Page 44 of The Slayer
Chuito hesitated and looked back to the locker room, where Wyatt was waving him over frantically. “I have to go.”
“Promise,” Marcos demanded. “Promise me you’ll make sure my cousin wins another belt. Promise you’ll stay there.”
Chuito closed his eyes and then whispered, “I promise.”
Marcos was quiet for a long moment after Chuito said it. Then he whispered into the phone, “Wepa.”
“Wepa,” Chuito agreed. “I’ll call you later.”
“You do that,” Marcos agreed. “Bye, cabrón. I love you too.”
Marcos hung up before Chuito could respond.
* * * *
It was a bittersweet night for Chuito, reminding him once again that his life was one big roller coaster.
He won the Light-Heavyweight title.
And found out his cousin was in deep with Los Corredores again whether he wanted to be or not.
Chuito knew Marcos. He didn’t like being a gangster before he went down for almost two years. If he was doing it now, that meant something grim was going on.
Chuito didn’t trust Angel anymore.
The power was going to his head.
Maybe the power was going to Chuito’s head too, because for the life of him, he didn’t understand why all the money in his bank account couldn’t fix this.
He was a fucking world champion.
Even his mother was letting him support her. No one had more pride than Sofia Garcia, but Marcos wasn’t going to let Chuito rescue him. He had overstepped Chuito’s mother in the pride department.
That was a special trick.
It was depressing the fuck out of him.
“Okay, okay, okay, I’ll admit that he should’ve pulled out the left hook before the second round.” Wyatt’s voice was still loud in the aftermath of the fight as he sat in the living room of Chuito’s master suite. “But y’all got to admit, it was holding out that long that threw Evans off.”
“That’s not admitting anything,” Clay said in disbelief. “You’re asking us to admit you were right ’bout something you just said you were wrong over. You were gonna have him keep up the orthodox fighting for another round. Thank God Chuito told you to fuck off.”
Wyatt laughed. “That was on the footage too. Roll it back. Let me see it again.”
“You just wanna see yourself in the footage. They didn’t get that on tape,” Jasper said with a snort of incredulity.
“No, no, they did,” Wyatt argued. “Roll it back. You’ll hear it. He told me to fuck off in front of millions of people.”
Clay huffed, and Chuito tilted his head, seeing that Clay was messing with the laptop they had in front of them on the coffee table. Clay, Wyatt, and Jasper all sat there and listened. Then Wyatt burst out laughing again.
“He said,‘Fuck this.’” Jasper laughed with him. “I heard it.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Wyatt held out his hands as he looked at the laptop. “I need to see it again.” They all watched the footage of the second round, and Wyatt jumped off the couch. “Look at that! Whew, boy, I ain’t never seen a knockout like that. Just bam. One solid left hook and Evans is out. That’s gonna go in the top-ten-knockouts-of-all-time reel for sure. That was fucking beautiful.” He turned to Chuito, who was sitting on the bed just watching them. “It was fucking beautiful.”
“Thanks.” Chuito looked at the phone in his hand, seeing the text from Marcos that he had been staring at for the past five minutes.
Don’t worry about it, bro. I got this. Proud of you.
“You are gonna come out here and celebrate.” Wyatt gestured to the living room. “It just ain’t even right that a twenty-two-year-old UFC champion’s not out doing what twenty-two-year-old fellas are supposed to do, but if you got to hang with us, you’re coming out here and watching the video of this perfect knockout.”
