Mafia Don’s Secret Twins: Chapter 13

As soon as Benicio calls for the competition to begin, I have approximately three seconds before everything around me explodes.

Literally, in the case of a fist to my head.

Despite the ricochet of pain exploding across my face, I grin.

One thing I can do is fuckin’ fight.

I don’t know if it’s rage or blood that turns my gaze red, but it doesn’t fuckin’ matter.

I’m here to fight.

Fast as I can, I round on the person who hit me. When my fist connects with his body, it sends a thrill of something wild and animalistic through me.

I don’t have time to feel. I don’t have time to do anything except move.

So that’s what I do.

I don’t know what is happening. Not consciously, really. I move like I’m programmed, like every movement is flowing through me, channeled by something that I’m not in control of.

It’s like a bar fight, but so much better.

Everything around me is chaos. Fists. Feet. The crunch of bone and cartilage under my fingers.

At some point, someone is manically laughing. It takes me a second to realize that it’s me.

Then, I keep going.

“Dino!” I hear Johhny yell.

I look over at him.

The Russian, Volkov, is towering over him. Johnny isn’t a huge guy, maybe somewhere around six foot, with a fairly lean build.

Volkov is built like a fuckin’ polar bear.

I snarl, dodging someone’s fist before I duck and roll over to Johnny and Volkov. With a swift kick, I hit Volkov in his ankles.

Big men have ankles as weak as anyone. Weaker.

Volkov howls, and goes down. Johnny dodges his body as it dips, and ducks towards me.

“Behind you!” he yells.

I spin just in time to move away from the Frenchman’s fist. I come back, knocking him down. I know it’s a good hit because the sound it makes is like pounding into a steak.

I know it’s a great hit when he doesn’t get up.

“Dino!”

I turn to Johnny. Volkov is definitely reeling, but he’s rebounding quickly.

He, Johnny, and I are the only ones still standing.

Johnny looks at me, giving me a wink. “I’d rather it was you, man.”

Shit.

Instead of punching him, I walk up behind and grab his neck, pressing my hand against his windpipe. Volkov watches me, his eyes narrow, with all the patience of a wolf.

Gently, I lay Johnny down, and Volkov and I circle each other.

I don’t have any formal training. I’m just fuckin’ winging this.

But I can tell that Volkov is not going down easily.

We feint a couple of times, each of us dodging in the other direction. He’s big but he’s fast, and while I took his ankle down earlier, he’s recovering well.

Still. If it’s bruised, he has a weakness there.

Let’s see where else you’re hurt, motherfucker.

I duck in, landing a hit on his side. He winces, grunting. Ribs.

I spin away from him as one meaty fist moves.

Shoulder. He’s slow on his right side.

Dancing behind him, I put a punch in his kidneys, and he groans.

That’s the spot.

Enough pain from a kidney and liver shot will be more than just debilitating.

If I hit him hard enough, he’ll pass out.

I grin.

Volkov grunts and dashes for me. I spin, but not fast enough. The pain in my shoulder is intense, to the point where I stumble for a second.

It’s enough of a pause that Volkov swoops in, roaring like a wounded boar.

He hammers in another shot to my collarbone, and I hear something crunch.

That’s not good.

There’s a gasp that has to be Marisol. I turn, instinctively, toward the sound.

Her scream makes me turn back to Volkov.

I just manage to move fast enough to get out of his way. I’m on the defensive though, and that’s not somewhere I want to be.

I run across the garden spot, my feet crunching on gravel. I need something. I can’t use a weapon, but I could use…

There’s a bench.

That I could use.

I turn back to Volkov, edging backward toward the bench. “Hey motherfucker!” I yell at him. “You think I’d go down that fuckin’ fast?”

Volkov snarls something in Russian, a language that honestly, I never fucking bothered with, and stomps toward me.

Good.

He’s dragging his back leg ever so slightly. I know that if I can get him to put weight on it, he’ll collapse.

And then I can knock him the fuck out.

“Yeah, that’s right, you giant fucking Russian piece of shit,” I yell. The more that I talk, the angrier he gets.

It’s a predictable reaction. Men like Volkov think they’re powerful.

They’re sensitive enough, though, to let words goad them into action.

“Yeah, that’s right, you ugly fuckin’ son of a…”

“Shut up!” He roars.

He’s one foot from me when I hop up backwards onto the bench. Using the height, I fly forward, connecting with Volkov’s shoulders.

Volkov roars, and I twist so that I’m behind him. One of my arms wraps around his neck while he tries to tear me off.

But he’s not very flexible.

Can’t forget to stretch after you work those pretty muscles, asshole.

I drive my knee into his kidney, and Volkov howls. I do it again and he staggers down. I push back, coming off of his back, and then stand over him as he falls to his hands and knees.

He looks up at me. He’s panting, and blood is pouring from his mouth. Split lip or internal bleeding?

I don’t give a fuck.

I bring my foot up, stomping him hard in the back again. He makes a sad, small noise, unusual for such a big man.

From this angle, I could stomp him in his jaw. Shatter the lower part of his face. I could…

“It’s over,” I hear a cold voice near my shoulder, and the sound of a safety being clicked off.

My chest heaves, but I look to the side.

Moretti is there, pointing one of his fucking big-ass pistols at my head.

I sneer at him, and he looks at me with flat, reptilian eyes. I’m not a fuckin’ biologist or nothin, but I can tell that this guy isn’t human.

Those are the eyes of someone dead inside.

