Chapter 14: Serenity tells Marcus about the fight and what they did to each other and what she hates Bernice so much and what she wants to do Bernice
The moonlight cut a silver path across the patchwork quilt, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the still air of their bedroom. Serenity lay on her side, every muscle a tight knot of protest. The deep, throbbing ache between her legs was a constant reminder of Bernice’s fingers, a violation that felt more personal than any broken bone.
Marcus was a warm, solid presence behind her. She felt the dip of the mattress as he shifted, his hand coming to rest gently on her hip. “Can’t sleep?” His voice was a low rumble in the dark.
She shook her head, the braids rasping against the cotton pillowcase. The silence stretched, comfortable but heavy with everything unsaid.
“Let me see,” he murmured.
With a sigh that came from the soles of her feet, Serenity rolled onto her back. The movement sent a fresh jolt of fire through her groin. She winced, her hand flying to the spot instinctively.
In the faint light, Marcus’s face was all shadow and concern. He didn’t flinch. He never did. He just reached for the jar of salve on the nightstand, the one that always lived there after a fight. The familiar, sharp scent of arnica and comfrey filled the small space between them.
His touch was feather-light as he applied the cooling balm. His fingers, so capable and gentle, worked over the bruised, tender flesh. It was a practiced ritual, but tonight it felt different. The injury was different.
“She went for me there again,” Serenity said, her voice flat. “Clawed. Like she was trying to tear me open from the inside.”
Marcus’s hand stilled for a second. She felt the tension ripple through him. He took a slow, controlled breath before continuing his ministrations. “I saw.”
“You didn’t see all of it.” She stared at the water stain on the ceiling, the shape of which she’d memorized over twenty years of lying in this same spot. “I hit her back. Same place. Harder. Drove my foot right up into her. Felt it… give.”
She heard his sharp intake of breath. This was beyond their normal post-fight debrief. This was new territory, dark and ugly.
“I had her,” Serenity continued, the words coming faster now, fueled by a fresh wave of anger. “She was on the ground, crying. Just a ball. And I knelt down. I got right in her face and I told her. I told her she doesn’t get to do that to me. Not ever again.”
She turned her head to look at him, needing to see his reaction. The moonlight caught the sheen in his eyes.
“It’s not enough, Marcus.” Her voice dropped to a raw whisper. “It’s not enough that she lost. It’s not enough that I hurt her. I need… I need her to understand. I need her to feel small. I need her to feel like nothing.”
“Serenity…” His voice was a caution, a plea.
“No. You don’t get it.” She pushed herself up on her elbows, ignoring the screaming protest in her body. “You see the fights. You see the money. You don’t see what she is. She’s not just some other fighter. She’s a poison. Every time she looks at me, it’s like she’s spitting on our life. On this.” She gestured weakly around the room, at the quilt her grandmother made, at the photograph of them young and smiling on the nightstand.
“She hates that I have you. She hates that I have something to come home to that isn’t just the smell of other people’s blood. That’s what this is about. It’s not a title. It’s not a purse. It’s her trying to prove that I’m just as hollowed out as she is.”
Marcus was silent, just watching her, his expression unreadable in the dim light. He reached out and his thumb gently wiped a tear from her cheek she didn’t even know had fallen.
“So what do you want to do?” he asked, his voice terribly calm.
Serenity lay back down, the fight draining out of her, leaving only a cold, hard certainty. She stared at the ceiling again, her jaw set.
“I’m going to break her,” she said, the words simple and final. “Not just beat her. I’m going to take that ring, and I’m going to dismantle her. Piece by piece. I’m going to make sure everyone sees it. I’m going to make sure she never, ever thinks she can look at me again.”
She turned onto her side, facing away from him, pulling the quilt up to her chin. The warmth of his body seeped into her back.
“I’m going to end her.”
The words hung in the quiet room, a promise and a threat. Marcus didn’t reply. He just shifted closer, wrapping an arm around her waist, his hand splaying protectively over her stomach. He held her as the moon traced its slow arc across the floor, both of them awake in the dark, listening to the weight of what came next.
His arm was a solid weight across her waist, a tether holding her to the world after the darkness of her own words. She focused on the steady rhythm of his breath against her neck, a counterpoint to the frantic drumming of her heart. The moon had moved, its silver path now climbing the far wall.
“You know,” Marcus said, his voice a quiet vibration against her skin. “For a woman who just declared a blood feud, you’re hogging the quilt.”
