12 Rounds (3 page)

You don’t ask those kind of questions to the king pin of the brotherhood.

Unless you have a death wish and want to find yourself at the bottom of the Ohio River with a rope tied around your ankle and a brick tied to the end of that rope.

And in the future I know I won’t ever ask.

I like living and breathing.

I’m not interested in dying anytime soon.

I come to the last bill in the wad Murph gave me and pinch the bridge of my nose with a frustrated sigh. “Damn it. Murph, you’re a hundred bucks short.”

His eyes widen. “What?” Then under his breath he mutters, “Shit.”

“There should be five large here.” I narrow my eyes and stare up at him, trying to read him. Sometimes runners think they can get away with pinching some cash. They blame it on the customers. They say they got shorted. The runners who’ve done it in the past are now the dearly departed.

Murph is sweating bullets. He drops his burrito and begins touching himself frantically, emptying his pockets and by his reaction I know he didn’t take the cash. For one thing, the massive mother fucker dropped his burrito. And I know Murph has never wasted a miniscule morsel of anything edible. “I don’t know, man!” He continues patting down his pockets. Secondly, I’ve known him long enough to know he’s trustworthy.

“Relax,” I tell him and reach into my wallet. I pull out a crisp, new hundred dollar bill and add it to the stack. “Just remember next time. You got it?”

Murph swallows and wipes his forehead. “Yeah, man.”

“And be on time too,” I mention as I start the engine to the minivan. “I’ll cover for you this time, but you’ve got to remember this shit.” If he wants to live to see the next day.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

He nods.

“Plus,” I add, “now I’m late for training. And when Joe starts bitching at me, I’m gonna blame you.”

Murph chuckles and waves me off. “Shut the fuck up, bro. Joe will never believe you. That old fart fucking loves me.”

He does too. He tells me all the time, “That big friend of yours worries about you. I think it’s nice that he cares enough to look out for you.”

Sometimes I’d like to tell Joe that I don’t need Murph looking out for me. I’m twenty four years old for Christ sake, and I’ve been on my own taking care of my sister and myself since I was seventeen. But I never say anything. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I feel loyal to Joe and respect him in a way.

Joe used to be a boxer in the 1970’s. He never really got anywhere as a boxer, but as a trainer he was pretty damn amazing. I heard a couple of people around the city talking about how he trained some of the greats.

 I remember the day he recruited me. Well, if you want to call plucking a young scrapper off the street recruiting.

It was about two years ago. I’d been running some blow for Connie and on my way back, I saw some prick trying to rape and assualt a girl.

During my drug-running years, I’d seen a lot of shit go down and never got involved. I’d seen hookers getting beat up by their pimps. Junkies overdosing on the sidewalk. Runners holding other runners at gun-point. But this situation was different. The girl involved was different.

She was young, couldn’t have been more than nineteen and innocent looking. She vaguely reminded me of an angel, with platinum blonde hair, pink rosy cheeks, and she wore a frilly white blouse. As I walked past the darkened alley where the fucking pervert had her pinned against a brick wall, I watched her slump over when the burly man slammed her head into the brick barrier. And I’m not sure what made me react, but I knew I had to do something.

“Hey!”
I yelled and took a step into the alley. My deep voice echoed and bounced off the bricks.
“Back the fuck off!”

A grizzly voice shouted back at me,
“Mind your own fucking business!”

I was stunned. I figured that maybe this guy would back off and possibly run away.

But he didn’t.

He went even further.

The moment he pulled the poor girls’ jeans down to her ankles, something inside of me snapped.

I lost the logical part of me.

Blind fury took over
.                   

I snarled, charged toward him, yanked him back by the collar, and started wailing on him. I punched him so hard teeth flew out of his perverted  mouth and skittered along the pavement. I kept glancing at the girl and thought that she could have been Teagan, my kid sister, or my Ma if she was alive. Then I pounded the guy harder. Every ounce of rage in my body pumped through my fists, and for a second, I thought I might kill the guy.

