Sick Hate (Sick World Book 2), page 1
CONTENTS
About the Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
End of Book Shit
About the Author
Copyright © 2023 by JA Huss
ISBN: 978-1-957277-09-7
Edited by RJ Locksley
Cover Photo: Wander Aguiar
Cover Design: JA Huss
No part of this book may be reproduced or resold in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imaginations or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Irina van Breda escaped the hopeless life she was born into and started a brand new one in America all by herself. She has everything she needs—a condo in South Beach, a new accent that doesn’t betray her dark origins, a brilliant best friend, and an easy life of walking the beach and feeding the gulls.
But she is merely existing—until Dead-Eyes Eason Malone appears, asking questions. He knows who she is, he knows where she came from, and he’s got a plan for her. A plan that could help him get over his own tragic beginnings.
Irina and Eason are on a collision course with the truth—and when they finally come to terms with what really happened to them as children, it just might shatter them both into millions of pieces.
Sick Hate is the second book in the Sick World Series. It is a standalone but new readers should start with Sick Heart first if they want the whole story of Irina’s past.
What you can expect inside the pages of Sick Hate:
*DARK Past
*Friends to Lovers
*He Falls First
*Bad As* Hero
*Bad As* Heroine
*Slow Burn MF
*She’s a Virgin
*Touch Her and Die
*Sick World/Evil Bad Guys
*Found Family
CHAPTER 1
Rio de Janeiro, Bolivar and Atlantica
Fifteen floors up from Sick Fights Gym
“You have a last name now.”
The reporter—who I now know as Macks, which doesn’t fit her at all—is sitting across from me at the rooftop bar of the Bolivar Building. My gym is fifteen floors below us on the ground. I’ve agreed to talk to her because Cort said I should.
So. Yeah. Fun times.
“Maart?”
“Right. I do. It’s Carvalho.”
“Maart Carvalho.” She presses her lips together. “Mmm. I dunno. Does it suit you?”
“Does Macks suit you?”
She chuckles, and I realize she’s got a nice face. She’s older. Early forties, late forties? Hard to tell. But you can clearly see she was a knockout in her prime. Still is, but in a more mature way. Curvy. Brave, obviously, since she’s still alive. And a smile meant to wipe away all your problems, but only so she can tease your darkest secrets right out of your soul.
The wind is blowing her mahogany hair across her face and this would bother most people, but it doesn’t bother her. It’s pulled back, but not neatly, so wisps of it are dancing across her cheeks. “Macks is just my fun name. My real name is Mackenzie.”
“Hmm. That doesn’t suit you either.”
“No? Do you have a better suggestion? What should I be called?”
I shrug. “Beth.”
This makes her laugh out loud. “You can call me anything you want, Maart.”
I pick up my whiskey, jiggle the ice, take a sip, then shrug. “Whatever. I can live with Mackenzie.”
This pretty much describes my life. Living with it. Because my whole world is surreal these days. I mean, I’m sitting at a rooftop bar across from Copacabana Beach and I own an entire floor of this building. I can see the ocean. And that’s familiar. All of it. The scent, the wind, the waves, the sun. I could never leave that behind. But the women in bikinis always throw me, and the sound of traffic, and the laughter at night.
It feels like a nightmare.
“Does it feel like a dream?” Mackenzie is studying me intently and I realize I’ve been quiet for a little while, just staring out at the ocean.
I take another sip of whiskey, then look her in the eyes. “I’m not sure.”
“Can’t decide if it’s real?” Her eyes are soft. In fact, she’s much softer than I remember her being back on the Bull of Light before Cort’s last fight. I was rough with her that afternoon, pushing her out of the way. But she was so different. Ambitious and hungry. Desperate to tease some words out of Cort’s silent mouth. Nothing at all like this woman in front of me now, who seems very… satisfied.
Back then she wore too much make-up and low-cut dresses. Today she’s wearing black bike shorts, trainers, a neon orange tank top, and a thin workout jacket. She looks like she wants to take a lesson in my gym.
Maybe she does?
“Maart?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you gonna talk to me?”
“What do you mean? I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Nnnnooo. You’re not. You’re somewhere else. If it’s not a good time…” She starts to get up.
But I reach out, place a hand on hers, and look her in the eyes again to make her stop. “No. I’ll talk. Just… sit down.”
She hesitates, then settles back. “Look, I’m not trying to be difficult here. If you don’t want to do the interview, just say so. I’ll go away.”
“I do.”
“You don’t. It’s not even why you told me to meet you here.”
