Malcolm and the crime lords he ran with were under the illusion we were living in a different era. People and their possessions were property that could be conquered despite any modern laws. Zee sold sex; Malcolm had the fighting rings under his reign; some lords sold drugs, cars, anything you could think of. We were all fucking commodities to those in power. There was more to it; there were more bones to it.
If it was just fighting, walking into a cage and utilizing some well-placed aggression, I’d be good with being a Gladiator. It wasn’t. Gladiators in the past were accused criminals told to fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses. They were the same in the present.
It was a mind fuck. Kill or be killed. And once it was over you were not free. You were a prisoner in their world. If you managed to break out, they’d tell someone on their payroll who was in the local precinct about the lives you took, and you’d go down for murder. You’d never get to trial, though; you’d go down in your cell, the yard, somewhere. There was no way out. Not unless you were unbeatable, unless you became some kind of idle that could never fall, and even then, all you did was delay the inevitable. The ghosts of the lives you took would catch you in the end.
I’d grazed against that life. Malcolm has all kinds of fighting he manages. The fights the law breaks up from time to time are basically street kids hammering it out. It’s Malcolm’s recruitment pit. The winners become losers the second he plucks them up into his grip.
At first, you feel like a fucking king. They throw girls at you left and right, any drug you want, any car you want. Then they rattle you. Build your hate, fuck with your head. Call out demons that are better left alone.
Then when you’re in deep, the deal is laid at your feet. They trap you. You walk into a ring expecting a worthy opponent; you’re pumped with so much rage that common sense is in the backseat of your head. You strike, whoever the unlucky ass in the ring with you is long down and dead before it clicks with you that he is.
When you come to your senses, and the fear and guilt hits you, and you look to your beloved Malcolm for protection—a way to make sure the hundreds and hundreds of people who watched you kill a man with your bare hands never rat you out. Malcolm wastes no time making sure the fighter vanishes from the public eye. But the stupid fuck is not hiding out on an island somewhere. Nope, he’s a prisoner. On lockdown and told to fight for an elite audience that not only knows how to bet, but has the means. Your life is over then, one way or another.
Malcolm had already put a weak fool in the ring with me, I almost killed him in front of not hundreds but thousands. I came damn near close, but I stopped. Then I walked away. That was when my time in the ‘dog house’ began right at a year ago. Malcolm has been pining for a chance like this, just waiting for my fuck up. I all but put myself on a fucking platter for him tonight.
Malcolm told me once he’d only seen one other man fight like me in his life, Odin, and that I was a guaranteed win. It was meant to be a compliment, but words like that start all kinds of rumors that nobody needs. At the same time, his words woke me up. They told me under it all Malcolm saw me as a threat, but he couldn’t just put a hit on me, it would hurt his rep—make people think. Having me submit to his world and his rules on my own to prove myself made him a winner either way. Money and my death.
Channing knew my silence meant I was weighing the risk, what I could live with. Before it was all about my conscience and me. I knew I could win; I could make it to the end if I really wanted to. Knowing I’d have to take life after life with my bare hands just to do so—survive, was what had me throwing on the brakes. Now it was different. I had something to live for. I had something I could lose, leave vulnerable if I did lose in the end. Having something like that could only do one of two things: make me fight harder, or distract me to the point where I lost before I ever began.
“I’ll get her safe,” Channing said.
“If she has half the sense you think she has she’ll run far from all of this and never look back.”
Channing had the power to help me cover all this up. His six years above me, him caring about rising in our crew had landed him contacts I didn’t have. People who could flip facts in police reports around. Change the flow of the rumors on the street.
Nothing came for free on the streets. He was telling me to buy Ember’s life with my own. I was willing. The thing was, I didn’t trust another fucking soul on this planet to keep her safe.
“I wanted out of hell, not to dig deeper into it.”
“Why? Because of her?” he asked getting in my face. “You want out of hell, kid? Run straight fucking through it then! I can’t help it if you have an excuse to fucking give a damn now. I told you what you were getting into when I pulled your ass out of your cell three years ago.”
“You told me I could make some fast cash,” I argued back.
He shook his head at me and lit another smoke. “You’ve done it before.”
He meant kill in the ring. And I had. I did stop before I killed that kid in the ring a year ago, but he died weeks later because some doc gave him meds he was allergic to, or so I was told. Sounded like a set up to me—a way to link his death back to my ass and have me in the ring before the day was out. I didn’t run to Malcolm then, though, so if it was a set-up, it had failed. Still. I can still see the kid’s face. I can see every wrong turn I’ve ever taken. All the blood. Each and every time I close my fucking eyes.
“Self-defense,” I said to Channing. Not talking about that kid but others I’d put down in my life as an enforcer. My one moral rule that everyone knew was I wouldn’t kill unless it was self-defense. The notion should buy me some credit with this Vinnie bullshit, but it wouldn’t. They all know I’m not the same as I once was anymore. This summer had changed me.
“Trust me, it will be self-defense,” Channing said easily.
