Page 33 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)

T he night blazed like hell's furnace. Even the air seared her lungs when she breathed as Kathy pushed through the sweat-slicked French Quarter crowd, grateful for Carmine Boanno’s armed escort and the reconciliation that had made her and Janey family again.

She needed her own support tonight. For three days, she'd watched Carmelo transform in the ring—her gentle lover becoming someone feral and dangerous.

She'd tended his bruises, loved his pain away, whispered encouragement against his battered skin.

But what girl wanted to watch the man she adored summon rage like a weapon?

What woman could bear seeing her heart walk willingly into slaughter?

The whispers followed her: The last man who fought the Klan’s boy face was crushed and his neck snapped.

"You okay, chère ?" Janey squeezed her trembling hand.

"I think so," Kathy whispered.

Above Bourbon Street's garish neon, the Shamrock Arena's marquee blazed:

SOLDATO "THE WOLF" RICCI vs. "MISSISSIPPI MAULER" Sicilian Steel vs. Southern Savagery

"They changed his name," Janey observed.

Kathy stared at the electric letters spelling out her lover's new identity. "I see."

" Dai, andiamo! " A Sicilian capo cleared their path through the mob, delivering them ringside past the Marcello family and New Orleans' Black elite. Men's eyes devoured them both—desire and fear in equal measure. She kept her eyes averted, feeling undressed by their intense stares.

"Ignore them, chérie ," Janey winked. "They can look but never touch."

Inside, the arena reeked of cigar smoke, cheap gin, and blood-hunger.

Kathy's gut twisted as she studied the ring—a squared circle of stained canvas under merciless lights.

The Mauler paced like a chained gladiator, a beast of a man, while his Klan handlers smirked from their corner in pristine white suits.

Then— him .

Carmelo emerged from the shadows like a angel of war.

Caesar draped emerald silk edged in gold across his shoulders, but beneath the Marcello colors, his body gleamed with sweat and liniment.

Every scar told a story of survival: the hammer-blow ridge along his ribs, fresh bruises from brutal training, the faint pink stain on his lips from her ruby kiss—the one he'd refused to wipe away after she made love to him in a tight closet before leaving him to his fate and getting dress for the event.

His eyes, black as midnight water, found hers across the screaming crowd.

He winked.

I'm here, her heart hammered. I love you.

The bell clanged like a funeral chime.

Round 1:

The bell barely finished ringing when the Mauler exploded forward— 330 pounds of muscle and malice .

His first punch wasn’t a strike but a wrecking ball, whistling past Carmelo’s temple so close it stirred his hair.

Whiff . Carmelo pivoted on slick soles— Brooklyn footwork threaded with Sicilian grace —letting momentum carry the brute past him.

The crowd roared as the Mauler’s second swing cratered the air where Carmelo’s ribs had been. But the third? A sledgehammer left hook cracked into Carmelo’s shoulder.

THUD.

Kathy’s teeth rattled in her skull as if she’d been hit. Carmelo staggered, the impact vibrating through his spine—but as the Mauler wound up for the decapitating right haymaker, Carmelo dropped . Not away. Down and through .

The Mauler’s fist swung over his ducked head, hitting empty air with enough force but nowhere to land.

Carmelo rose, smiling through split lips.

First blood drawn: the giant’s balance tested. Now for the rest.

Round 3:

Blood trickled from Carmelo's nose; each breath he took sent fire through ribs that felt like cracked glass. The plan was working—barely. Wear down the giant, then unleash hell. That is what Matteo said to him on the phone before the fight. It’s what Caesar coached him from the corner of the ring.

But Christ, every blow from those sledgehammer fists felt like it was crushing his bones to powder.

The Mauler's breathing had turned ragged, his massive frame finally showing cracks in its armor. Sweat poured down his face like a river, but his grin remained vicious as he taunted in a drawl thick from his swollen jaw: "That all you got, little meatball? My mammy hits harder than you."

Carmelo's left eye was swelling shut, his shoulder screaming from absorbing punishment that would have flattened lesser men. But he'd felt the giant's punches losing their snap, seen the hesitation creeping into those wild swings.

Now.

Carmelo answered with his finesse. He feinted left and caught the Mauler leaning. It was then his right cross-hook cracked against the giant's jaw like a rifle shot. The big man's eyes rolled white for a heartbeat, his knees buckling.

The crowd gasped as over 300 pounds of fury swayed like a falling tree, barely holding firm.

“Your mammy’s a bitch!” Carmelo spat, and the bell rang, and he walked away.

