The Flesh Cartel - Episode #4: Consequences

be.”
    God, why was he saying all this stuff? Couldn’t seem to stop it. “Chameleon,” his mouth added,
    as if he hadn’t spewed enough secrets to Nikolai already.
    “Scares you? Do you think if it would save himself, he’d hurt you?”
    “Done it already, hasn’e. You saw. At the auction. Fucking raped me with that . . . that thing .
    Tortured me. Held me still while I begged him to stop—” No. No. He didn’t mean any of that. Didn’t mean it. He knew Dougie had only done what he’d had to do, had only done what Madame had forced him to do . . . But why couldn’t he say that? Where was all this awful shit coming from? “I can’t . . . I can’t trust him.” Yes, I can. I can and shut up, stop talking, stop talking stop talking you don’t mean any of this stop talking. “He can trust me, but I can’t trust him.”
    “Why do you think that is? Would you have done things differently?”
    “I’d have let those fuckers kill me before I hurt him. But I’m an idiot. Dunno when to quit. Coach
    Darryl’s been tellin’ me that for years, didja know? I never let him throw in the towel. Never tapped
    out in a money match. Not once .” He frowned. “Ref called it a few times, though . . .”
    “Mathias.” Nikolai snapped his fingers an inch from Mat’s nose. “Focus. Are you focused?”
    Mat stared at Nikolai’s hanging hand. “Sure.”
    “Do you think you give up too much for him?”
    “For the ref?”
    That hanging hand lashed out and slapped him again. Ow. “For your brother. ”
    Oh. “It’s’not like that.”
    “What’s it like?”
    “I jus’ wish I was more like him. I wish I could survive like he does. You know, just sit down
    and say to myself I wanna live and this is what I can givvup to do it.”
    “Do you think you’re going to die here?”
    Mat nodded. “’Less you’re as good as you think you are. You’ll kill me one day. I’ll piss you off,
    cos I’m not like Dougie, an’ even though I do wanna live I can’t . . . I can’t just . . .” He shrugged, forgot where he was going with that. “An’ one day I’ll, I dunno, punch you in the dick or something,
    and you’ll kill me. An’ then one of your goons will fuck my dead ass, I bet. They get off on that, you
    think? God knows they get off’n everything else.”
    Nikolai grimaced, and it was actually kind of funny, that face he was making, and Mat had to
    press a hand to his mouth to hold back a giggle. But then Nikolai looked sad instead, and that wasn’t
    funny at all.
    “I wish I could help you to accept all this as I’m helping your brother to accept it. I truly do. But I can’t, do you understand?”
    Mat nodded. “You need me to fight. An’ then throw the match. S’what your ‘client’ wants, right?”
    “That’s right.” Nikolai leaned in close, laid a hand on Mat’s forearm. “Do you have it in you to
    throw the match, Mathias?”
    Mat thought about that for a moment, but he already knew the answer. “For me? No. M’not strong
    like Dougie—not strong enough to give shit up like that justa save my ass. But for him? Yes. For
    Dougie.” He snorted with sudden laughter. “For Dougie’s ass.”
    “Quite,” Nikolai said.
    “Quite what?” Mat asked, but Nikolai just shook his head and said, “Nothing. Go to sleep.”
    Which left Mat with the niggling sense that something was horribly wrong, but he couldn’t quite
    hold on to it. Besides, he’d learned his lesson, even if he couldn’t quite think what it was right now.
    But the bed was inviting. So he crawled into it and closed his eyes.
    Nikolai tucked the covers around Mat’s shoulders, leaned in near his ear, and said, “I am that
    good,” and then, “I promise you’re not going to die here.” Then Nikolai kissed him on the forehead,
    which seemed very strange, but then he was gone and Mat wasn’t sure any of it had ever happened at
    all.

    Do you have it in you to throw the match, Mathias?
    Nikolai clicked pause on the security footage and allowed himself a single, satisfying moment of
    self-pity. He’d watched it four times now. He knew what was coming next. What he didn’t know was how to deal with the inconvenient truth of it, and so he clicked play again, hoping like a fool that a
    fifth viewing might reveal some new nuance, some new truth.
    For me? Mathias said. He shook his head, expression serious, momentarily clear of the drug
    haze. No. M’not strong like Dougie—not strong enough to give shit up like