the room.

  I took his legs out from under him with a vicious kick to the front of his knee and a hard shove. I followed him down, pummeling his face.

  Someone tried to pull me off him, several someones, but it was useless.

  And then I heard her. Calling my name. Snapping me out of it.

  I shook my head, stilling. I lifted my bloody fists up, staring at them. They were trembling badly. As I saw this, I realized my whole body had begun to shake.

  I looked down at the mess of a man underneath me.

  By the state of him, I'd been at it for some time.

  I cringed, and retching, I scrambled off him.

  It was his face that really got to me. It was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable, pounded into just so much misshapen meat.

  And he was so still.

  I was barely clear of him when I emptied out the contents of my stomach on the ground.

  Soft hands were stroking my shoulders from behind, Bianca saying something that I couldn't hear over the crowd.

  I couldn't hear them, but I felt the words, knew them by heart, and tried to believe them now.

  The room had gone wild with noise, cheers, and applause. They loved the raw, brutal violence of what I'd done. It's why they came, why I made money at this.

  I wanted to curl into a ball and disappear. This was the worst one yet.

  Had I killed him? I wondered, praying that I hadn't, though it seemed that I was grasping at straws. No one was trying to move him, as though they didn't think it was worthwhile to even try.

  I felt slender arms hug me from behind, soft kisses on my temple, and then her voice in my ear, "You're okay. He's okay. I'm okay. We're okay," she chanted soothingly, over and over.

  It helped. Even if it wasn't entirely true. It helped. She always knew how to take care of me.

  She always had.

  Always understanding, always accepting, always loving, from the very start.

  Things got out of hand in the ring sometimes. I'd done my fair share of damage, but so far, I'd never killed anyone in one of these fights. I found I was having a very hard time coming to terms with it.

  I had killed before. When I'd stopped that old man from raping Bianca I'd beaten his head so hard against the pavement that I'd felt when his skull caved in.

  No. This wouldn't be the first time I'd killed, but that didn't make it any easier to stomach.

  Who had he been? Who would miss him? Why was my life worth more than his?

  It wasn't. I knew it wasn't. But hers was worth more, and she needed me. The thought galvanized me, as it always did. I would do what I needed to for her. I'd do anything for her. Because it was a fact that she was worth it, and that certainty had gotten me through many o' rough thing.

  Who I assumed was a doctor was finally kneeling by the other fighter, tending to him. He didn't pronounce him dead right away, and I took that as some small sign of hope.

  Bianca pulled me gently away from the mess I'd made on the floor, and I blindly followed her.

  Old Sam, the bastard that organized these things, came to stand in front of me, a sick grin on his face.

  He waved a wad of cash in front of me.

  I grabbed it, glaring at him.

  He was the source of my livelihood at the moment, but I still hated him. He was the worst kind of opportunist and had no qualms about preying on the weak and desperate.

  "Good job, son," he told me with a good-natured chuckle.

  "Don't call me son," I told him, my voice gravelly from all of the retching.

  He shrugged. "You always get touchy after these things, but you're a natural, my boy. We're going to do great things together."

  I opened my mouth to say something scathing, but Bianca beat me to it.

  "Just go away. Leave him alone," she told the man in her coldest voice. "Give him space."

  The man lifted his hands, as though to show he meant no harm, and still smiling, walked away.

  "He's a parasite," she said vehemently when he'd left. "If we never set eyes on him again, it'll be too soon."

  I couldn't have agreed more.

  We stayed in the room long enough to ascertain that the other fighter was definitely still alive, and there was a chance he'd stay that way.

  When the doctor pronounced this to the crowd, there were more boos than cheers.

  I thought I might be ill again.

  I went on autopilot as Bianca led me away to a dimly lit bathroom in the back of the building.

  She lifted off my shirt, washed me, and tended to me like I was a child, fussing over the cut in my side, and I let her.

  She left, snagged some supplies from the doctor's bag, and came back quickly. She cleaned the cut, worrying over it.

