Chapter 11 - The Deep Water
""Three!"" the referee yelled.
Marcus dragged himself upright, his breath coming in ragged, whistling gasps through his mangled nose. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and unfocused. The liver shot had drained the spring from his legs; he stood flat-footed, leaning heavily toward his uninjured side.
Across the pit, Frank stood perfectly composed, blood dripping slowly from his jaw onto his chest. He didn't rush in to finish. He knew the danger of a wounded, explosive puncher.
""Work him, Marcus!"" Viktor shouted, slamming his palms against the timber rail. ""Don't let him breathe!""
Marcus lunged forward, throwing a desperate, looping right cross. It lacked the crisp technique of his opening combinations, born entirely of panicked pride. Frank slipped inside the arc with calm, surgical economy. He parried the arm and buried a short, clean right cross into Marcus’s chin.
Marcus’s head snapped back. He wobbled, his balance deserting him as he crashed back-first into the corner posts.
Frank closed the distance methodically, stepping inside the pocket. He didn't throw wild haymakers; he worked with short, compact, devastating blows. Left to the body, right hook to the ribs, elbow across the jawline. Each strike landed with a heavy, wet thud that sucked the remaining bravado out of Marcus’s frame.
Marcus attempted to tie Frank up in a clinch, wrapping his long arms around Frank’s neck to buy time. But Frank was a veteran of two hundred underground rounds. He wedged his forearm against Marcus’s throat, creating a frame, and drove a short knee into Marcus’s thigh, deadening the quadriceps nerve.
""You wanted elite resistance,"" Frank whispered in the clinch, his voice steady beneath the roar of the spectators. ""This is where resistance begins.""
Marcus shoved Frank away with both hands, throwing caution to the wind. He threw a frantic head kick, but his planted leg was dead from the knee strike. He slipped on the blood-slicked canvas, landing heavily on his hip.
The crowd began to jeer. The bookmakers near Hector were frantically recalculating lines, screaming over the betting sheets.
Marcus scrambled back to his feet, but his left eye was swelling shut rapidly from Frank’s short hooks. He looked over the ropes toward Viktor, searching for reassurance, for a strategy, for anything.
Viktor’s face was cold, merciless, and utterly devoid of support. He gave Marcus a singular, chilling look: You lose this, you are nothing.
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Marcus turned back toward Frank, his chest heaving, his fists shaking. He realized with absolute, terrifying clarity that nobody in this room cared if he lived or died—except the man standing across from him, who had offered him a different path four years ago.
With a primal scream of frustration, Marcus threw himself forward one last time.
