Page 7 of Fight

Two

P

I was so fuckedthat fucked didn’t even begin to cover it.

Over the last two weeks, I’d spent countless hours trying to determine what Markov might do to me, what horrific torture he and his men had in mind.

But I hadn’t contemplated this.

There was no space in my mind that could account for the monstrous man that stood across from me.

He was a giant of a man, broad and muscled from head to toe. His huge hands, which I couldn’t help but notice were clenched into tight fists, hung limply at his sides, but I could see that he was ready to attack. I looked up further and glimpsed at his face.

My eyes were drawn to the jagged scar that started at his neck and ran down his collarbone. The wound that had given him that scar should have been fatal.

But the scar, as vicious as it was, and as tough as he had to be to survive what had to have been an extensive wound, wasn’t the thing that terrified me.

No, when I looked into his eyes, dark, fathomless pools that seemed to be completely devoid of emotion, I thought I would lose the meager contents of my stomach.

Yeah, I was so fucked.

Oh well. At least this would be over soon, and I wouldn’t have to look at Markov or any of those other sons of bitches’ faces again. I turned and faced him, anxious to get this started and finished.

The monster man seemed to share my impatience to be done with this, so he stomped toward me with almost lightning speed, and soon had me in his grip.

I’d been hit more in the past two weeks than I had in my entire life, so being struck wasn’t that unfamiliar to me.

But the pain of those punches was nothing compared to the way his fingers dug into my shoulder, his hold so tight and painful, my eyes began to water. Despite their best efforts, none of Markov’s men had inspired as much fear as this man did when he lifted me as if I was nothing.

For reasons I couldn’t explain at the moment, I met his icy eyes again. Actually, that was wrong. To call his eyes icy would be to presume that there had ever been something behind them, but when I looked at him, I saw nothing.

Not rage, not anger, not fear.

Nothing.

It was as though he was a machine, one intent on my destruction and anxious to complete his assigned job with haste.

I tensed and tried to break his hold. Doing so hadn’t been conscious, probably just an unconscious attempt to get away from him. My motions did nothing to break his grip. They didn’t faze him in the slightest.

But they did trigger something in me, reminded me that I had been a fighter for my entire life, and I’d come too far to go down without some effort.

This guy was gonna fucking kill me, but he was gonna earn it.

He still held my shoulder, but my arms were free, so I moved them. I swung with all my might and hit him directly in the jaw.

The onlookers—vicious, hateful fucks, all of them—laughed.

Probably my first clue that I had made a very bad move.

The second clue came when I again looked into his eyes.

It had been my experience that when someone got punched in the face, they would react, lash out in anger, recoil in fear, do something.

He did nothing at all.

Instead, he leveled those frigid eyes at me and, holding me with one arm, lifted the other and pulled back.

His huge, heavy-looking fist approached me in what seemed like slow motion, and much as I had anticipated the bullet before, I anticipated this, the one blow that would seal the deal on what had been my far too short life.

---