I hold up my hands, wincing at the pain in my shoulder. “I think I won, asshole.”

“Maybe,” he says in response.

I give him a grin. I can taste the iron of blood in my mouth, but despite that, I smile so that he can see my teeth through the gore.

So he knows I am not fuckin’ scared of him.

And if this gun wasn’t between us, I’d fucking stomp his ass too.

Clapping sounds from where Benicio is sitting. He takes a step down, his polished boots crunching on the gravel.

He comes within about ten feet of me before he stops. “Bravo, Drakos.”

I don’t miss how his voice makes the word Drakos sound like a sneer.

“You did well. But I am curious, why did you merely choke this one,” he gestures to Johnny. “Why not take him down completely?”

“I prioritized,” I grunt.

Benicio stares at me for a minute. He makes a noise, nodding. “I think it would have been better to not reveal your weaknesses…. Drakos.”

His eyes shoot to Marisol, who is standing. She’s staring at me, her chest heaving. It makes her breasts press against the edge of the dress she’s wearing.

That, in turn, makes my vision go red all over again.

But for a very different reason.

I take a deep breath through my nose, trying to control myself. I can fucking do this.

“Did I win or not?” I manage to grit.

Benicio frowns. “You did not lose,” he concedes.

Good enough for me.

“Fine,” I spit. “That’s just fuckin’ fine.”

Benicio moves closer. “Do not think that this gives you the advantage. Even though I am holding this as a competition, I will not allow my daughter to marry someone I do not like,” he says.

The words are cold.

Quiet.

For a second, I understand completely the type of killer that Benicio Souza is. Before now, he’s been a somewhat arrogant, weird guy, who seems to be making us all dance at his whim.

Now, though, I see him.

The Benicio in front of me is a fucking threat.

And I would do well to remember it.

I nod sharply. “Noted,” I say, not willing to give him anything other than that.

I don’t want to give Benicio Souza a single thing that he could use against me.

He grunts. “Clean up. We will have dinner once the others regain consciousness.”

It’s approximately nine in the morning.

Clearly, he’s building out some time for recovery.

Aware that Marisol is watching me, I limp away, back to the spot in the barracks that Souza gave us.

I need to get my shit together. I need to figure out if my collarbone is broken.

But most of all, I need to figure out how the fuck I’m going to win this shit.

Johnny, unsurprisingly, is one of the first to recover.

I didn’t knock him out that badly. Choking out is an easy one to recover from.

“Bro,” he says, a big grin on his face. “That was fucking epic.”

“I need you to set my collarbone,” I tell him.

Johnny blinks. “Bro?”

“Here,” I gesture to him. After spending the better part of an hour poking at it, I figure that it at least has a hairline fracture.

I’m going to need to set it. I have a makeshift sling, made from a pillowcase, and I think that if I can just get it fuckin’ straight, I’ll be able to keep it semi-immobile unless I’m out jumping through Benicio’s hoops.

Johnny blinks at me. “You want me to set your collarbone.”

“Yeah. Didn’t you spend like six months as a medic?”

He shakes his head. “Yeah but like that was a fuckin’ minute ago, and I was dishonorably discharged bro.”

“For setting collarbones?”

Johnny shuffles. “Nah man, for smoking weed.”

I sigh and gesture him closer. “Set my fucking collarbone,” I growl at him.

Blinking, Johnny steps back. “Jesus Christ. Okay. Let me just…”

I whip off my shirt, and he winces as he looks at the bruises covering me. “I think a broken collarbone might be the least of your problems,” he says, eying the spot where my ribs are bruised so badly you can’t see the tattoos on my skin anymore.

“Not broken. Collarbone,” I point to it.

“Are you sure you need me to set it? Normally that stuff kinda just heals on its own with immobility.”

“There’s a piece of it that’s not in the right spot,” I grit. The feeling of your bones being in an incorrect place is not pleasant, and talking about it is making the whole situation even worse. “Set. My fucking. Bone.”

“Jesus okay. Hold on…” Johnny presses his thumbs on either side of the broken bone.

The pain is blinding. I grit my teeth so hard that I hear one of them crack. Johnny’s hands move, and with a little bit of a snap, I feel a dizzying wave.

It’s in pace.

Panting, I wave my good hand at the pillowcase I made into a sling. Johnny eases me into it. Once I have it on, I collapse on my bed.

I’m in so much fuckin’ pain, I feel like I’m going to throw up.

The nausea overwhelms me and I break out into a sweat. The only thing I can focus on is the rise and fall of my breath.

I let everything else fade.

In.

Out.

In.

Eventually, the urge to throw up diminishes. I’m left with the shaky after-effects of adrenaline.

Shock.

I need to get warm.

I sit up. Johnny’s still here. “I need a blanket,” I say, from between my chattering teeth.

Johnny leans forward and wraps something around my shoulders. “Already got you, boss.”

“Not your fuckin’ boss.”

He sighs. “Yeah but. For now.”

We sit in silence for another minute. He looks over at me. “You know, you could leave.”

“No.”

“The French guy and Costa left after they came to.”

“Good,” I mutter.

It is good. That’s less competition. Volkov, Johnny, and the Armenian are the only ones left.

And me.

Johnny looks at me, his eyebrows pinching together. “You really want this chance at Souza’s empire, don’t you?”

I shake my head. “Don’t give a shit about that.”

“So why… oh,” Johnny’s eyes widen. “The girl. You really are just here for the girl.”

I nod.

“I really am.”