  I soaked in her loving ministrations.

  "The doctor said he'd come back here to check you out after he finishes with the other guy."

  I just nodded, feeling disconnected.

  She'd taken the money from me and counted it to make sure it was all there.

  "Four hundred dollars. Let's get a room tonight, okay? You need to take a nice hot shower and sleep in a soft bed."

  I didn't argue. This was the usual pattern after a fight, one of the few things that made it worthwhile to hurt people for money.

  Four hundred dollars, I thought. I was willing to do that to a man for four hundred dollars, to beat him beyond recognition.

  I swallowed hard, taking deep breaths to keep from gagging.

  I had no notion of how much time might have passed before the doctor came to check on me.

  He didn't do much, or didn't take long, but it seemed to reassure Bianca to let him tend to the scrape of a knife wound.

  "Will he live?" I croaked at him. I'd been working up the courage to ask him since he'd walked in.

  "Yes. He won't be pretty, but he'll live."

  I breathed easier, but only a little. I nodded and thanked him.

  There was a weekly budget rental place within walking distance, and I stayed outside while she went into the office and got us a room for the night. It was one of the few places that took cash and didn't ask for ID.

  I stiffened when I saw who was behind the reception desk, but Bianca was already heading back to me, key in hand.

  "Don't ever talk to that guy," I told her, my voice harsh with fear. "Stay away from him."

  She studied me, her tragic eyes seeing everything. "Oh Stephan, what did you do?"

  I flinched. "Don't. Please."

  She moved into me, wrapping her arm around my waist and leading me. "He wouldn't take any money. Said you'd settled up the last time we were here."

  Her tone held not an ounce of judgement, but instead a world of pity and grief.

  "Please. Don't," I said again, suddenly wanting to cry.

  "I love you," she said calmly. "More than my own life, I love you."

  I didn't respond, too occupied blinking away tears.

  "What did he make you do?" she asked when we'd stepped into our room.

  I looked around, avoiding her eyes now. At least it was clean. Mostly.

  "It doesn't matter," I told her.

  She wasn't innocent. She'd seen too much for that. But she was pure, and I wouldn't corrupt her ears or mind with the filthy t
hing I'd done to pay for our room the last time we were here.

  "Oh Stephan," she uttered softly, her tone undoing me.

  I shook my head, swallowing hard. "I'm going to shower."

  She let me go.

  I didn't hurry, but I didn't linger either. I needed to get clean, but it would take more than hot water and soap for that.

  I crawled into bed still damp and waited, trembling, while she took her own shower, and joined me.

  I wrapped myself around her, burying my face in her clean wet hair. Just a few deep breaths and I already felt better.

  "Did he hurt you?" she finally asked, voice muffled into my chest. "Can you talk about it?"

  I couldn't. What could I say? She knew what I'd done, or at least enough. Explaining that letting him suck my dick, instead of the reverse, had made it palatable enough for me to accept was hardly going to make me feel better.

  My long silence told her everything. Her voice was clogged with tears when she spoke again. "Don't ever do that again. Please. Promise me. I can't bear the things you put yourself through."

  I couldn't refuse her when she pleaded with me like that. "I won't," my voice was thick and full of anguish. "I promise."

  We were silent for a very long time, but that was fine. The contact was what I needed.

  I did eventually recover enough to talk about it. "I hate that part of me. Hate it. All I want is to keep you safe and never have to hurt anyone again."

  Her chest moved against mine as she took a very deep breath. "I know. I'm so sorry."

  "Don't be sorry. This isn't on you. It never was. I just . . . wish I wasn't like my dad."

  "You're not. This violence is not who you are. It does not define you."

  I let that penetrate, let it comfort me, as it was meant to.

  "This is all temporary," she told me, her tone wistful. "Remember our little houses."

  I smiled. This was a popular fantasy of ours.

  "Side by side," I added.

  "Neighbors," she agreed.

  "I want grass in my yard."

  "I want nothing but rocks and maybe a cactus." I could hear the smile in her voice.