“Art, look at me.”
He lifts his head, and what I see there guts me. It’s not the bitterness from the Calloway estate. It’s not the cold fury of a man who ordered me to lose. It’s grief. Raw and open and the kind that tells me he knows exactly what he’s done by bringing Percy here.
“I didn’t know,” he says. “They told me it was a standard bout. They didn’t tell me it was you.”
“And now that you know?”
His jaw works. His eyes drop.
I scoff, the little bit of my heart left cracking down the center. “That’s what I thought.”
“You were my brother,” he says. “And you took her from me, anyway.”
“Fuck. You. You weremybrother, and I was your property.”
He breaks eye contact, his cheeks flushing.
“Maybe. But at least I’m not the one in the cage.”
He moves away, and takes up a spot at the back of the room, alternating between glaring at me, and staring at his phone like he can’t decide which one to focus on.
This is what they do. This is what they’ve always done. They take everything good and twist it until it breaks.
I turn away and think about Genevieve.
Her smile. Her laugh. The way she counts to seven when she’s trying to hold onto a moment. The way she felt under my hands and in my heart.
She was the best thing I ever had, even if I only got to have her for a moment.
Percy is brought to the cage. They open a gap in the chain-link and push him through, and he stumbles onto the concrete, catching himself with one hand. When he straightens, I spot the knife.
It’s tucked into the waistband of his shorts, handle visible. They didn’t even try to hide it.
Percy notices me looking at it, and his face crumbles. “I’m so sorry, Lance. I’mso sorry.”
“Me, too, kid.”
The crowd roars, but all I can see is Percy. All I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears.
And Art…
For just a second, our eyes meet, and something flickers across his face.
The bell rings.
Percy moves first.
He’s faster than I expect. His fist connects with my ribs before I can block, and I stagger back.
I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t want to die, either. So, I throw a punch, but keep it soft. He comes back with a hook that catches my jaw and I taste blood.
The crowd is screaming. Chanting. They want carnage. They want one of us to break.
Percy hits me again.
And again, I let him.
Because maybe this is how it ends. Maybe this is what I deserve for all the people I’ve hurt and killed in the ring. All the damage I’ve done.
