Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
I walk past Davis to the kitchen, make a protein shake, and then take it out onto the terrace. This whole time Davis is following me around and talking. “So what do you think? We gonna do this?”
“Is she gonna be there tonight?”
“Dog said he sent the text with the info. It’s not a fight night. There are no tournaments happening for a few more weeks, but since we were looking for her, he called the guys in.”
“So there is gonna be a fight?”
“Not exactly. But a few of them remember her. They want her to come back. But this time, they want her to test.”
“Test?”
“Jesus, dude. Don’t you remember what it’s like to be a—”
He stops there. Because no. No, I do not remember what it’s like to be a newbie in a fight club. I’ve always been in the business. Every fight was a fucking test and if you were alive at the end, ya passed.
“Anyway.” Davis plays it off. Of course he knows about my past—he was there. But he wasn’t there the same way I was there, so he doesn’t like to talk about my past. He just wants to pretend it never happened. “A few years back Mad was running things.”
“Dog’s father?”
“His uncle. He thought the girl was a joke. They were just gonna fuck with her.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Not like that. At least, I don’t think so. She wanted to fight, they wanted a show, I guess. She lost. Predictably. But she was obviously trained. She was not some random little girl. And I know for a fact that Mad was familiar with the Ring of Fire.”
“How?” This one word comes out with so much contempt, Davis pauses for a moment.
“I’m pretty sure he had a fighter from there a long time ago. Someone escaped—”
“Bull. Shit.”
“Calm down. I’m just repeating what I heard. The point is, he had his suspicions that maybe the girl was from one of the Ring camps. So he let her keep coming, just to keep an eye on her, and they were gonna test her into the team the next fight after her three-round win.”
“But she disappeared.”
“Yep.”
“And what happened to Mad?”
Davis clears his throat. “Suicide. He was diagnosed with CTE. I heard the shit was getting bad quick and…” He shrugs. “Guess he didn’t want to go out that way.”
“How old was he?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck. Which is why you should start thinking—”
“Don’t start with me, Davis.”
He puts up his hands. “All right. But, ya know… it’s a cautionary tale, Eason.”
CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, an almost inevitable outcome for MMA fighters at my level. I turn back to the sea and enjoy what I have right now because there’s no way to turn back time and, unlike these guys around here, I never had a choice.
I still don’t have a choice. I never went to school. I have no other skills. And yeah, I have more than I need right now. I could sell the condo, buy a shitty piece of land in fucking Alabama or something, live in a trailer and never have to fight or work again.
But what the fuck is the point of life if you’re just gonna play it safe?
If it happens to me, then fuck it, it happens to me.
I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.
The same way Mad did.
The meeting is taking place in Dog’s gym and we get there an hour early to have a pre-meeting chat. There are five other guys there aside from Davis and me, and all of them look to be in their late twenties, early thirties, except one lean Mexican guy who looks about my age.
At twenty-four, I’m young for street tournaments. Especially in Miami where there’s an MMA gym on every fucking corner. But none of these guys look at me with anything other than respect. They don’t know me, but they know of me.
Or, more accurately, they know of the Ring of Fire. Because the moment Davis and I walk in, they all go silent.
Dog does the introductions, starting with Muzzle, a massive Mexican dude who looks slow, but if he actually was slow, he wouldn’t be here. He’s wearing classic black shades even though we’re inside. He looks like a fuckin’ gangster, tattoos all up and down his bare arms, and his knuckles say ‘DEADHEAD.’ I’m guessing that has nothing to do with liking old-ass hippy music.
Next up is the only other white dude in the room besides Davis and me, called Kill Bill. He’s lean and tall, with long arms and a reach I’d kill for. He’s wearing an open seafoam-green button-down, Hawaiian shorts, and no shoes. He wants to dap knuckles with me, and when we do, he says, “’Sup, dude,” like he’s a fuckin’ surfer instead of a fighter. But again, if he were just a surfer, he wouldn’t be here.