Chapter 3: The Parisian's Last Breath
The water from the showerhead was tepid and stung. Kiara stood under the weak stream, head bowed, letting it sluice through her hair and over the fresh purple blooms on her skin. The dirt and Seraphina’s blood swirled down the drain in a grey-pink spiral. Her knuckles were split. Her ribs were a continent of pain.
She hadn’t won.
The silence after her whispered “boo” had been broken by the buzzer. Time. The round had ended while Seraphina was still gasping on the mat. A technicality. A draw, they called it. A reprieve. They’d carried Seraphina out one way, her grey eyes blazing over a medic’s shoulder, locked on Kiara with a promise that felt more binding than any victory. Kiara had limped out the other.
Now, in the locker room’s concrete stillness, the adrenaline was gone. What remained was a hollow, vibrating fear. She’d gotten lucky. Twice. She’d survived by being disgusting, by being absurd. The Serpent wouldn’t forget. The thought was a cold stone in her gut.
Klaus was silent, wrapping her ribs with fresh tape. His hands were careful, but his face was grim.
“She’ll kill you next time,” he said finally, the words flat in the dripping quiet.
“There might not be a next time,” Kiara mumbled, leaning against the cold tiles.
“There’s always a next time. Until there isn’t.” He secured the tape. “Madame has your semifinal. Tonight.”
Kiara’s head jerked up. “Tonight? I can’t… look at me.”
“You can. And you will.” Klaus wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s not The Serpent. It’s someone else. New blood. They want to see if you’re broken.”
“I am broken,” Kiara hissed, a tremor in her voice.
“Then die clean,” Klaus said, gathering his kit. “And save us all the trouble.”
He left her there. The echo of the door was the loudest sound she’d ever heard.
She didn’t primp. She didn’t preen. The reflection in the steel mirror was a stranger—pale, bruised, eyes wide with an animal wariness. The bravado had been stripped away, sanded down by Seraphina’s relentless hands. She pulled on the simple black lingerie. It felt like a shroud. She left her hair down, a tangled blonde curtain.
When the call came, her legs moved on their own.
The arena felt smaller tonight, the ceiling lower. The crowd was a different beast—rowdier, drunker, smelling of cheap beer and cheaper anticipation. They hadn’t come for artistry. They’d come for a car wreck.
Her opponent was already in the cage.
Asia stood under a dingy light, stretching a long, powerful leg. Her skin was the colour of dark coffee, slick with a light sheen of oil. She wore deep burgundy lingerie, the lace straining over full, heavy breasts. Curved hips flared above muscular thighs. Her black hair was a waterfall down her back. She moved with a lazy, predatory grace, rolling her shoulders, cracking her neck with a series of soft pops.
She saw Kiara and smiled. It was a wide, white, hungry thing.
Kiara climbed through the ropes. Every step sent a jolt through her core. The cage door clanged shut behind her, the finality of a vault sealing.
The ref mumbled. Asia never stopped smiling, her eyes roaming over Kiara’s taped torso, the fading bruises on her jaw, the way she favored one side. Cataloguing weaknesses. Kiara recognized the look. It was a colder, cruder version of Seraphina’s assessment.
“They said you were tough,” Asia said, her French accent a soft curl around the words. Her D-cups heaved as she rolled her shoulders back, deliberately. “They said you beat Benazir. You look like someone beat you with a sack of oranges.”
The crowd chuckled.
Kiara said nothing. Her mouth was dry.
Asia cracked her knuckles, one by one. The sound was sharp in the tense air. “I saw the tape of you and the one in the suit. The Serpent. You fought like a cornered rat. Squeaking. Scrabbling.” She took a step forward, her hips swaying. “I don’t like rats.”
Kiara’s fear curdled, met a surviving spark of her old, nasty pride. She forced her own lips into a smirk. She reached up, not to fight, but to hook a thumb under the front strap of her own black bra. She popped it against her skin with a soft snap.
“Your little tits will look cute,” Kiara said, her voice finding a ghost of its old taunt, “stuffed in my trophy case after I crush your windpipe with them.”
It was her old line. Her old armor. It rang hollow in her own ears.
Asia’s smile didn’t falter. It deepened. Her eyes flashed. “Ah. There she is. The vain little bitch. I was hoping she wasn’t all gone.” She beckoned with one finger. “Show me.”
The bell rang.