Insert Joe.

He saw me pummeling the fucking rapist and stopped me. Yeah, that’s right. He stopped me with two sentences.

The first one was;
“Do you know what they do to rapists in prison?”

I eased up off the unconscious guy and held back a laugh. Why a laugh? I’m not quite sure now that I think of it, but I assume it was because I felt like he stole the question right out of my brain. My guess was a whole lot of anal research.

Second was;
“That girl needs a hospital.”

Shit. I let my anger get the best of me. I completely forgot why I was punching the prick in the first place.

 At first I was pissed, you know? Pissed that Joe decided to butt in and make me stop. I kept thinking if I kill this guy, so what? That’s one less rapist and pervert that the women in this area have to worry about.  With the drug cartels and branches of the mob, this area has enough problems as it is.

Subtract a rapist.

Then add in me, a criminal, I mean hero.

I think the citizens would appreciate my random act of nobility.

But when I scooped the limp girl up in my arms and her head rolled into the crook of my neck, I knew Joe was right.

She needed a hospital.

And she needed one fast.

I drove her in silence, but she started to regain her consciouness. I stared at her face, now complete with a bloody lip, bruised cheeks, and a black eye. She stirred in my passenger seat and I gripped her hand. I massaged my thumb over the area between her thumb and forefinger and murmured, “Don’t worry. You’re safe now. Everything is going to be all right.”

She passed out on me again a second later.

At the hospital, I carried her through the emergency room doors and a heavy set nurse with short black hair greeted me.

A team of doctors and nurses came together to work on the angel girl, and the nurse stopped me at the double doors, a stern look in her steely gray eyes. “Are you family?”

“No, but—”

“Then you can’t come back here,” she snapped and rushed toward the doors.

“But I found her!” I screamed.

“Sorry, kid. Family only!”

Then the nurse disappeared through the double doors.

After I left the hospital, I went back to the scene of the crime to find Joe, propped up against the side of one of the buildings. The rapist was gone. “What did you do with him?”

Joe pushed off the building and walked toward me. “What do you think? I called the cops. They came and got him and I covered for ya.”

I laughed. “You told them you beat the shit out of him?” If I was a cop I wouldn’t believe Joe could cause that kind of physical damage to a man. Whether he used to be a boxer or not. The man wasn’t an inch over 5’3. And he’d aged quite a bit since his boxing days. He told me this after the fact. Plus, I’d seen pictures and newspaper clippings.

“No kid, I told them what I saw. I told them I saw him trying to rape the girl and that the kid who knocked him out took her to the hospital.”

When I thought about the whole situation, I realized I could have called an ambulance, but at the time that thought had slipped my mind. “And my guess is that they’re going to want me to come down for questioning.”

“You got it kid.”

I kicked a rock across the alley and muttered, “Great. Just fucking great.”

I liked to avoid the cops at all costs.

 And I’ll never forget what Joe said after that. He said, “You’ve got a hell of a right hook, kid.” He stood next to me and patted my shoulder. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone throw a punch like that.”

Those two sentences changed my entire life.

Murph shoves his hands in his pocket and rocks on his heels. A vibration in my pocket pulls me from my thoughts and I whip out my cell, thinking it’s either Joe or Connie. It’s neither. It’s my sister Teagan. I hit the silence button. I’ll call her back in the morning.

Tee has this weird notion that if she talks to me before bed sometimes it helps her sleep. I don’t know why she thinks so. My voice is deep. Thick. Harsh, with a slight Irish lilt. I assume maybe she likes hearing me because my voice is familiar to her. Or could remind her of happier times.

“Later Murph,” I say with a nod of my head.

He chuckles. “Tell Joe I said hey.”

“Will do.”

And with that, I speed off, leaving Murph to the streets’ violent delights.

Chapter Three

~Hadlee~

There are moments in my life where I feel like the self-blame for everything I’ve gone through in the past year will continue gnawing at me like a carnivorous beast mawling on my flesh until it picks my bones clean.