He was fine with putting my life at risk, always had been. I was a tool. But it didn’t fuck with his conscience, because in his head, I was undefeatable.
***
A choice like this, one that would completely alter your life was one you needed time to dwell on. The irony is when real life changing moments come about you have no time, ever.
I went back and forth with Channing right until dawn about what went down, what had to go down now. A move this big was not easy to make. It wasn’t like I could walk up to Malcolm and said ‘hey, I fucked up. I’ll fight for you now. Forget those people I was hanging with.’ Not that I would if I could.
Things like this had to be handled slowly, and the real truth of the matter was, when it was all said and done, my choice might not even matter. It would be the reaction to the pieces I set on the table that would decide my fate.
The first piece I laid out was that both Vinnie and Zee’s boys had Bloom’s payment. Vinnie’s stash was easy to prove. Channing and I found it in his ride, parked outside the church right where the fuck could stare up at the open attic windows. I swear I wanted to kill him again. My gut told me one way or another Vinnie was coming into the church that night. Bloom just gave him a reason to pounce.
Zee’s payment was harder to put out in the open. We had to press a cop on the payroll to say it was on the kid in his report. There it was, both bosses knew their mark had paid up. Which should haze his importance. The next step was for them to get my side of the story.
I walked right into Malcolm’s lair and looked him in the eye and said that I’d asked Vinnie to meet me. He did. Right after Vinnie left, Zee’s boy came in looking for his payment. I was leaving him to his business when I heard the kid push for more money. Then I heard the shot. I told Malcolm that Vinnie must’ve heard it too, because he came back in, so did the other guys. I was vague about who shot who, but made it a point to say the kid that went down was blazed and too young to really know what the fuck he was doing.
Malcolm didn’t say a word. Just ticked his head for me to leave. He and Channing talked for hours. I was always Channing’s problem since he was
the one that found me and pulled me in. Every fuck up or victory I had fell on his shoulders. Which is why he was pushing me to fight—to be the sure win Channing promised I’d be when he brought me ‘round. Luckily, for Channing’s sake at least, he had a stoic charm about him that Malcolm trusted. I was just a punk they’d break one way or another.
When Channing came out, it was hard for me to read his face. He had a way of never really showing emotion. When he did he always looked less fierce, younger, maybe even kind, something he couldn’t afford to do in his position.
“I’m going to have a face to face with Zee,” he said. “Check to see what’s on file with the cops. We go from there.”
I knew then a choice had been made. Malcolm wanted me to fight so badly that he’d overlook this shit to make it happen. I was that big of a fucking threat to his throne.
I sat on this revelation for hours, thought of every way in and around this shit. In the end, I came right back ‘round to Ember. Like I said, I trusted no one to keep her safe but me. If Malcolm figured out he couldn’t break me, he’d use her to do it.
I had to run. We had to run.
After covering Bloom’s debts, I didn’t have much cash, but it was enough to get gone. I made it back to my storage unit, grabbed my stash, and weapons, then checked over my bike making sure it was ready to fly. Every fifteen minutes, I had someone give me an update on Ember. Through all this I always had eyes on her.
I knew our payroll was doing their job when I got word all the detectives were leaving the hospital. Stealing her away from such a public place wouldn’t be easy, especially if she fought me, but I was dead set on my plan, knowing if I stopped to think about it I’d fuck it all up.
It was late when I made it there, most of the halls were vacant and dim, but I found Bloom’s room. I didn’t go all the way in, but from the shadow of the threshold, I could see her on the other side of the sheet divider in the room.
Bloom was sitting up, dressed with his arm in a sling, looking soberer than I’d ever seen him. “You should go,” he rasped.
Ember dipped her head, dropping tears to her bare legs. “I want us both to. I won’t go without you.”
Panic and defense slammed into my chest. Where the fuck did she think she was going?
“They’ll help you,” she pleaded.
Boom smirked. “Do you have any idea how many times your grandmother said the same?”
“She wasn’t wrong,” Ember said stubbornly. “You quit. You always do.”
He looked away.
“Can’t you go for me?”
He swayed his head. “You want me to hide in a church?” He nearly laughed. “It’ll burn at the sight of me.”
“Not hide,” she argued. “He said they’d house us. Get you help. Put us on our feet. A new town. Far from here, from what keeps pulling you back in.”
Bloom dropped his head.
I told myself to move, to tell her for the first fucking time in his life Bloom was right. There was no changing him. That she needed to run with me. We had to go, and now.
My body felt heavy, though. There was an invisible wall that I could not push past. I felt eyes on me then and looked down the hall.
Father Donnelly was staring me down. If I were ever to claim to have a father figure in my life, it was him. I’d known him since I was a boy and he’d just taken his vows. He saw something in me I never did. It didn’t matter what I told him, how much darker I made it; he never looked at me differently.
Holding his stare as stubbornly as I had in the past, I walked to him. I knew he’d stepped in. That he’d gone to Ember and told her he would help her, he gave Ember a way out that wasn’t even on my list of escapes. One without me.