Asia exploded forward. No caution, no circling. Pure, aggressive velocity. Kiara backpedaled, panicked, throwing up a guard. Asia’s first punch was a hammer to her forearm. The second, a straight jab that slipped through and snapped Kiara’s head back.
Bright stars burst behind her eyes. She stumbled.
Asia was on her, a storm of perfume and sweat. A knee dug into Kiara’s bruised thigh. An elbow glanced off her shoulder. Kiara swung back, a wild, looping hook. Asia ducked under it effortlessly and drove a fist into Kiara’s taped ribs.
The world went white. A silent, screaming sheet of pure agony. Kiara’s legs folded. She hit the mat on her hands and knees, bile rising in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Each attempt was a knife-twist.
Asia didn’t jump on her. She took a step back, letting the moment breathe. Letting the crowd see.
“Get up, trophy case,” Asia purred. “I’m not done looking at you.”
Gasping, tears of pain blurring her vision, Kiara pushed herself up. Her arms trembled. Asia closed in again, a leisurely walk. She grabbed a handful of Kiara’s hair, yanking her head up. “You talk about pride. Let’s see it.”
She slammed her knee into Kiara’s face.
There was a wet, crunching sound. Kiara collapsed onto her back, warm blood flooding her mouth and nose. The metallic taste was familiar, terrifying. The ceiling lights swam.
Asia straddled her, settling her weight on Kiara’s hips. She leaned down, her curvy body looming. She wiped a thumb through the blood on Kiara’s lip, then smeared it across Kiara’s cheek. “Pretty colors,” she murmured.
Kiara tried to buck, to shift. It was futile. Asia’s strength was immense, her control absolute. This wasn’t Seraphina’s clinical precision. This was a demonstration of raw, contemptuous power.
“Please,” the word bubbled out of Kiara, mixed with blood. It was instinct. The coward’s whisper.
Asia’s eyes lit up. “Ah. Music.” She slapped Kiara, not hard, but degrading. An open-handed tap on the cheek. “Again.”
Kiara turned her head away, shame burning hotter than the pain. Asia grabbed her jaw, forcing her to look up.
“You humiliate others. How does it taste?” Asia’s free hand drifted down, fingers tracing the lace over Kiara’s breasts. A mockery of a caress. “These. These are your weapons?” She chuckled, a low, dark sound. “They are pillows. Soft things for soft girls.”
She curled her fingers into the lace and pulled. The fabric tore with a ragged shriek.
Kiara gasped, a wave of violation crashing over her. It wasn’t the exposure—she’d fought in less. It was the ease. The utter contempt. Asia was dismantling her, piece by piece, symbol by symbol.
“See?” Asia said, sitting back slightly, admiring her handiwork. “Just handles.”
The word was a lightning strike. Handles. Seraphina’s word. The truth of it, proven twice now, was a despair so deep it felt like drowning.
Asia, seeing the spirit break in Kiara’s eyes, smiled. She leaned forward again, her intent clear. She was going to finish it. To use those very “pillows” to smother the life from her, a poetic, humiliating end.
Kiara’s mind, frantic, scrabbling, latched onto the only thing left. Not pride. Not skill. The memory of grit in Seraphina’s eyes. The absurdity that had bought her a half-second.
As Asia’s body descended, Kiara moved. Not to push her away. She arched her back, just a little, and turned her head to the side. She pressed her mouth and bloody nose against Asia’s inner thigh, where the skin was bare.
And she blew out a hard, wet, raspberry.
The vibration, the utterly childish, gross physical sensation, made Asia jolt. She froze, her body going rigid with surprise and disgust. “What the f—”
Kiara blew another, a sputtering, bloody froth against her skin.
It was so stupid. So undignified. Asia recoiled, her perfect dominance shattered by sheer, bewildering vulgarity. She shifted her weight to pull her leg away.
It was enough. Kiara’s hand, which had been lying limp at her side, shot upward. Not for a punch. Her fingers, slick with her own blood, aimed for Asia’s eye.
Asia saw it coming this time. She jerked her head back, the strike grazing her temple. But the movement over-corrected her balance. For a fraction of a second, her center of gravity was off.
Kiara bucked with everything she had left, a final convulsion of desperate strength. It wasn’t pretty or powerful. But it was enough to roll Asia to the side.
They tumbled in a heap. Kiara ended up on top, but she was spent. She had no strength to mount, to strike. She simply collapsed forward, her body a dead weight on Asia’s.
