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)
That rooftop view of Copacabana Beach is too much.
I take her into my office, slip around the other side of my desk, and she shuts the door and sits in the chair for guests.
“What’s going on?”
I hesitate.
“Like I said, Maart, I don’t need a story. The entire world wants to know what the hell is up with you, so I’m here to write a stupid article if you wanna spill your guts. But I don’t need this story.” I make a face at her, but she puts up a hand. “I know, I know. You’re interesting. People are interested. Hell, I’m interested.” She pauses here to smile at me. “I know how much it’s worth, and I have a list of two dozen publications that want your story—including Vogue, by the way. Congrats on that. You know you’re an official player on the board when fuckin’ Vogue wants your story. So you’re worth a lot. But I don’t need your story. I am not the woman you know from the past. It’s been seven years and my life today looks nothing like the one I left behind.” She pauses here. Looks me in the eyes. “Yours doesn’t either, does it?”
“You know it doesn’t.”
She leans back in the chair. Relaxing a little. Crossing her legs as she leans an elbow on the arm and props her chin into her hand, staring at me.
Mackenzie was a reporter—maybe even the only reporter—for an underground fighting magazine called Ring of Fire, which was named after the underground death-fight circuit that I grew up in.
Actually, the Ring of Fire is the name of the highest level of that secret world. You have to fight for a decade, at least—killing opponent after opponent after opponent—before you are allowed to perform for the world’s sickest men in the final death fights at Ring of Fire level.
There were about six fights a year and each one was heavily promoted between the glossy pages of the magazine. Each fighter did an extensive interview with Mackenzie. There were photoshoots filled with romantic images and beautiful words strung together into sentences that never once mentioned the fact that only one of these two fighters would be alive when it was over.
But trust me, no one thought two fighters were gonna walk out of that ring. Everyone knew. Because the only people who ever saw those fights were the owners of other fighters who qualify at that level.
On the Bull of Light that night—when Cort had his last fight for these sick fucks—all those people who were watching were owners. They all had their own fighters back home. They all had their own death-fight camps filled with kids clawing their way up the levels.
Cort and I came up in Udulf van Hauten’s camp together. Our friend, Rainer, was there too. I can fight just as well as Cort can. I’ve killed my share of opponents in the lower-level rings. But I’m also very skilled as a medic and since the Ring of Fire doesn’t come with a healthcare plan, I was the one who put Cort back together after he won.
We made a deal when we were small. Before we were even teenagers. He would be the one to get to the Ring of Fire. He would get his own camp. He would get his own kids to train. He would get everything. But I would be the reason he got all that. Because I would keep him alive.
We had a plan. We were gonna buy our freedom. You can do that, at least in theory. The men—the ones who owned us—they told us it was possible. The price was high, of course. But the prizes each fighter got if they won in the Ring of Fire were massive. Yachts. Mansions. Things like that.
And Cort won thirty-six times.
He never once took a prize. He asked for the dollars. He never got the dollars, either, not really. Ninety-five percent of his cash-value prize was handed right back to Udulf as soon as the fight was over. He was paying, little by little, over many years and many fights, for our freedom.
He paid for me first. And by that time we were taking Rainer with us. After Cort had won enough for Rainer’s freedom, Evard came along. I tried to talk Cort out of that, but failed.
So that last fight on the Bull of Light was the final payment for Cort’s own freedom.
And he won, obviously. Since we’re all still here and we’re not living in death camps.
But the whole thing was a lie. They were never gonna let us buy our way out.
I knew that from the beginning. I saw it in Udulf’s face when he talked to Cort. Feigning love. Calling him ‘son.’ You don’t send your son into a death fight.
It was all lies.