Ringside (15 page)

Sloane

Angel cleared a
path and we headed up the aisle amongst the cheering throng. It was crazy. Some
people were even throwing money into the air, but eventually we made it to
hallway where he’d come into the arena from.

“This way,” he
told me, pointing down a bit to the doors of a dressing room. We hurried in,
and at last Angel turned to me, throwing his arms around me, enveloping me in
the sense that we were through the worst of it. He’d beaten Davis, and with any
luck the Carellos-

“How very
touching,” came a voice out of the corner.

Angel let me go
and I whirled around to see who was speaking. It was the Carellos. One of them
was tall and lean and the other looked like he may have been an ex-boxer
himself. They were the same guys I’d seen with Jessie at Angel’s first fight.

The tall one had
spoken, and he spoke again. “Sloane, is it?” he asked, though he went on
without waiting for an answer. He knew perfectly well who I was… “I don’t
believe my brother and I have had the pleasure of an introduction. I’m Leo, and
this is my brother Vick. He’s a bit angry, you see, so I thought I’d settle him
down by coming back here and seeing what the fuck your boyfriend was thinking
just now.”

Vick reached into
on pocket and fished out a gun. It was bigger than mine, but in that massive
paw of his it looked tiny.

Angel stepped in
front of me, and Leo laughed.

“You can’t protect
her. You can’t even protect yourself, Angel. Why, right this moment, there are
hundreds of ‘fans’, let’s call them, talking about the exhibition you just put
on for them. You’re a hero! They’ll be waiting at the doors to congratulate
you, unless I miss my guess. All of them know you’re in here getting changed,
taking a shower, basking in your victory.”

“And?” Angel
asked. His big body was in front of me. Was he shielding enough of me from view
that I could get the gun out of my purse without being seen? I wasn’t sure, but
I wasn’t going to just stand here and do nothing. I reached into my bag as
slowly as I could, careful to not draw any attention to myself.

“And a majority of
them, at least those in the know, saw Vick and I head back here when our
fighter was knocked out. That was a mistake, Angel. If you wanted to go legit,
you picked a stupid time to try it.”

Angel shrugged,
stalling. “So they know you came back here. Which means you’d be idiots if you
hurt either one of us. Everyone would know it was you.”

Leo shrugged. “Of
course they’ll know. They know it was the Carello family who did
a lot
of things we’ve gotten away with
though, don’t they? And do you know
why
?
Can you fathom a reason that I could have Vick here fill both of you worthless
pieces of shit with holes and then stride out of here still holding the smoking
gun?”

Angel didn’t
answer. My hand was on the gun, my finger against the trigger. I didn’t trust
myself to yank it out of the purse yet. If I were too slow, or if I startled
Vick with a sudden movement, the gun he had already leveled at Angel would
surely go off.

Leo laughed.
“We’ll get away with it because they don’t want the same thing to happen to
them. Simple fear. That’s all you need to control, and you can rise above most
men.”

Angel tensed, and
I felt that he was about to charge them. He was a big guy, fast on his feet now
that he’d learned a few moves from me. I had no doubt that he could close the
distance between the Carellos and us in a flash.

I also had no
doubt that he wouldn’t be able to get out of the way of the bullet Vick would
fire into him. He wouldn’t
try
to get
out of the way either, because he’d be worrying about them hitting me.

Jessie burst into
the dressing room, pushing a frail old man ahead of him without enough force to
knock the guy to the ground.

I took my
opportunity. Vick had been as startled as I was, and he’d swung the gun from Angel
to Jessie, not knowing who was coming in.

I pulled the
handgun out of the purse and stepped to the side of Angel. The safety was
already off, and I knew how to work the thing well enough to put a whole
through any one of the men across from us.

I pointed the gun
at Vick and said, “Drop it.”

Angel

All of a sudden, a
lot was happening. I saw Sloane with a gun on my right, threatening to shoot
Vick. I saw a man that could only be Kellerman on the ground at our feet,
beaten and bruised and bloodied.

And I saw Jessie
looking like he’d rather have shoved his way into any other room in the world
than this one. He wasn’t stunned for long though, and an instant later he was
reaching for the pistol I knew he carried in a shoulder holster.

I had to intercede
before Sloane could react. She’d do the
right
thing, the thing that made the most sense to do, which was aim her gun at
Jessie when he became a threat. It would be a mistake, though Vick would take
the opportunity to either shoot her or disarm her, and I didn’t think he’d mind
starting the gun play already.

So, I darted past
Sloane and smashed my fist into Jessie’s face. The little fat man, so often a
critic of just how fast my punches should be coming, constantly bemoaning how
much power was behind them, suddenly felt the full force of one of my attacks.
His jaw snapped beneath my knuckles and he went flying, unconscious, into the
wall.

“Drop it!” Sloane
said again behind me, which meant that she’d been smart and kept her gun on
Vick. I hunched my shoulders, expecting to feel a bullet pierce my back, but
instead I heard the metallic clatter of a gun hitting the ground and being
kicked over to Sloane’s side of the room.

I turned around to
find Leo still smiling, his grin matched only by the sullen scowl on Vick’s
face. They were beaten, but I wasn’t getting the vibe from them that they were
destroyed, not like Kellerman and I had hoped going into this.

“Alright,” said
Leo. “Let’s call an end to this then, shall we?”

“What?” Sloane
asked. “We let you walk away so we can spend the rest of our lives looking over
our shoulders? Forget it!”

God love her, she
had the right idea. Keep them talking. Keep them on the back foot. I shut up
and made sure Jessie was down for the count.

He was. There was
no way he was getting up from that anytime soon.

“Forgetting it is
exactly what I propose, actually,” Leo was saying. “Let’s just all let bygones
be bygones. No harm, no foul.”