Her face landed in the valley of Asia’s breasts. The world was dark, soft, perfumed. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe.
Beneath her, Asia snarled and began to push. She was stronger. In two seconds, she’d flip them. In three, she’d end it.
Kiara did the only thing she could. She opened her mouth.
And she bit down. Hard.
Not a love bite. Not a warning. A deep, ugly, canine sink of teeth into the soft, upper curve of Asia’s breast, just above the lace of her bra.
Asia’s scream was piercing, real, shredded of all its cruel amusement. It was a sound of pure, shock, and violated agony. Her hands flew to Kiara’s head, nails clawing at her scalp, trying to tear her off.
Kiara held on, clamping down like a terrier, tasting salt and fabric and copper. She shook her head, just once. A vicious, feral twist.
Asia’s strength flooded out of her in a gush of panicked pain. Her pushes became weak slaps. Her legs kicked uselessly.
The ref was shouting. The crowd was on its feet, a wall of roaring noise.
Kiara didn’t let go. She saw nothing. She knew only the metallic warmth filling her mouth, the tremors of the body beneath her, and the dark, red understanding that this was all she was now. Not a champion. Not a beauty. A desperate animal that won fights by being too disgusting to lose.
Hands, many of them, pulled her away. Her jaw was pried open. She was dragged backward, blood smearing her chin and neck.
On the mat, Asia was curled on her side, clutching her chest, sobbing openly, hysterically. The wound was a dark, terrible blotch on the burgundy lace.
Kiara stood, supported by two handlers. She spat a mouthful of blood and tissue onto the canvas. She looked at Madame Evangeline’s balcony. The old woman was standing, leaning forward, her jeweled hands on the rail. And she was laughing. A silent, shaking laugh of pure, macabre delight.
Kiara looked down at her own hands, trembling, stained. She listened to Asia’s broken weeping.
She had won.
She felt absolutely nothing at all.
The handlers half-dragged, half-carried her down the metal stairs, their fingers digging into her biceps. The roar of the crowd became a distant ocean, muffled by the thick, pulsing blood in her own ears. Someone threw a rough towel over her shoulders; it stuck to the sweat and gore on her skin.
In the medical alcove, a man with tired eyes swabbed at the cut on her lip without speaking. The antiseptic burned. He moved to check her ribs, his hands clinical. “Breathe,” he muttered. She tried. A sharp hitch. “Cracked, maybe. Not broken. You’re lucky.”
“Lucky,” Kiara echoed, the word tasting of iron. She stared at a crack in the concrete wall.
Klaus appeared in the doorway, his face unreadable. He watched the medic work for a moment. “Evangeline wants you. Now.”
“I need to shower.”
“She doesn’t care.”
The walk to Madame’s private lounge was a trek through a silent tunnel. The opulence here was a shock after the cage: deep carpets, crystal sconces, the smell of cigars and expensive perfume. It made the blood on her feet look obscene.
Madame Evangeline sat on a divan, sipping something amber from a crystal glass. Seraphina stood at her shoulder, changed into a sleek grey trousersuit, her face a mask of perfect composure. Only her eyes, locked on Kiara, held a living, simmering heat.
“My little tiger,” Madame cooed, setting her glass down. “You are full of surprises. First a bite for The Serpent. Now a taste of the new vintage.” She laughed, a dry rustle of paper. “You fight like a starving alley cat. It’s compelling television.”
Kiara said nothing. She kept her gaze on a point just above Madame’s elaborately coiffed hair.
“Asia is quite upset,” Madame continued, picking an invisible piece of lint from her sleeve. “The surgeons say the scar will be dramatic. She is demanding a rematch. An immediate one.”
Seraphina’s mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly. She remained silent.
“I told her,” Madame said, leaning forward, her jeweled hands clasped, “that rematches are for contenders. Not for discarded toys.” She smiled. “I told her she could have her moment now. To finish what she started, before the footage is even cold. She agreed, of course. Pride is such a predictable poison.”
Kiara’s stomach plunged. Her body, held together by tape and shock, screamed in protest. “Now?”
“The crowd is still wet from your last performance,” Madame said, her voice light. “Why let them dry off? It’s more authentic this way. Raw.”
Klaus stepped forward. “Madame, she can’t. Her ribs, she’s—”
“She can,” Madame interrupted, her eyes finally snapping to Kiara’s. “And she will. Or she can forfeit her purse, her standing, and walk out that door into oblivion. Her choice.”
