Then, the lights cut to pitch black.
The opening notes of Silas’s music hit the PA system, and the arena literally shook. It was, without a single doubt, the loudest pop in UWF history. A building-shaking, earth-shattering, chaotic-eruption of cheers that vibrated my bones.
The spotlights flared, hitting the top of the stage, and there he was.
Draped in the regal robe, he clutched the heavy Puerto Rican flag in his hands, waving it high above his head as the Taino Sun necklace rested against his chest. He stopped at the top of the ramp, teary eyed as he stood there taking it all in. The fans were singing every word of his music, a low hum of something else running like an undercurrent to the lyrics. A chant started in the lower bowl andimmediately caught fire, spreading uninterrupted, until twenty thousand voices screamed in unison.
“WELCOME HOME! WELCOME HOME!”
My emotions swirled at the sight and sound. Pride, love, a twang of jealousy perhaps. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper. I turned away, pretending to stretch, taking in the ring layout instead of letting my tears take root. Weapons were scattered along the outside: ladders, tables, steel chairs. A thick metal chain lowered from the rafters as the referee took my title belt, attaching it to the hook so it could be hoisted twenty feet above us.
No matter how hard I tried, my eyes kept drifting back to him. I watched Silas walk down the ramp, high-fiving fans, his large hands grasping theirs. He scanned the signs in the crowd, reading the messages written in Spanish with a heaving chest. This was everything Silas had ever dreamed of, and it would heal an ache in his soul he’d been carrying his entire life.
Once in his corner, he carefully stripped out of the sleeveless robe. He took off the Taino Sun necklace, kissing the stone before bundling it into the flag to hand off to the referee. I read his lips over the thunderous volume, telling the ref to ensure those things stayed safe. To which the ref nodded and carried them to the timekeeper’s area.
We stepped to the center, and the referee checked in with both of us, running through the standard rules of a match that legally had none. We stared each other down, the air between us stiff and electric.
Then the bell rang.The next eighty minutes were pure, unadulterated madness.
We gave it our absolute all. This was the match of our careers, capping off what the dirt sheets had already coined the best storyline since the eighties. Our feud cemented us as future Hall of Famers, and this match would solidify exactly why.
It started fast and only escalated from there. Within fifteen minutes, the ring was a graveyard of broken wood and dented metal. We hurled each other into the barricades, slamming each other's bodies onto the steel steps in a brutal, bloodybattle. We knew it would push us to our physical limits, but we were the best people to do that because we would protect one another with our lives.
By minute forty, it was a bloodbath. Silas busted my forehead open with a stiff chair shot, causing blood to run down my face and sting my eyes as it mixed with the eyeliner. I retaliated by introducing the thick steel chain, wrapping it around my fist and beating him down. The metal cracked against his broad back, leaving angry raised welts across his skin, but Silas didn’t stay down. He ripped the chain from my hands, wrapped it around my throat, and pulled tight, choking me over the top rope until my vision swam with dark spots. The split second he relaxed the tension to gloat was the only invitation I needed to drag myself back from the edge and slip the noose, returning the violence tenfold, giving the crowd an unrelenting brutality rarely seen in this era, amplified by the terrifying element of towering steel ladders.
But beneath the gore and the blood-soaked canvas, we took care of each other.
“You good, baby?” I rasped, hiding the words as I trapped him in a headlock. The cameras focused on our struggling bodies.
“Yeah,” Silas groaned, “Hit me harder on the next spot. Make it look like you’re trying to kill me.” His chest heaved against my arm, his hair matted with sweat and blood.
“Yes, sir,” I purred softly before wrenching him up and throwing him face-first into a propped-up ladder in the corner.
We improvised, going entirely off-script. At the sixty minute mark, Silas charged me, and instead of taking the standard clothesline, I leaped up. Mid jump, I caught his head and hit a high-risk DDT that sent us both crashing through a table on the outside. The crowd lost their minds, screams of“HOLY SHIT”echoing off the arena walls. It was the highlight-reel moment of the night, a masterpiece of trust and timing.
The true climax was approaching, and I knew how terrified Silas was. Last night, Evan called me at two in the morning because Silas had been hyperventilating over the final move of the match. It was the exact type of high-angle spot thathad caused the catastrophic botch that broke his confidence and nearly ruined his career years ago, but it was time to face the ghost.
I dragged a massive, sixteen-foot industrial ladder into the center of the ring, setting it up directly beneath the hanging title, and arranged two wooden tables side-by-side on the mat below. My limbs screamed in agony as I climbed first, blood dripping from my chin. Silas followed, crawling up the opposite side. We met at the top, and the arena held its collective breath. We were so high up that the ring looked like a postage stamp beneath us.
Brutal hands were traded, the smack of flesh colliding echoed in the silence of the crowd’s anticipation. Silas grabbed me, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck to set up the suplex. He was shaking. His breaths were labored, and his eyes were wide as he looked down at the tables below us.
The fighting stopped. I reached up, my bloody hand gripping his bicep. I leaned my face in close, touching our foreheads together to hide our mouths from the hard-cam. “You’ve got this. You’re stronger now. You’re the Heavyweight Champ, Si.”
“Cal, I can’t—”
“I trust you with my life,” I whispered, squeezing his arm and pouring every ounce of love I had into my words. “I love you. Now put me through that fucking table and go be a champion.”
Silas let out a ragged, guttural scream, and the fear vanished, replaced by a surge of pure adrenaline. He hooked my arm, hoisted my entire body weight into the air, and threw us backward into the abyss.
The fall felt like an eternity. We crashed through the tables simultaneously, the wood exploding into a shower of white splinters. The impact knocked the air from my lungs in an agonizing rush.
I lay in the wreckage gasping, staring up at the blinding stadium lights, my body completely spent. Through the blur, I saw Silas drag his battered and bleeding frame out of the debris. He crawled back to the ladder, pulling himself up the rungs one step at a time. With only seconds left on the clock, he reached up, hishand closing around the gold plates of the World Heavyweight Championship belt, and unhooked it.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“HERE IS YOUR WINNER AND THE NEW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION! ‘TIMELESS’ SILAS REED!”
I rolled onto my side, clutching at my ribs and hiding my face in the crook of my arm. With long heaving breaths, I lay there sobbing. To the cameras, it was due to the agony of defeat, but really, I was crying because I was so damn proud. I wasn't sad about losing the title, not for a single second, because I was the one who got to help Silas fulfill a lifelong dream.