I made a face.
“You expect us to believe that you’re going to lose all that money on a fight
you thought you’d fixed and be okay with that?”

At that, even
sullen Vick found a smile. “We didn’t bet, you stupid fuck,” he growled at me.
“Smelled funny. Guys at the gym been telling us you’ve been training like a man
possessed. Leo and I thought it best to keep our wallets in our pockets, this
time around.”

My heart sank. I
thought I could trust the boys I trained with, but, just like always, everyone
had a price. Still, if the Carellos hadn’t lost all of their ill-gotten gains,
maybe they
would
be more willing to
let Sloane and I go.

And Kellerman.
Can’t forget about him. I turned my attention to the old man, only to find that
his head was hung in defeat.

So much for
bringing down empires, I guess.

“So that’s it?” I
asked. “You go your way and we go ours?”

Leo nodded. “You
and your little ballerina, yes. We have a score to settle with Mr. Kellerman
though. I’m sure he’ll understand, but we can’t have someone like him working
against us as well as he nearly did. Wouldn’t make sense…”

I saw Sloane raise
her gun a little, and I knew what was going on in her head. If she could only
pull the trigger, she’d be thinking, she could get rid of these two scumbags.
Save Kellerman. Maybe even insure a life for her and myself together, free of
the sort of worry that having a family like the Carellos after you would
certainly bring with it.

“I don’t think
you’re remembering all those people that saw us come back here to your dressing
room,” Leo reminded Sloane, in the very same voice he’d have used to explain a
problem to a small child. “You see, something tells me you won’t be given the
same loyalty my brother and I would. Something tells me that there’d be
many
people willing to tell the cops who
brought down the Carellos. And then where would you be?”

He was right. The
only way out of here was with the Carellos still alive, and I didn’t see a way
we could bring Kellerman with us, not if they were hell-bent on teaching him a
lesson they couldn’t teach me.

Sloane

The man on the
ground in front of me, Kellerman I guess his name was, looked up at me with sad
eyes set deep within his wrinkled face.

“They’re right,”
he said. “Partially.”

Leo didn’t like
that. I could tell he was the sort of guy who only knew what to do with himself
when he was in charge, and Kellerman having a say in his own fate, even
re-writing the script a touch wasn’t going to please him. “What are you talking
about, old man? She’s not an idiot. She knows if she kills me and Vick that
it’s just a matter of time until she gets done by someone else.”

Kellerman nodded
knowingly. Even though he was still on his hands and knees, blood trickling to
the floor from a handful of cuts, he seemed to be laughing to himself. “Yes,
I’m sure she knows that. She knows that your brother Ritchie and your Uncle
Gino would make mincemeat out of her and her boyfriend.”

“Exactly,” said
Vick. “So why are we still talking?”

But Kellerman kept
right on speaking. “Does she know that, if the two of you were gone
and
Ritchie and Gino were gone as well,
she’d be safe?”

Leo shrugged,
clearly getting flustered. “How do I know what this bitch does and doesn’t
know?”

Vick shifted his
weight on his feet nervously. “Get out, Angel. Take the girl with you. Leave us
with Kellerman. All this old man is doing is showing us that my Uncle Gino
should never have spared him, way back when. He’s been nothing but a thorn in
our side, and that stops tonight.”

Kellerman nodded.
“Yes, yes it does. One more thing though, Brothers Carello. I wonder, does
Sloane know that your loving Uncle Gino, he who showed me such mercy ‘way back
when’ as he gunned down my son, as he murdered my friends, does she know that
he and your brother Ritchie were playing cards in a little apartment on Eighth
Avenue tonight? Does she know that they were sitting by the phone, waiting for
you to call and tell them that she and Angel were as dead as my boy?”

Leo’s face went
white, and I knew Kellerman was speaking the truth.

“How the Hell do
you know that, old man?” Vick demanded.

Kellerman
chuckled. “Does she know that about half an hour ago, a gas line broke inside
that apartment? Your Uncle’s a heavy smoker, isn’t he Leo. What do you think
happened when he lit up his next cigarette?” Kellerman made an exploding noise,
sitting up to reveal that he grabbed the gun Vick had kicked over to me without
me or anyone else knowing. “A shame. At least there were only the two victims.
Leaky pipes can be so dangerous, don’t you think?”

Angel grabbed my
hand. “Let’s go,” he said urgently. “Now!”

I nodded, stuffing
my gun back into my purse. “Mr. Kellerman…” I said, not knowing what to say
next.

“Go now, child,”
he told me. “I’ll make sure these two don’t ruin the life you and your man have
ahead of you.”

I hurried to the
door. Angel pushed it open, but I paused, unwilling to leave the old man like
this.

“We can all go,” I
told Kellerman, even though I knew it wasn’t true.

He shook his head.
“I don’t think so, sweetheart. Maybe…”

“Yes?”

“Maybe if you have
a boy, you could name him William, after my son?”

I nodded. Billy. I
liked that. I didn’t know of course that Angel and I would have a son. Hell, I
didn’t even know if he and I would be a thing forever.

Though that was a
lie. I knew I had his heart, and he certainly had mine.

I rushed after
Angel. We ran down the hallway, and through the crowd, he and I both thinking
the same thing, that if Kellerman did what we thought he was going to do, the
more people that saw us and the farther away from the scene of the crime we
were, the better…

Someone had pulled
his Jag around front, and we climbed in, too uncertain to smile, but clinging
to each other like the lovers we were.

Like the lovers
we’d always be.

Billy. Billy
Angelino.

I liked it. He
sounded like the sort of boy who’d grow up to be a man worth knowing.

And I couldn’t
wait to meet him.

THE
END