A surprised huff of air, almost a laugh, escaped her. She loosened her death grip on the fabric. “It’s my quilt. I do what I want.”
“Typical tyrant.” He shifted, his hand gently probing the muscles of her lower back. She flinched. “Still tight?”
“Everything’s tight. Everything hurts.” She rolled onto her back again, staring at the ceiling. The anger had receded, leaving a hollow, aching fatigue. “Especially… down there.”
“I got the salve.” He was already moving, the bed groaning as he sat up. The small jar clicked open on the nightstand.
The balm was cool, his touch clinical and gentle. It was a strange intimacy, this care for a wound inflicted in such a brutal, personal way. She watched his profile in the dim light, the concentration etched on his face.
“I meant what I said, Marcus.”
“I know you did.” He didn’t look up. “But meaning it and doing it are two different animals in a very nasty cage.”
“I can handle the animal.” She pushed herself up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The worn floorboards were cool beneath her bare feet. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry after you try to dismantle someone in your head.” He followed her, his own footsteps heavy. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”
The kitchen was a landscape of shadows and familiar shapes. The red glow of the stove clock cast a faint light. He moved with an easy confidence, pulling bread and cold cuts from the fridge.
She sat at the small table, tracing a scratch in the wood with her finger. The fight replay in her mind was less about pain and more about angles, openings she’d missed. “She favors her left when she’s gassed. Always has.”
“I know.” He laid out slices of turkey. “You mention it every time.”
“Do I?” She accepted the plate he handed her. The sandwich was stacked high, just how she liked it. “I’m just making sure you’re paying attention.”
“I always pay attention.” He sat opposite her, watching as she took a huge bite. “You think Mickey will grant a rematch that quickly?”
She chewed, thinking. The turkey was good. The bread was soft. It grounded her. “He will if the money’s right. And after that spectacle, the money will be very right.”
“So we call him in the morning.”
“We call him in the morning.” She took another bite, her eyes meeting his over the table. The resolve was back, but colder now, tempered. It wasn’t a hot rage anymore. It was a plan. “Tell him I want it in six weeks. Not a day more.”
“Six weeks is fast, Serenity. That groin pull needs time.”
“It’ll have time.” She finished the sandwich, dusting the crumbs from her hands. “It just has to be enough time to let me finish what she started.” She stood, her body protesting but her spirit already sharpening. “Now, come back to bed. My personal medic has more work to do.”
He followed her back to the bed, the springs complaining under their combined weight. “Alright, turn over. Let’s get the kinks out.” His hands, warm and sure, found the arch of her right foot first, his thumb pressing into the dense calluses built from a lifetime of delivering kicks.
She groaned, a mix of pain and profound relief, as he worked the tension from her sole. “That woman… her fingers felt like rusty hooks.” The memory tightened her jaw. “She didn’t just grab, Marcus. She twisted. Like she was trying to unscrew something inside me.”
He moved to her calf, kneading the rock-hard muscle there. “I saw the way you folded.”
“I almost went down. For a second, the whole world was just that pain.” She closed her eyes, seeing the cage lights, Bernice’s triumphant sneer. “It was so calculated. She waited until I was off-balance from a high kick, knew my guard was down there. She went in hard and fast, all her weight behind it.”
His hands paused for a beat on her leg, then continued their methodical work. “She’s always been dirty.”
“This was different.” Serenity’s voice was low, venomous. “This was personal. She wanted to break more than my will. She wanted to break what makes me a woman. You understand? It was a message.”
She shifted, letting him access her other leg. “So I sent one back. When I drove my foot up into her, I felt everything give way. Felt the soft tissue tear. Heard the air leave her like a punctured tire.”
A grim, satisfied smile touched her lips. “But that was just a reply. Next time, I’m starting the conversation.”
“And what are you gonna say?” Marcus asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“I’m going to talk with my knees.” Her words were flat, precise. “I’m going to work her body until she can’t stand straight. I’m going to make that groin pull she gave me feel like a love tap. I’m going to grind my heel into every single one of her old scars until they split open anew.”
She rolled onto her side to look at him, her eyes gleaming in the dark. “I’m not just going to beat her, baby. I’m going to remodel her. I’m going to make sure she has to look at what I did to her in the mirror every morning when she gets out of bed.”
He held her gaze, his hands still moving on her leg, a steady, calming rhythm against the tide of her fury. He didn’t speak. He just listened, his silence a greater acceptance than any words could ever be.
