Tyson POV

Alex had just gotten on her ride. I left her by the buss stop but didn’t stray far because I wanted to keep an eye on her. It wasn’t smart for a girl to wander on her own in this neighborhood. Not even if she had Alex’s skills.

Now that she was gone I needed to move. To where, I didn’t know. It didn’t really matter. I just didn’t want to go back to the house. Not ever. But I knew I would have to return eventually. I couldn’t afford to live on my own. Plus, I was still underage.

“Just a few more months!” I thought, counting down to my birthday. “Then I’ll be free! I’ll just have to try harder to avoid him till then.”

Especially now. I wanted to kill him.

The way he looked at her… The way he talked to her… All that made me want to just pounce on that scumbag and hit him until he was unconscious. And then to hit him some more.

I sighed.

I needed to work. Right now. But I had to wait until it was evening. Then the Ring would provide me with the much desired arena to vend off my frustration. Tonight I wouldn’t give a damn about the money; I just needed to fight!

But right now, I needed a smoke.

*****

The Ring rule number six: fights are one on one, two on two, one on two and, on special occasions, melees. The last provided the best way to unleash the beast within you which was exactly what I needed this evening. Unfortunately for me, tonight wasn’t a special occasion. So I had to go with the second best choice: one on two. I would be fighting alone of course. As for my opponents… Well, I didn’t really care who they were, as long as they were strong. It was for their own good to be so ‘cause I was going all the way tonight.

No mercy for anyone!

*****

Alex POV

I was right - Tyson was fighting at the Ring tonight. I knew he would want… no, he would need to do so after what happened this morning. I would be doing the same if our roles were switched. At least I would want to… but he would never allow it. He never did. Although he knew he would make good money from me, not once did he even think to put me in the Ring. No. That would’ve attracted too much attention to me and I was too precious for him. I was his. At least he wanted it that way!

I sighed heavily. I was just starting to forget about him! And now here I was at the Ring – one of the places where he would make his money, so I could watch another guy fight.

I looked down at the arena just in time to see Tyson enter again. It was his third battle for the night; all of them were one on two with him fighting alone. He hadn’t noticed me yet and I was hoping to keep it that way.

“Perhaps I should go home…” I thought. But I just couldn’t keep my gaze away from the boy with the mismatched eyes.

The fight started.

God, he was beautiful!

And I didn’t mean his face. The way he moved… It was pure poetry! It was hypnotizing! Fast, swift, accurate… So deadly in his fury! He was like a wild animal: lunging at his prey with both enough force and speed to cause maximum damage. He was out for blood tonight! He just couldn’t get enough of it. Needless to say the battle was over quickly with one of his opponents too exhausted to get up and the other lying unconscious on the floor.

The sound of cheers erupted around me, mixed with the disappointed groans coming from those who no doubt had betted on the losers. Only then did I realize I was gaping in my amazement. That had been the third fight the boy won in a row.

Third and last because of Ring rule number seven: three matches at most per night unless on a special occasion. And special occasions indicated they were having some high rollers as VIP. Tonight wasn’t such a night though.

Which meant it was time to go home. After all I’d come to the Ring with the sole purpose of watching Tyson. I didn’t want to spend much time here; it brought too many memories.

*****

“I shouldn’t have gone there!” I scolded myself, walking through the mostly empty streets. “I shouldn’t have…But I wanted to see Tyson.”

Only now that I was on my way back home from watching that boy fight at the Ring, I couldn’t help the memories of him coming back.

The memories of Stefan.

It all started when we were children. Our families were friends, so naturally, we grew up together. Stefan had always been a stuck up, selfish rich brat but he had a soft and kind side for me… only for me.

He would be one of the three boys to always take care of me when I was little.

But when one of those boys died protecting me, little five-year-old me decided it was time to learn to take care of myself so I’ll be the one protecting the important people in my life.

But my mother and father didn’t think it was appropriate for their daughter to learn to fight. For years I had begged them to hire me a tutor who’d teach me the art of combat.

But they always refused me.

So who did I turn to? My childhood friend Stefan – a boy whose strict father was a big believer in violence because “fighting was the way to prove you are a real man”.

I still had one more protector – my older cousin. But he lived in England so I rarely saw him. That left me alone with Stefan.

No wonder we got so close!

Only little me and little Stefan eventually grew up. And when that happened, we both changed. Because the now grown Stefan was in a gang and he was the alpha male there.

It started with him making a few new friends. He rolled with guys now but he kept me close by. We started going to parties, drinking and smoking weed (even I tried it a few times) and when we got bored of that, we would dare each other to play a prank on someone.

As time passed the challenges became more demanding and less than legal. The usual one was to steal something small from a person who pissed you or your pals off or to “borrow” a car; something I was particularly skillful at because I was good with vehicles.

Then somebody got the idea that instead of just “borrowing” cars and leaving them somewhere after a joy ride, we could steal them, sell them and enjoy spending the money. Most of the boys were upper-class and didn’t need the extra cash; they just wanted to play gangsta.

And that’s how Stefan’s gang had started.

It consisted of roughly a dozen boys and me. Being the only girl, I had to constantly prove myself when challenged. It wasn’t that hard for me; I was good at anything I was interested in. And if there was something new to be learned, I would be the first one to get the hang of it. But when they started with the illegal business, I wanted out. The only problem was that Stefan begged me to stay, convincing me I was the only one he could really trust.

So I stayed. I just couldn’t leave my childhood friend on his own. Not after all he’d done for me.

But I never went with the boys on their raids.

