Page 4 of After the Knockout
“She’s yours. Deal with your mess.” He glanced at the woman whose eyes looked sad and cold at the same time.
“You’re out,” was all she muttered before storming off.
“You open your mouth, and there won’t be a place on this planet to hide.” The man added. “Clear it!” he ordered. The women moved fast, shoving valuables into bags and ripping the belt from my shoulder like it was nothing. Before he left, the man crouched down, close enough for me to smell gun oil and sweat.
“Should’ve taken the fall,” he said. “This what pride cost you.”
They left through the front door, carrying two duffel bags full of my shit. Both women paused before stepping out, looking at Lyrius like they already knew her life was over.
“Come on,” one of the women said tightly, grabbing the other one. “We gotta go.” They stepped out of my house without another word, and the house went quiet. Too quiet.
“Stay with me.” Lyrius was on me immediately, pressing down on my wounds, hands covered with blood. “Please, baby. Don’t die on me. I’m calling 911. Help is coming.”
My vision blurred as she spoke to what I assumed was the 911 operator. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to pull her close and ask her why. Instead, all I felt was betrayal. I looked at her through the haze, her face filled with fear and regret and something else I couldn’t deny.
“You . . . s-set me up,” I said, voice barely there as my blood leaked from my body.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this.” She choked. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Her hands pressed harder against my wound. “They use girls to get information. I tried to stop it. I tried to back out,” she cried.
I tried to focus on her face, on her words, but it was all slipping out of view. I didn’t let my guard down. I didn’t lose. Yet here I was, laid out on my own floor in a pool of blood.
“Everything I feel for you is real, I swear. I love you, Dakota.”
“Get the fu-fuck away . . . from me,” I said between breaths. “You set me up!” I tried to make this shit make sense, tried to find a version of events where the only woman I’d ever loved wasn’t a part of this. I’d taken a lot of punches over the years, but none of them felt like this.
“I’m sorry, Dakota.” Her hands froze, and she looked at me like she wanted to crawl inside my skin and never leave. “I?—”
Blue and red lights flashed against the walls, and sirens echoed in the distance. Her eyes shot toward the sirens, panic taking over her whole face. She sobbed once hard and then stood. She looked at me like she wanted to stay, like leaving was killing her.
“Fight,” she whispered as I watched her back away step by step, like she was trying to undo everything that had happened. The front door burst open, and I heard voices shouting beforeLyrius turned and ran out the back door like she was never mine to begin with. That was the last thing I saw before everything went dark.
Six Years Later
“As expected, Hurricane Imani is now a category five hurricane. We expect her to make landfall within six hours. All northbound highways are closed. Repeat, all northbound highways are closed. They are urging residents to seek immediate shelter?—”
“I know,” I muttered, cutting off the radio mid-warning. I didn’t need a reminder. I was already trapped in the chaos. Rain hammered against my windshield, smearing brake lights into long, red streaks. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel as traffic slowed to a crawl. So much for getting further north. I eased the car toward the highway exit, hoping for anything that wasn’t gridlocked. Then I saw the green highwaysign that read Azalea County, and my stomach instantly dropped.
I fled Azalea County with a broken heart and blood on my hands, and I swore I’d never be back. I had no reason to be, at least not until today. I was only supposed to be passing through on my way to higher ground, but the road closures and the category five hurricane barreling toward us didn’t care about what I’d sworn.
“Mama?”
“Yeah, baby?” I blinked as I glanced up into the rearview mirror at my five-year-old. He was sitting in his booster seat, studying the sky like it was the most fascinating thing.
“Why aren’t we moving?” He asked the same question he’d been asking since we’d hit traffic a few hours ago. What was supposed to be a straight shot north out of the hurricane’s path had turned into a parking lot full of people trying to flee the storm. The entire golf coast was getting hit by the worst storm that had hit the region in decades. I’d packed last night after pulling a double at the resort and left at the crack of dawn, thinking I still had time. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea. I had only made it six hours away, in the twelve hours we’d been on the road.
“There are a lot of people fleeing the storm,” I told him. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel again as the familiar street signs came into view through the sheets of rain. Pine Avenue. My pulse spiked as my body recognized it before my brain did.
“Absolutely not,” I muttered, turning onto another street. My eyes glanced at Dae-Dae in the rear-view mirror instantly. My baby was sitting there like his usual self, quiet and observing, like my answer was good enough to suffice until the next time. He didn’t panic easily. He never had—just like his father. Thethought hit before I could stop it, like it always did whenever I looked at Dae-Dae.
He was every bit of his father. Same caramel skin. Same dimples that showed up when he tried not to smile. Even the way he chewed his jaw when he was deep in thought reminded me of the man I’d left bleeding on his marble floor. Five years, and Dakota Knox still lived in my head like something unfinished. I found out about the baby four weeks after that night, in a cheap motel bathroom in Shoreline. I hadn’t even figured out my next steps yet. I was still posted in the town where I’d run out of gas that night. I was still jumping at every knock on the door, still checking the parking lot before I stepped outside. I thought I was sick from stress until the nausea never stopped. Then my baby became the only thing I had left. My only family.
KO didn’t know. He still didn’t. I stayed just long enough to make sure he survived the shooting, then I disappeared for good. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t know who was more dangerous at that point—the people I crossed or the man I betrayed. The organization had made it clear what happened if I talked too much. Then the people connected to it started turning up missing and showing up dead. Every time I thought about going back, another story hit the news. Maybe none of it had anything to do with KO. Maybe all of it did. Either way, I had a baby to protect, so I started going by my middle name, Remy, and stayed gone. The way KO was moving, there was no fixing us, not even if I showed up with a baby bump.
The motel offered me a housekeeping job. That eventually led to a promotion. Five years later, I was still there, managing a housekeeping team, still picking up overtime whenever I could, still trying to build something stable for my son and me. It wasn’t a soft life, but it was an honest living, and Dae-Dae had everything he needed.
My phone buzzed against the console, shaking me out of my head, causing me to glance down at the radio to see Nia’s, my next-door neighbor and the closest thing I had to family, name flashing on the screen. I answered before it could ring twice, already knowing what she was about to say.
“Yes, ma’am.”