She’s right. But I don’t look at her now. I just let my gaze wander across the ocean. It’s calm today, and it calms me. I like the flatness of it. Always better than the storm, in my opinion. Even though the storm comes with dramatic thunderheads in every shade of purple and gray you can think of, and even though it’s beautiful in a terrible and exciting way, the smooth glassiness of a calm ocean is like letting out a breath of relief. It’s like relaxing back on a hot stretch of sand and closing your eyes for a moment of peace.
Something I never had much of before recently, because my life, up until Sick Fights became a gym and I became a world-class MMA trainer, was mostly jungles and blood.
That’s why the bikinis, and the traffic, and the laughter throws me. How is it possible that this world I live in now exists side by side with the one I came from just a few years back?
Have they all been blinded by the sun?
Or is it a choice?
I guess I understand. If I had the choice to know, or not know, I would rather not know.
But I wasn’t given that choice. I was born into this darkness. That’s why I had to make up a last name. That’s why all my papers are fake.
“OK.” Mackenzie stands up this time. “Listen, I’m not here to torture you. I don’t need this story. I’m retired. So if you’re not ready—”
“Ready?” I stand up too. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
She huffs, tilts her head a little, shoots me a look that says, Cut the bullshit. “I know what you’re after. Cort told me, Maart. You’re looking for Irina.”
I turn my back on Mackenzie and run my fingers through my hair.
The next thing I know she’s got her hand on my shoulder and she’s leaning in to my neck. “Come on. Let’s do this somewhere else.”
Then she takes my hand, like I’m a fucking child or something, and leads me across the roof to the elevator.
The most interesting thing about this move is that I allow her to do it.
Maybe ‘allow her’ is a strong way to characterize it. Because I’m not even thinking about Mackenzie anymore. I’m still stuck on the name Irina.
She didn’t even have a name when she got to the camp when she was six. Sergey named her. Something Russian because she spoke Russian and so did he. That’s how Irina came to me.
That’s how almost all of them came to me.
Small things, mostly starving. Some pale, some brown. Some blue-eyed, some green-eyed, some brown-eyed. Blonde-haired, black-haired, even some ginger-haired.
It was just a constant thing, these kids showing up. Like a never-ending fucking river of kids. Every couple months some would die and new ones would take their place.
When Irina landed in camp she had a black eye, a cut lip, and a freshly broken finger. No one explained why she came like that because Irina was dropped off w
One day there was no girl named Irina. Then one day there was.
Not even Cort knew she was coming, and that was unusual in its own way. Udulf usually let him have a say in the kids he brought to camp. Not typically in choosing them, but definitely in accepting them.
But with Irina, there was no discussion.
She stood no taller than my waist and weighed thirty-six pounds that first day. I was twenty-two and she was six.
It didn’t take her long to learn English—a few months. By that time she’d had her first fight and she could mostly have a conversation.
I remember looking at her that very first day, all beat up, while I was setting the bone in her finger. And I remember thinking… It’s just not fair.
Of course, none of it was fair. Nothing in my life had ever been fair. At the time I had probably trained several dozen children. Cort had won maybe fifteen or twenty Ring fights by then. And Sergey was one of the first to come train with us and the only one left from those early days.
But something about Irina hit me harder than the others. She had a scowl on her face. She didn’t ever whimper as I set her finger. And when I was done, she looked up at me and just… sighed. Like she was a weary soul who had lived too long and didn’t really care anymore.
That was my first impression of Irina.
And I wanted her to win.
Of course, I wanted them all to win. I did. And I tried really hard to make that happen.
But they can’t all win.
They can’t all be Cort.
Mackenzie and I end up in my gym. It’s noisy, and stuffy, and smells like sweaty men, but it was a good call on her part because this is a place I understand.
That rooftop view of Copacabana Beach is too much.
I take her into my office, slip around the other side of my desk, and she shuts the door and sits in the chair for guests.
“What’s going on?”
I hesitate.
“Like I said, Maart, I don’t need a story. The entire world wants to know what the hell is up with you, so I’m here to write a stupid article if you wanna spill your guts. But I don’t need this story.” I make a face at her, but she puts up a hand. “I know, I know. You’re interesting. People are interested. Hell, I’m interested.” She pauses here to smile at me. “I know how much it’s worth, and I have a list of two dozen publications that want your story—including Vogue, by the way. Congrats on that. You know you’re an official player on the board when fuckin’ Vogue wants your story. So you’re worth a lot. But I don’t need your story. I am not the woman you know from the past. It’s been seven years and my life today looks nothing like the one I left behind.” She pauses here. Looks me in the eyes. “Yours doesn’t either, does it?”