The theft business was only one of Stefan’s ways to make money. His father was a high roller at the Ring and he introduced it to his son, who introduced it to his gang in turn. Stefan sometimes fought himself but he would usually let his boys fight while he betted on them. He didn’t let them take a dive; he said that would ruin the gang’s image. But if they lost a fight in which he had betted on them, then they owed him money.

And Stefan was not the type of person you wanted to owe anything to.

The more he got involved in things like that, the more alienated he became from me. He knew that I disapproved so he tried to keep me away from it all because he didn’t want to loose me.

But I knew. I always knew although I was foolishly hoping that he would change back to the way he was before.

But even though I did not steal cars or fight in the Ring, I found other ways to get in trouble. So one day my parents sent me off to England. They thought it was for the best; I wasn’t the perfect little lady they wanted me to be so maybe a new environment would transform me into just that. But I got kicked out of school just a month after I arrived there so they had to take me back.

Imagine my surprise when Stefan came to pick me up from the airport. On his own. Without a single one of his boys. He said he missed me terribly; that he wasn’t himself when I was away. He made me feel like when we were kids. I had such a good time catching up that we ended up spending the whole weekend together.

We slept together once. Then a second time. Eventually, we started dating.

And then he went back to his gang. At first it wasn’t that bad. He would still be kind and attentive to me. But slowly he began treating me less as his girlfriend and equal and more as one of his subordinates.

Stefan’s over-protectiveness had now turned into a sense of possession. He wanted me near even if all we did was fight. I was no longer a person; I was a trophy, evidence he could have anything he wanted. But I’d had enough. Enough of waiting and hoping that things will get better; enough of being captive.

So I left. I left him, I left the country.

And I came to the small town I’d called home for the past few weeks.

I sighed heavily.

Yep, I shouldn’t have gone there. Thinking about Stefan always left me feel drained.

How did I not see sooner what he was like? Why didn’t I leave earlier?

It wasn’t only his possessiveness. He was now messing with drugs. No, he wasn’t doing drugs; he was selling them. That had been the final straw! I just couldn’t be around him anymore. Especially not after he knew my reason for hating them.

The man who killed my brother when I was five… He was on drugs. The man who was aiming at me… but shot him instead.

I was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe. The familiar lump formed in my throat. But I knew I wouldn’t cry. I’d lost that ability the day my brother was shot twelve years ago. I had not shed a single tear after that. Not even on his funeral.

I was almost at my apartment now. But I didn’t go in. I needed to run.

So I turned on my heals and sped off in the opposite direction.

*****

I could feel it; the exhaustion taking over and replacing part of my sorrow. I knew the grief wouldn’t go away completely; I knew it would come back to haunt me in my nightmares.

I was running through a park when I heard it: coughing. Not the I-have-a-cold type of cough but the I-can’t-breathe one. I stopped and looked around, searching for the source of the noise.

My heart clenched at the sight of him.

Tyson was sitting on the ground, leaning his back on a bench and clutching his stomach. What had happened to him after the Ring? Instead of having just a few not too troublesome injuries, he was now covered in fresh bruises and cuts and was gasping for air.

“Tyson!” I ran to him.

“Alex?” He coughed out. “What… What are you… doing… here?”

“Tyson, what happened?” I ignored his question.

“I had… a little… dis… disagreement with…” He couldn’t even finish one sentence; he was in that much pain. “… a pair… a pair of twins and… some friends of theirs.”

Twins? His second battle tonight had been with twins. Maybe they decided to take revenge; it was not unheard of for people to do so after they got out of the Ring; that way there will be no rules whatsoever.

“Tyson, move your hands!”

Probably too tired to argue, he did as I told him. But instead of the stab wound I expected, I saw something else.

“Tyson, were you shot?”

“You just keep on… keep repeating my name tonight… don’t you, Alex?” He smiled weakly at me. He wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying and that was NOT a good sign. “I like that,” he admitted quietly.

“Tyson, I need you to focus.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “Were. You. Shot?”

“Don’t… worry about it, Alex! It’s not… really not serious. It just barely grazed my ribs… that’s all.”

“It still stings like a bitch,” I remembered.

“How… would you know?” He asked, his mismatched eyes trying to focus on my face.

“Never mind. Can you get up?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Damn it! Damn it… Damn it…”

*****

I had no choice; I brought Tyson to my apartment. The hospital was not an option ‘cause they would ask too many questions. They would even get the police involved and that would cause some serious trouble for Ty: if he didn’t speak to the officers, they’d arrest him; if he did talk to them and told them about the Ring… Let’s say a prison stay will be heaven compared to what the people from the Ring would do to him!

My place was closer than the boy’s house so naturally that’s where I had headed. Besides, I was sure he wouldn’t want to go to his house anyway. And I could keep an eye on him here.

I had finished taking care of his wounds. One more thing I learned thanks to my life with Stefan. He was never interested in mending wounds but he made sure I knew how to do that. One of the guys that worked for him taught me everything about patching up wounds ranging from an ordinary bruise, going through a small cut and finally - stab and gunshot wounds. The dude even showed me how to fix a dislocated shoulder or ankle. That is why we called him The Doctor, or Doc for short. He was the eldest in the gang, a guy in his twenties, and yet he hung out with us. I think being pressured by his parents to attend medical school, he never got to enjoy his teen years. So once he decided he had enough of being told what to do by mommy and daddy, he came to us. But enough about him!

I sighed, getting back to the present.

The good news was that Tyson had been right: the bullet had only slightly grazed him, it wasn’t serious.

He was now sleeping in my bed. I myself was curled up on a bean bag in the same room. I wasn’t eager to go to sleep; I knew the nightmares would come. Especially now that I saw a gunshot wound. It was just too close to home.

I knew that if I fell asleep now I would dream of my brother’s death.