The door opened. Asia entered, flanked by two men. A thick, white bandage was taped high on her chest, peeking above her robe. Her eyes were red-raw, her beautiful face twisted into a mask of pure, unfiltered hatred. She shrugged off the robe. Underneath, she wore only briefs and the bandage.
“No lace this time,” Asia spat, her voice hoarse from screaming. “Nothing for your filthy teeth.”
Seraphina finally spoke, her tone conversational, directed at Madame. “This is wasteful. The German is broken. This is just slaughter.”
“Precisely,” Madame said, beaming.
The return to the cage was a blur. The crowd, seeing them re-enter, erupted into confused, then ravenous, cheers. This was unprecedented. This was chaos. They loved it.
Asia stalked toward the center, ignoring the ref’s preamble. Kiara stood frozen by the ropes, the towel slipping from her shoulders. The lights felt like interrogation beams.
The bell rang.
Asia charged, not with technique, but with vengeful fury. She didn’t aim for points or positions. Her first swing was a wild, open-handed slap that connected with Kiara’s ear. The world buzzed. A fist hammered into Kiara’s damaged ribs.
Kiara folded, gasping, backpedaling until the chain-link dug into her spine. Asia closed in, grabbing handfuls of Kiara’s hair, yanking her head side to side. “You bit me!” she shrieked, spittle flying. “You disgusting animal!”
She kneeed Kiara in the thigh, again and again. The pain was bright and blinding. Kiara slid down the fence, her vision spotting.
Asia stood over her, chest heaving. The bandage had a faint red bloom at its center. “Look at me!” she demanded.
Kiara looked up. She saw the hatred, the humiliation. She saw herself reflected in it.
“You’re nothing,” Asia hissed, bending down to seize Kiara by the throat. “Your big, famous tits? Useless. You’re just a weak, scared little girl who fights dirty.” She squeezed. “I’m going to make you beg again. Then I’m going to break your neck.”
The pressure on her windpipe triggered a primal panic. Kiara’s hands flew up, not to Asia’s wrists, but flailing, pushing against her body. Her palms slapped against Asia’s bare shoulders, slid. Asia leaned more weight into the choke, her face inches away.
“Beg,” Asia whispered.
Kiara’s flailing right hand slid over Asia’s collarbone, down. Her fingers caught on the upper edge of the white bandage. Without thought, she clawed at it, hooking her fingers underneath. She pulled.
The medical tape ripped free with a sickening tear.
Asia screamed, recoiling instinctively, her hands flying to the exposed, sutured wound. The choke was broken. Kiara gulped air, saw stars.
But Asia’s scream of pain quickly twisted back into rage. With a guttural cry, she dropped her full weight onto Kiara, pinning her against the canvas. She didn’t go for a hold. She began pounding. Short, hard, vicious hammer-fists to Kiara’s face, her breasts, her stomach. It was pure, unadulterated brutality.
“Useless!” she shrieked with each impact. “Weak! Dirty!”
Kiara could only cover up, arms wrapped around her head, taking the blows on her forearms and elbows. The world narrowed to the thud of fists on bone, the hot spray of Asia’s breath, the metallic stink of her own fear. She was going to die here, in a puddle of someone else’s hatred.
Then, a blow landed directly on her sternum. Her arms, fatigued beyond function, fell away, sprawling out to her sides. She was utterly exposed, pinned beneath Asia’s weight, staring up at the furious, tear-streaked face above her.
Asia saw the opening. She stopped punching. A new, colder intention settled in her eyes. A promise of a different, more intimate finish. “Pillows,” she snarled, the word dripping with venom.
She shifted her weight, settling her knees hard on Kiara’s biceps, pinning them down. She leaned forward, placing her hands on the canvas on either side of Kiara’s head. She was positioning herself. Bringing the heavy, hated weight of her own breasts toward Kiara’s face.
Kiara understood. Asia was going to smother her. To let her die in darkness, under the softness she mocked.
But in that final, positioning shift, Asia’s balance was high, her center of gravity forward. And Kiara’s arms, though pinned, were not trapped all the way to her sides. Her hands were free, palms up on the bloody canvas.
As Asia lowered herself, Kiara acted on the last instinct her shattered body had. She brought her hands up, not to push, but to pull. She slapped her palms against the sides of Asia’s torso, fingers digging into the soft flesh above her hips, and yanked downward with every ounce of failing strength.