“You know it doesn’t.”
She leans back in the chair. Relaxing a little. Crossing her legs as she leans an elbow on the arm and props her chin into her hand, staring at me.
Mackenzie was a reporter—maybe even the only reporter—for an underground fighting magazine called Ring of Fire, which was named after the underground death-fight circuit that I grew up in.
Actually, the Ring of Fire is the name of the highest level of that secret world. You have to fight for a decade, at least—killing opponent after opponent after opponent—before you are allowed to perform for the world’s sickest men in the final death fights at Ring of Fire level.
There were about six fights a year and each one was heavily promoted between the glossy pages of the magazine. Each fighter did an extensive interview with Mackenzie. There were photoshoots filled with romantic images and beautiful words strung together into sentences that never once mentioned the fact that only one of these two fighters would be alive when it was over.
But trust me, no one thought two fighters were gonna walk out of that ring. Everyone knew. Because the only people who ever saw those fights were the owners of other fighters who qualify at that level.
On the Bull of Light that night—when Cort had his last fight for these sick fucks—all those people who were watching were owners. They all had their own fighters back home. They all had their own death-fight camps filled with kids clawing their way up the levels.
Cort and I came up in Udulf van Hauten’s camp together. Our friend, Rainer, was there too. I can fight just as well as Cort can. I’ve killed my share of opponents in the lower-level rings. But I’m also very skilled as a medic and since the Ring of Fire doesn’t come with a healthcare plan, I was the one who put Cort back together after he won.
We made a deal when we were small. Before we were even teenagers. He would be the one to get to the Ring of Fire. He would get his own camp. He would get his own kids to train. He would get everything. But I would be the reason he got all that. Because I would keep him alive.
We had a plan. We were gonna buy our freedom. You can do that, at least in theory. The men—the ones who owned us—they told us it was possible. The price was high, of course. But the prizes each fighter got if they won in the Ring of Fire were massive. Yachts. Mansions. Things like that.
And Cort won thirty-six times.
He never once took a prize. He asked for the dollars. He never got the dollars, either, not really. Ninety-five percent of his cash-value prize was handed right back to Udulf as soon as the fight was over. He was paying, little by little, over many years and many fights, for our freedom.
He paid for me first. And by that time we were taking Rainer with us. After Cort had won enough for Rainer’s freedom, Evard came along. I tried to talk Cort out of that, but failed.
So that last fight on the Bull of Light was the final payment for Cort’s own freedom.
And he won, obviously. Since we’re all still here and we’re not living in death camps.
But the whole thing was a lie. They were never gonna let us buy our way out.
I knew that from the beginning. I saw it in Udulf’s face when he talked to Cort. Feigning love. Calling him ‘son.’ You don’t send your son into a death fight.
It was all lies.
But I couldn’t tell Cort that. He believed. And belief is so powerful. It’s what got him across that finish line every time he stood on the platform with a crazed, insane death-fighter looking back at him under the blacklights and dark skies.
He needed the hope. So I let him hope.
We had to kill them all in the end. Udulf, Lazar, all the other owners who came to watch the end of us. Came to watch us kill each other. That was their plan. Cort had won them lots of money over the last dozen years, but he was old to them. Over. He needed to die and he needed to take me out with him.
Of course, that’s not how it ended.
I mean, what kind of dumbass walks into Cort van Breda’s camp, stands there drinking champagne and laughing it up with their sick, rich friends, and expects Cort and I to kill one another?
It was never going to happen.
As far as how they all died that day? Well. It was the kids who did it. Even the little ones joined in.
Seriously. How stupid do you have to be to walk into Cort van Breda’s death-fight training camp filled with two dozen MMA death-fighting children and think you’re gonna get out of there alive?
I had ten-year-olds who could take down those bodyguards. Lazar, and Udulf, and the other owners—well, those assholes were just too easy. Even Anya could’ve killed them.
Irina was the one who took out Udulf in the end. Lazar fell off a cliff or something. I wasn’t there for that because Lazar ran into the jungle like a little pussy and I was too busy trying to get my kids out of the way and onto our ship.
We did lose some. But they lost everyone. Not a single fuckin’ owner who came into our camp to watch Cort and I fight that day got out alive. A few of the bodyguards got away, but it’s nothing to brag about. They were going up against children who only had their fists, and feet, and minds as weapons.