The resolve settled deep in her bones, colder and harder than any anger. It was a fact now, simple and unchangeable as the dawn. Bernice had started a war she couldn’t possibly win.
The resolve settled deep in her bones, colder and harder than any anger. It was a fact now, simple and unchangeable as the dawn. Bernice had started a war she couldn’t possibly win.
Marcus watched Serenity sleep, the morning light finding the silver threads in her braids. Her face in repose was the map of their life together, all the softness she kept for him alone. The things she’d said in the dark felt like a shard of glass lodged in his chest.
He slipped out of bed, the floorboards cold under his feet. In the kitchen, he scrolled through his phone, his thumb hovering over Bernice’s contact. It was a number he’d never called, saved only for emergencies he’d hoped would never come. He typed a message, his pulse a dull thud in his ears. We need to talk.
Her reply was instantaneous. Address.
The cab ride was a blur of shifting neighborhoods. The buildings grew more tired, the colors leaching from the world. He paid the driver and stood on the cracked sidewalk, looking up at a narrow brick house with a sagging porch. The air smelled of wet concrete and distant garbage.
He knocked. The door opened a few inches, a chain taut across the gap. A single, hard eye appraised him. “You got a lot of nerve, coming here,” Bernice’s voice rasped from the darkness within.
“I need to understand,” Marcus said, his own voice strangely calm.
The chain rattled, and the door swung open. She stood there in a stained tank top and sweatpants, her massive frame blocking the hallway. Her face was a landscape of old violence, the bruises from last night blooming a spectacular purple and yellow around her eye. “Understand what? That your wife’s a vicious bitch who fights dirty?”
“She says you started it.”
Bernice snorted, turning and walking deeper into the house without inviting him in. He followed, closing the door behind him. The living room was sparse, dominated by a large flat-screen TV paused on a frame of two women grappling in a cage. The air was thick with the smell of menthol rub and stale coffee.
“I started it?” She whirled around, her movements still fluid and powerful despite her age and injuries. “She ended my career, Marcus. The first time. Twelve years ago, in a ring a lot like that one.” She jabbed a thick finger toward the frozen screen. “Tore my ACL with one of her fancy spin-kicks. Took me two years to get back. Two years of surgeries and pain and watching her become ‘Serene Fury’ while I rotted.”
She limped closer to him, the floorboards creaking under her weight. “You think this is about a title? A purse? This is about legacy. She got to build one. A life.” Her eyes swept over him, a look of pure contempt. “She got you. I got a metal knee and a quiet hatred that keeps me warm at night.”
Marcus said nothing. He just watched her, the raw, untamed fury that made Serenity seem almost civilized in comparison.
“She has everything I was supposed to have,” Bernice whispered, the words dripping with a venom that felt ancient. “And she flaunts it. That skirt. Those sandals. That pretty little life she parades back to after she’s done playing monster for the night.”
She stepped so close he could smell the coffee on her breath, see the broken capillaries in her nose. “You want to know what I’m going to do to her in that cage? I’m going to take it all away. I’m going to make her ugly.”
Her voice dropped to a gravelly promise. “I’m going to break her nose first. So she can’t smell anything but her own blood. Then I’m going to dislocate her jaw so she can’t even say your name. But that’s just the opening act.”
A strange, cold heat spread through Marcus’s chest. He should have been repulsed. He should have turned and left.
“I’m going to do what I did last night,” she continued, her eyes locked on his, seeing his reaction. “But I’m not going to claw. I’m going to grab and I’m not going to let go. I’m going to twist until something inside her pops. I’m going to make sure she can never look at you again without remembering the feeling of me taking that from her. I’m going to make her barren in that ring, Marcus. I’m going to hollow her out right in front of you.”
She leaned in, her lips nearly brushing his ear. Her voice was a low, intimate growl. “And when she’s broken, when she’s just a sobbing, bloody mess on that canvas, I’m going to put my foot on her throat and I’m going to make her acknowledge me. I’m going to be the last thing she ever sees as a whole woman.”
Marcus stood perfectly still. The graphic, intimate violence of her plan should have sickened him. It should have ignited a protective fury. Instead, a dark, shocking current of arousal jolted through him, a primal response to the sheer, undiluted savagery in her words. He felt his face grow warm, his breath catch. This was the true heart of the beast Serenity fought, raw and pulsating and terrifyingly honest.
Bernice saw it. A slow, cruel smile spread across her battered face. She leaned back, her gaze dropping down his body and lingering for a moment. “Yeah,” she breathed, the sound full of grim satisfaction. “I thought so.”