“I don’t trust him,” I said in a cold whisper in the dim hallway.
Father Donnelly reached for my hands and folded them together like he did when I was a boy. He wasn’t forcing me to pray. He was forcing me to look down at the verses, their numbers tattooed on my hands.
Daniel 9:9 The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him;
My eyes sheened with tears I’d never let fall. This man knew I’d shed blood, taken lives. He may or may not know my reasons, but he was still telling me I was forgiven—and so were sick fucks like Bloom. He was telling me nothing I could or would do would change this. He was making me stop my one-track mind from thinking about getting Ember, my Ember, safe and think about what my life was doing to me. He was making me look at another lash on my soul that in time would heal...if I allowed it to.
“I want her safe...”
He moved his hands to the 13’s on each hand. First Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
“I don’t have any of those,” I said quietly.
“You love her,” he said in the serene tone he was known for.
“I don’t deserve to,” I finally admitted to him and myself, emotion was thick in my broken tone.
His smile kind, but weak. He always strived to show me who I was in the eyes of the divine, and when I rebelled, he’d give me that smile. A sign I always took as him accepting the challenge before him. He wasn’t giving up.
“Listen,” I said clearing my throat. “I meant it. I don’t trust Bloom. Get her far from here. I don’t care if he goes. I don’t care how much you help him. But get her out of this city. Don’t let it be a choice, or her father to be a condition.”
He bowed his head. A promise I could count on. “It has to be now, tonight. They’re still putting together the pieces of what went down. It won’t be long until it all hits the fan, one way or another.”
I grabbed a pillowcase from the cart next to us then loaded it with bundles of cash I had stuffed in the pockets of my jacket. “Don’t let Bloom lay a hand on this. Use it to pay her way.”
He took the pillowcase with the cash in it and set it down on the cart, then took my hands. I knew he wanted to pray with me, for me. And I let him. Even though I knew the words were not going to stop me from living the life and walking the path I was being forced down.
It gave him comfort, and maybe, like last time, when I felt myself slipping into a dark oblivion I’d think of them and fight my way out once more.
I glanced back at the room Ember was in. That same wall was right there, stopping me from moving—from sucking her into my hell.
I bowed my head, and for the first time I let myself feel, really feel grateful for knowing her. The little time I had with her made it all worth it. Truly.
FOURTEEN
Ember
(Five Months Later)
It still hurt. There wasn’t a single night I didn’t wake up saying Slayton’s name across a gasp. The dreams I had were always different. Sometimes, it was just us riding his bike on an endless road to nowhere. Other times, I could feel him next to me as I slept. I swear I could smell him at times. Most dreams were of him in the cage—him surrounded by an angry mob who wanted blood.
The nights I had those dreams, I’d never fall back to sleep, and for days I’d walk around in a haze feeling an ache in my chest. It was different from the one I felt when I lost my grandmother. Deeper.
The day after my father was shot and all the statements were given, the priest who had been at my side as I lied came to me with an offer I was sure angels had sent. He said he could send us away. To another parish hours from there; a different state, a different world. He told me they could help my dad. Get us on the right track.
It was near impossible to convince my dad to go. Ultimately, it was the priest and what he said to him in private counsel that swayed him. I kept waiting for Slayton to show. I knew he would. I could have sworn I felt him, but he never did. I knew then that I was right, he was furious with me. The heartbreak was destroying me, and so was the fear that I’d put him at risk. That he wouldn’t walk away from this.
The priest gave me no time to say goodbye, not even to Mrs. Jin. But I did manage
to race up the stairs of the church to the attic we’d shared. For precious seconds, I thought I’d imagined it all. Nothing looked the same, the bed was gone...the candles.
I knew if Slayton had taken the time to come back here, he was still standing. But I wouldn’t go as far to say he was safe. I pushed through the disarray and found my things tucked in drawers that were dusted with incense. His were still there.
In the dust, with a trembling hand I wrote: It was real...
I wasn’t sure if I was writing it for him to find, or for myself, but it was done. I could hear my name being called from below. I took one long, lasting glance around, then took off toward my new life swearing to myself that as soon as my father was settled and healed, I’d come back for my dark angel.
Healing is never easy and twice as hard with an unwilling patient. For weeks, my father and I stayed at a small parish. He hated it, rebelling incessantly. I had no idea what he was coming down from, but I swore to myself I’d never try it. The sweating, the fever, how sick he was—it all made his path to recovery seem impossible.
He told me it was; every day he did.
Two months after we left the city, we were staying in a halfway house. I’d gotten a job. It filled my time. We were to the point where his recovery was heavy counseling. I talked to a therapist too. She was helping me overcome what I saw that gruesome night, the grief I was dealing with.
I asked her once if she thought what I felt for Slayton was infatuation or some kind of hero crush. She laid out all the statistics for me, the ones that were stacked against me, then leaned forward and put her hand on my knee and said, “Only you truly know. But no, I feel you are genuine with your emotions. You have the ability to stand in a storm and see its beauty. Grow from this.”