Page 104 of 4th Degree

No, no, no, this can’t be happening. They can’t know. No one can know.

I can barely make my fingers work enough to switch over to the gym profile. Under our latest post, there are similar comments.

Was that girl even legal?

The fact that women can’t catch a fucking break in the MMA world. Men are pigs.

Bulldog MMA: where you send your daughters and girlfriends to get mounted.

I fight the urge to dry heave. This is… This is insane. This is so much worse than anything my brain could have conjured up.

I don’t know what makes my rational brain turn on again. It feels like I stand in the middle of my living room for hours, frozen in horror and shock. But eventually I remember the texts.

My hands are trembling when I call Tristan. He picks up on the first ring.

“Hey.” I can’t hear anything in his voice. “Where are you?”

“Home,” I reply in a monotone voice. “I was about to leave for the gym.”

There’s a pause. Then, “Have you checked your email?”

My eyes slide closed. “No. I got stuck on Instagram.”

“Stay on the phone with me while you check it.”

My motions are robotic as I follow someone else’s orders for once. Putting Tristan on speaker, I switch over to my Gmail app.

It was sent at 11 p.m. last night, from an anonymous sender.

My gut already senses what’s in the email before I open it.

And I’m right. There are pictures of Skylar and me at the gym. In some, we’re only kissing, but in a few, the sexual undertones are clear—the worst one is a picture of me on top of Skylar on the mat, my teeth latched onto her nipple through her tank top and my hand down the front of her shorts.

There’s no nudity, but it’s explicit enough to make it obvious that we’re about to have sex.

There are half a dozen images at the top of the email. It’s the first thing I see when I open it. But as I start to scroll down, my lungs constricting with every inch, I realize there’s more.

This is Dominic Caruso, owner and head instructor of Bulldog MMA in Center City Philadelphia. You’ve likely heard his name before, as he was a well-known fighter in the professional MMA circuit until he retired and opened a gym. For years, it’s been a well-respected, successful gym. But only because no one knew what was lurking beneath the surface.

Pictured above is Skylar Vega, one of Bulldog MMA’s newest students. Skylar is a freshman at Temple University. As a pre-nursing student, Skylar was looking for a way to de-stress outside of work and classes, and decided to pick up MMA. She had no idea she was about to walk into every young woman’s nightmare.

It took no time at all for Dominic to take advantage of this young, helpless student. Being seventeen years her senior, Dominic made quick use of their power imbalance, alienating her from the gym’s other instructors and even going so far as to offer Skylar a job so he could further tie her to him. Skylar might not even really see his monster behavior for what it is—as a skilled predator, Dominic may have even brainwashed her into thinking ‘he’s never done this before,’ and that he ‘only loves her.’ We can only guess how deep the horrors of Bulldog MMA go.

I can’t read the rest of the email. I skim the second half, my eyes landing on a few phrases that make acid rise up my throat.

Predator… grooming… underage girls…

In the end, I do throw up. I rush to the bathroom and vomit every bit of the breakfast I made myself this morning. I have a bizarre, errant thought about the irony that I made that breakfast while thinking about Skylar, barely twenty minutes ago.

I don’t remember that I kept Tristan on the phone until I’m sucking in water from the faucet and see my phone on the sink beside it. Somehow, he stayed on the line through all of that.

Leaning both hands on the sink, I let my head hang between my shoulders. “Tristan,” I say, my voice sounding like it’s been dragged over gravel. “You there?”

“I’m here, Coach,” he says. And his voice is gentle. He stayed on the phone with me because he knew he needed to, and I feel a wave of gratitude.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I tell him. “It’s not… I’m not fucking her. I mean…it’s more than that. I think I—I couldn’t—and Christ, there are no other girls, I would never?—”

“Take a deep breath, Dom,” Tristan interrupts. “You have to stay calm with this. We’re going to figure this out, but you have to keep your head on for me, alright? You with me?”

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