Round 5:

Pure savagery. The Mauler drove Carmelo into the ropes like a battering ram, his massive fists hammering kidneys with sickening thuds that echoed through the arena. Each blow sounded like meat hitting concrete.

Kathy sobbed openly now, mascara streaming down her cheeks. This wasn't boxing—it was execution. The giant was trying to kill him, and the referee was letting him.

Even Janey, who'd been languidly fanning herself with bored sophistication, sat frozen in her seat, her usual mask of indifference cracking to reveal raw terror.

The Mauler unleashed everything—two decades of rage, oppression, subjugation at the hands of the Klan on Carmelo. Every ounce of his 300-pound frame behind punches that would have shattered ribs. Carmelo's body folded like a broken doll.

He went down .

The referee leaped over him, counting. Carmelo's chest heaved against the stained canvas, blood pooling beneath his face. Get up. GET UP! Kathy screamed silently, her nails drawing blood from her palms.

At seven, he pushed himself up on trembling arms. At nine, he stood—swaying, glassy-eyed, but upright. The ref grabbed his face, checking his pupils, searching for signs of a man too broken to continue.

The fight resumed.

Then Carmelo exploded .

Like a switch had been thrown, like a survivor of Cosimo’s hammer, he became a whirlwind of calculated violence—elbows carving through the giant's guard, pivots that turned defense into attack.

He drove the stunned Mauler backward step by bloody step until the ropes trapped the beast, who moments before had seemed unstoppable.

The bell rang. Salvation.

Round 8:

Carmelo's left eye had swollen completely shut, a purple grotesquery that turned half his world black. The Mauler's nose was pulverized meat, blood streaming down his chest like war paint. They circled each other like wounded predators in a gladiator’s ring, breathing fire through shattered mouths.

In the VIP seats, Don Marcello's sons exchanged cold, calculating nods. Money was about to change hands. Klansmen spat tobacco-stained curses into the smoky air. The end crackled through the arena like electricity—everyone felt it pressing down like a storm about to break.

Carmelo felt it too, and he charged straight toward destiny.

The Mauler lunged with desperate fury, telegraphing a wild haymaker meant to decapitate.

But Carmelo dropped— not falling, flowing —into a perfect crouch, every hour of training crystallizing into this single moment.

As the giant's fist sailed harmlessly overhead, Carmelo drove upward like a compressed spring releasing, his right fist connecting with surgical precision against the Mauler's exposed throat.

The weak spot the Marcellos told him to aim for.

A sickening crunch echoed through sudden silence—a shattered larynx.

The giant's eyes bulged, his gloves clawing at his crushed windpipe. He staggered backward like a drunk man, then crashed to the canvas with the sound of a felled redwood— a thunderous impact that somehow seemed louder than the crowd's roar.

Absolute silence.

Nearly a thousand people held their breath as one. The Mauler lay motionless, a broken mountain of flesh. The referee stepped over cautiously and began his count, each number falling like a hammer blow into the hush.

"Seven... eight... nine... ten!"

Then—explosion.

“WOLF! WOLF! WOLF!"

The arena erupted as the referee seized Carmelo's blood-slicked glove and thrust it skyward. Kathy screamed until her throat was raw, and she and Janey collapsed into each other's arms—laughing, sobbing, delirious with relief and disbelief.

He had done the impossible. The Wolf had conquered the South.

There was a press shoving cameras in his face.

There were the mafia bosses demanding their pot of gold.

There were doctors barking orders. There were girls who'd slipped through the back doors, desperate to throw their undergarments at the champion.

But through the chaos, with his one functioning eye, Carmelo searched for the only face that mattered.

The doctors won their battle, shoving everyone aside with medical authority.

He wasn't doing well—not well at all. They rolled him onto his side as blood bubbled up from somewhere deep inside, his body rebelling against the punishment it had endured.

Don Marcello's money had bought the best physicians in New Orleans, but even they looked worried as they worked over his battered frame.

But he had won. He had Kathy.

Then he felt it—the familiar warmth of her fingers threading through his bruised knuckles. She squeezed gently, anchoring him to consciousness. He turned his head with enormous effort, his good eye finding her through the swirling chaos.

She leaned over him like a guardian angel, her tear-streaked face the most beautiful vision he'd ever seen. The carnival of noise and bodies faded to nothing. The world contracted to just this: her eyes, her touch, her presence.

"I LOVE YOU," she mouthed silently, her lips forming each word with perfect clarity.