She turned her back on him, picking up a remote and unpausing the fight on the screen. The sound of a roaring crowd filled the small, grim room. “Now get out of my house. Tell your wife I’ll see her soon.”
Marcus walked out, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound of finality. The sunlight felt alien and harsh. He stood on the broken pavement, his heart hammering against his ribs, the image of Bernice’s ruthless promise and the feel of his own treacherous response burned into his mind. He fumbled for his keys, his hand trembling slightly as he tried to fit one into the lock of a car that wasn’t there. He had to get home. He had to look at Serenity, and the thought filled him with a dizzying, shameful thrill.
He stood on the broken pavement, the sun feeling like an interrogation lamp. His car was blocks away. Each step was a mechanical effort, his mind replaying the crude, graphic promise in Bernice’s words and the unwelcome heat it had ignited in his gut. The shame was a cold wash now, following the thrill like a shadow. He stopped, his hands shaking as he lit a cigarette he didn’t remember taking out.
He turned around. The narrow brick house seemed to pull at him, a dark gravity well. He walked back, the decision feeling less like a choice and more like a biological imperative. He knocked again, harder this time.
The door swung open immediately, as if she’d been waiting. Bernice didn’t look surprised. She leaned against the doorframe, a fresh ice pack held to her jaw. “Forget something?” Her voice was a low, knowing rumble.
He couldn’t hold her gaze. He looked past her, at the paused fight still glowing on the screen. “What you said. About… her.”
“What about it?” She took a slow sip from a mug of coffee, her eyes never leaving him.
“How?” The word was ripped out of him. “How would you… do it? Exactly.”
A slow, ugly smile spread across her face. She understood the game now. She pushed the door wider, a clear invitation back into the gloom. “You want the technical details, husband? Fine. Get in here.”
He stepped over the threshold, the smell of menthol and stale sweat wrapping around him like a shroud. She didn’t offer him a seat. She just stood in the center of the room, a hulking silhouette against the television’s blue light.
“I’m not gonna claw at her like some amateur,” she began, her tone becoming clinical, almost instructive. “That’s messy. Inefficient. The skirt’s a problem, but it’s also loose. I get her in a clinch, my head tucked right here.” She demonstrated on the empty air, her arms coming up. “My right hand controls the back of her neck. My left… my left drops. I’m not grabbing fabric. I’m going under it.”
Marcus felt a bead of sweat trace a path down his spine. He didn’t speak.
“I get my whole hand on her,” Bernice continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not just the fingers. My palm, my fingers, everything. I’m gonna get a handful of that pretty, trimmed patch she probably keeps so nice for you. And then I’m gonna squeeze. I’m gonna twist the whole thing, skin and hair and flesh, into one tight fist.”
A sharp, involuntary sound escaped him. He shifted his weight, the arousal a persistent, humiliating thrum beneath the horror.
She saw it, her eyes gleaming in the dim light. “You like that? You wanna know what comes next?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I use that grip for leverage. I’m gonna pull her right off her feet by her cunt. I’m gonna use it to swing her, to slam her face into the canvas. I want to hear her teeth rattle.”
“And then?” Marcus heard himself ask, his voice hoarse.
“Then,” she said, stepping closer to him, the ice pack now dangling from her fingers. “When she’s dazed, when she’s trying to curl into a ball to protect herself, that’s when I get precise. I’m gonna use my fingers like a hook. I’m going inside. I’m gonna find that little knot of nerve endings that makes her moan for you and I’m gonna dig my nails into it until she screams for a different reason. I’m gonna tear it.”
She was right in front of him now, her breath hot on his face. “I’m gonna make a ruin of the place you call home. I’m gonna make it so swollen and bruised that the thought of you touching her, or anyone ever touching her again, will make her sick. I’m gonna hollow out your sanctuary, Marcus. I’m gonna leave nothing but a painful, empty reminder of me.”
He was hard. The shame was a roaring in his ears, but his body was a traitor, reacting to the raw, destructive power in her vision. He couldn’t speak. He could only stare at the brutal certainty in her eyes.
Bernice reached out and patted his cheek, a gesture of terrifying condescension. “Now you know. Now get the hell out of my house. Go back to your queen and see if you can look her in the eye.”
He stumbled back out onto the street, the sunlight now feeling like a lie. He walked toward his car, each step heavy with the weight of the grotesque images now permanently etched behind his eyes. He had his answer. And he had no idea what to do with the part of himself that had wanted to hear it.