A lot of times I think I can feel my self-loathing snake through my bloodstream riding on nerve endings before it actually makes it to my brain and I can tell myself:

Stop, Hadlee.

Just stop.

Don’t think about. Don’t think about. Don’t think about it.

Because that night wasn’t your fault.

The night he… he…

It’s just not your fault.

But I keep asking myself what if things turned out differently? What if my study group decided on a place to study that was closer to the Carver University Campus? What if I had suggested it? Or why didn’t I ride with someone ? Or have my roommate  drop me off?

The self-inquiries are endless.

And never seem to let up.

No matter how hard I try to push them into the back of my mind I can never seem to. It’s like the questions have long, nimble legs and are running circles around my brain.
What if, Hadlee?

What if? What if? What if?

Enter Satine, my therapist.

I’ve been seeing her two times a week for the last eight months. My sessions with her have helped, but sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be able to fully get over the fact that I was beaten unconscious and almost raped a year and a half ago.

I never saw my attacker’s face. He wore a dark gray sweat suit with the hood pulled tightly around his jaw line.

But there are times when I swear I can hear him.

Feel his strong calloused  hands cutting off my air supply as they enclosed  around my neck.

Smell his stale breath, a mixture of smoke and rotten teeth as it climbs up my chin and sprints through my nostrils.

Then I breathe in deep and remind myself that it’s not real. He can’t hurt me ever again because the man who attacked me is spending the rest of his life in prison.

Satine likes to remind me that you can’t change the past, but sometimes, the past helps up shape and change our lives for the better.

For the future.

My future seems grim. Because as much as I hate to admit it, the past is something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over.

Satine’s monotone yet feminine voice cuts into my thoughts. “Hadlee, what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” I lie and look away from her, staring at some of the gold framed plaques with her name on them. They hang on the almond colored wall. Sometimes I want to ask her why she hasn’t been able to put me back together yet. Surely someone who has been awarded such plaques would be an expert at putting broken people back together.

“You sure?” she probes further.

I manage a tiny smile and face her. “Yes.”

She stares at me for a nanosecond and reclines backwards in her black, leather chair. “Very well then. Tell me about this week.”

“It was okay,” I mumble and start playing with my fingers.

I peek up at her through my eyelashes and she lifts a thin, arched ebony eyebrow. “Just okay?”

I know she wants me to elaborate, but I just don’t feel like it. Because the last week didn’t go so well. “It was a little rough.” I let out a groan, knowing that I have to continue or the questioning will intensify. “Sometimes I feel like even though I know where he is. That he isn’t really there. That he isn’t really in prison and he’s actually out looking for me.”

Satine has a notepad in her hands and she jots down everything I said.

There is only one saving grace involving everything that went down with my attack. One thing that reminds me that there are decent people in the world. Someone saved me that night. Someone interrupted the attack right before I was raped and the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital. I hear his voice sometimes too. He has a deep, gentle voice with a slight accent. I think it’s Irish. Maybe. I wasn’t exactly lucid when he came to my rescue so I can’t be sure. But I remember how his voice was calming, almost melodic and how when he said,
“Don’t worry. You’re safe. Everything is going to be okay.”
  I believed him. Felt safe when I heard him tell me that.

I wish I knew who he was. I wish I could properly thank him because if it wasn’t for that random guy, I’d be Randall Mason’s fourth victim and maybe…just maybe…I would have ended up not only raped, but murdered as well.

There’s a sliver of a portion of me that wishes that my savior didn’t actually save me. It’s a morbid thought, I know, but somehow I think dying would have been easier than living through my life with the haunting images of the past year. Do you how many times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night screaming? Or how I couldn’t go anywhere by myself. Couldn’t bring myself to leave my apartment at night. And let’s not even mention dating. I didn’t have much of a dating life before the attacker, but I still had casual dates and one relationship that lasted six months. Now my life involving the opposite sex is pretty much non-existent.