It wasn’t a powerful move. But it was unexpected. Asia, already leaning forward, was pulled off-balance. She lurched, her controlled descent becoming a fall. Her chest slammed into Kiara’s face, not with precision, but with clumsy, heavy force.
Kiara’s world went dark, muffled, hot. The air vanished. She was buried. Panic erupted in her veins, pure and electric.
Asia, furious, adjusted. She ground her body down, using her weight to seal Kiara in a sweltering, airless prison. “Die in the dark, you bitch,” her voice came, muffled and vibrating through her own flesh.
Kiara thrashed her head side to side, but there was no purchase, no gap. Her lungs burned. Black spots bloomed in the darkness behind her eyes. This was it. This was the end Seraphina had promised, just delivered by different hands.
Then, through the panic, a memory surfaced. Not of fighting. Of lying in a Berlin apartment years ago, showing off for a lover. A stupid party trick. “I can hold a beer stein with these,” she’d laughed, demonstrating the vice-like grip of her pectoral muscles. A parlor trick. A joke.
Her body was shutting down. Her consciousness was fraying at the edges. There was no technique left. No strategy. Only a final, neural firing from a deep, forgotten place.
With the last of her will, Kiara stopped fighting the smothering darkness. Instead, she pressed her face forward, turning her head slightly, aligning her mouth and nose in a narrow valley of flesh. She forced her neck to go slack.
Then, she tensed.
Not her arms. Not her legs. She focused every atom of her being on the muscles across her chest and shoulders, the ones that had once held a glass stein aloft to drunken applause. She flexed them inward with a brutal, spasmodic contraction.
It was a convulsion. A total, full-body clench that began at her core and rippled outwards. The effect on the soft, heavy weight pressing down on her was immediate and catastrophic.
Asia felt the change. A sudden, terrifying pressure encircled her, not from arms, but from the flesh itself. It was a sensation so alien, so wrong, it froze her for a critical second. It wasn’t a squeeze. It was a vice, warm and living, snapping shut.
A wet, choked gurgle escaped her. She tried to push up, to break the seal. But Kiara, sensing the shift, arched her back off the canvas, increasing the angle, the pressure. She was a clam shell closing. Her world was darkness, and the muffled, frantic sounds of struggle growing weaker above her.
Asia’s hands beat at Kiara’s sides, her back. They scratched and clawed. But the leverage was gone. The pressure was immense, unrelenting, and applied directly to her thorax. She couldn’t draw breath. Her desperate kicks against the mat grew arrhythmic, then feeble.
Kiara held on. She didn’t breathe. She existed only as that single, crushing muscle. She heard the cartilage crackle, a faint, intimate sound felt more than heard. She felt the frantic drumming of a heart against her cheek, a wild, fluttering tempo that scrambled, faltered, and then went still.
The blows stopped. The twitching ceased. The heavy weight atop her became inert, a complete and total dead weight.
Still, Kiara held the contraction, locked in a rigor of survival, until the burning in her own chest became an explosion. She finally released, her body going limp as a discarded rag.
Air, cold and shocking, rushed back into her lungs. She coughed, vomiting a little blood and bile onto the canvas beside her head. The light was blinding. The noise of the crowd was a silent, waving forest; she couldn’t hear them.
Hands rolled the limp weight off her. Asia slumped onto her back, eyes open and fixed on the lights, her face mottled, mouth slack. A medic leapt into the cage, but his frantic movements slowed, then stopped. He looked up at the ref and gave a small, sharp shake of his head.
Silence, then a roar, crashed over Kiara in a wave.
She lay on her back, staring up. Someone was standing over her. It was Seraphina. She must have come down from the balcony. She looked down at Kiara, then at Asia’s body. Her grey eyes were wide, their predatory coolness momentarily shattered by genuine, appalled shock.
She knelt, bringing her face close to Kiara’s. Her perfume cut through the stench of blood and sweat.
“My God,” Seraphina whispered, her voice barely audible in the din. It held no mockery, no threat. Only a kind of horrified reverence. “You really are just an animal.”
She reached out a single, impeccably manicured finger and touched the blood drying on Kiara’s chin. Then she stood and walked away, disappearing into the crowd of officials now swarming the cage.
Kiara turned her head. She looked at Asia’s vacant stare, at the deep, awful bruises already blooming on the pale skin of her chest in the perfect shape of a crushing embrace.
From her balcony, Madame Evangeline watched, clapping slowly, a serene, triumphant smile on her painted lips.