Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,12

grinning into her phone.

“I’m already tweeting it.”

I should have told them. Every single one of these women was just as devoted to Strike, had given as much of their time and talent to this tournament as either Logan or I. They deserved to know that everything might come crashing down on our heads, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not yet. This was a moment they deserved to savor.

When we got to the stadium the staff were waiting for us. They escorted our group inside and we filed onto the concourse overlooking the field. No one spoke for a minute. Except for a few workers milling in the aisles, the sections and the floor were completely empty. It was a sixty-five-thousand-seat, thirty-story blank canvas, and in four days it would become the epicenter of the martial arts world.

C.J. walked over to me. She’d been with Strike longer than any of the other directors, since we took the leap from merchandise and supplements and started construction on our first gym. Holding up her phone, which meant she was either live-streaming this or planning to slice it into a more polished piece for later, she grinned and asked me a question.

“Gregg Abbott, did you ever think you’d be here?”

“Not me, C.J.” I paparazzi-palmed the camera. “Interview someone else.”

“I’d ask Logan if she were here.”

We both let that lie, then she pocketed the phone and turned to face the belly of the stadium with me. The amount of space was mind-boggling. You had to be insane to pull off an event of this magnitude. Insane, or in love.

“No, really, Gregg. When you went to Palicka vs. Russo, could you ever have imagined this?”

I smiled at the massive stadium, remembering.

“I didn’t have to imagine.”

It was twenty years ago. I’d been in Las Vegas for a conference and someone handed me fourth-row tickets to what turned out to be Logan’s greatest, highest-rated match of her career. I’d heard of Logan Russo before, the undefeated Italian fighter they called the Mill City Miracle, but the odds that night favored Palicka, an up-and-coming Czech who was supposed to rob Logan of her title. I put a hundred dollars on the Czech and walked into the lights of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, unaware that my entire life was about to change.

Logan decimated Palicka. On the KO, she landed a side kick to the challenger’s face that broke her nose and sprayed blood all over the mats, and I barely saw it. I was mesmerized by the flex of Logan’s calf, the ripple of perfectly arced quads at the moment of impact, glistening with moisture and salt and indomitable victory. She watched her opponent fall without a flicker of change in expression, then she paced the far end of the ring, shaking her head at the count of the ref, and I swear she wanted the Czech to get up, like the KO had robbed her of something more vital than a retained title could give back.

I was nothing and everything in that moment. A loser who’d placed the wrong bet. Not even a story. Just a spectator to the blood-splattered day my life began.

I spent the rest of that night looking up everything the internet knew about Logan Russo, which in the late nineties wasn’t much. I talked to various staff until I found out she was staying in a penthouse suite at the MGM and bribed one of the concierges to tell me she was scheduled for a massage in the spa the next morning. I booked a facial and hot shave.

I’d been in the relaxation room a little over two hours when she came in, dressed in the spa robe and slippers. She looked startled at first, as though she’d expected to have the room to herself. If we’d met in 2019 everything would have played differently. She would have been jaded, suspicious of random men acting like they didn’t see her. She probably would have called hotel security to run interference. But this was pre-Y2K, before the towers fell, before W had been elected, before smartphones, and long before strong was the new skinny, and so Logan just gave me a once-over before lying on a chaise lounge, facing away.

I waited three minutes, time for her to get comfortable but not long enough to forget I was there.

“Congratulations.”

She glanced over and the hand she’d braced against her ribs instantly dropped to her side.

“Thanks.” Her voice was a surprise. Hoarse and low, the