Chapter 41: Round 1: Bernice's greased arm disappears to the elbow. Round 2: Serenity's screams cut off as her body arches violently. Round 3: Flesh makes wet popping sounds as it everts. Round 4: A glistening red blossom of muscle twitches on display. Round 5: Marcus faints as Bernice licks the exposed vaginal walls.
The first thing Serenity was aware of was the smell of their laundry detergent, clean and sharp, cutting through the phantom stench of blood and arena filth. She was in her own bed. The weight of the comforter was a familiar comfort, but the body beneath it felt like a borrowed, broken thing.
Sunlight streamed through the blinds, painting stripes across Marcus’s sleeping form in the chair he’d pulled up to her side. His head was tilted back at an angle that would guarantee a stiff neck, and in the quiet morning light, he looked every one of his forty-eight years, plus a dozen more she’d put there.
She tried to shift, to find a position where the deep, internal throbbing wasn’t a constant drumbeat of reminder. A sharp, electric jolt shot from her core down her left leg, and she hissed through clenched teeth.
Marcus’s eyes snapped open. He was instantly awake, instantly focused on her. “Ren? What is it? What do you need?”
“Just… recalibrating,” she managed, her voice rough with sleep and disuse.
He was out of the chair in a second, his hand finding hers. “Pain meds? Water? Doc said to stay on top of the medication, don’t try to be a hero.”
“The meds make my head fuzzy. I need to think.” She looked at him, at the deep worry lines etched around his eyes. “How long?”
“Three days. You’ve been in and out. The surgeon came while you were sleeping. Said the repair was… extensive.” He couldn’t quite meet her eyes when he said it. “But it went well. Structurally, you’ll heal.”
Structurally. The word hung in the air between them, sterile and inadequate. It said nothing of the memory of being turned inside out under the lights, of the sound her own body had made.
“Bernice?” Serenity asked, her tone flat.
“Banned for life from the official circuit. Not that it matters. The Abattoir’s already a ghost town. Commission shut it down. Too much heat.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s over, Ren.”
She looked away from him, out the window at the ordinary suburban street. A kid on a bicycle, a woman walking a dog. A world that kept turning. She thought of Bernice’s face, not in the ring, but in the rehab room months ago, that smug, petty cruelty as her fingers dug into the vulnerable muscle of Serenity’s abdomen. You’re already broken. This had just been the finale.
“It’s not over,” Serenity said quietly. “It’s just intermission.”
Marcus sighed, a heavy, weary sound. He picked up a glass of water from the nightstand and held the straw to her lips. She drank, the coolness a blessing.
“The house,” she said after a moment. “The payments.”
“We’ll figure it out. I’ve already put in for more hours at the warehouse. We can dip into the retirement fund if we have to.”
“No.” The word was final. “We’re not touching that. We earned that.” She looked back at him, her eyes clear and hard. “I earned that.”
“Serenity, look at you.” His voice broke. “What else is there? There is no more fighting. There’s no more Abattoir.”
“There’s always a ring,” she said. “It just doesn’t always have ropes.”
A week later, she was standing in their garage, leaning heavily on a wooden cane. The space smelled of oil and old concrete, a familiar, masculine scent that was now mixed with the faint, medicinal odor from the balm she rubbed into her scars twice a day.
She faced a heavy bag Marcus had hung for her years ago, its leather scarred and dark with sweat. She stared at it, her knuckles white on the head of the cane. Her body was a traitor. Every instinct, every fiber of muscle memory screamed to pivot her hip, to chamber the kick, to unleash the power that had always been there. But when she tried to even shift her weight, the pain bloomed, deep and warning, a steel hand gripping her from the inside.
“Damn it,” she whispered, the frustration a hot stone in her throat.
“Hey, easy.” Marcus came up behind her, his hands hovering, not quite touching. “Doc said no stress on the pelvis for at least six weeks. That means no kicking, no punching, no nothing.”
“What am I supposed to do, Marcus? Knit?” She gestured bitterly at the bag. “This was me. This is what paid for this house. What put food on the table when your back went out.”
“I know,” he said, his voice soft. “But that’s past tense now. We need a new plan.”
“The plan is I get back in there.”
“And do what? Get killed? She broke you, Serenity. In a way nobody comes back from.” The words were out, harsh and true, before he could stop them.
The air went out of her. She turned slowly, leaning on the cane. The raw pain in his eyes mirrored the one in her body. He wasn’t trying to clip her wings. He was trying to keep her from flying into a mountain.
“She didn’t break what matters,” Serenity said, her voice low. She tapped her temple with a finger. “She just showed me what I’m really made of. And it ain’t just muscle and bone.”
She looked past him, through the garage window to the tidy lawn beyond. The perfect picture of a life they’d fought tooth and nail for. A life Bernice had tried to steal twice now. First his body, then hers.
“She thinks I’m finished. She’s sitting somewhere, counting her money, thinking she’s the queen of a pile of ashes.” A slow, cold smile touched Serenity’s lips. It didn’t reach her eyes. “But you don’t need an arena to have a reckoning.”
She started to walk, a slow, deliberate shuffle back toward the house. Each step was a calculation, a negotiation with the fire in her core.
“Where are you going?” Marcus asked, confusion replacing his worry.
“To make a phone call,” she said without looking back. “If the commission shut down her playground, then we’ll find a new one. One with no rules at all.”
She left him standing in the garage, the silent heavy bag a monument to what was, and the determined set of her shoulders a promise of what was to come. The humiliation of the rehab room, the violation of the ring—they were fuel now. Bernice had wanted to see what was left. She was about to get a very close, very personal look.