The Nuclear Family, Chapter 15, Part II

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You know that feeling you have when you find a new place and you’re trying to remember everything, every place you visit, every face you meet?  You shake dozens of hands, get introduced to Hillary, Tom, Terrance and Charlie, yet you retain nothing?

That was me for the next month.

Of course, everyone was understanding. I had just changed my entire life, so there was going to be an adjustment.  Amy beamed as she introduced me as her boyfriend, and I smiled and shook hands, desperately trying to keep a name and a face.

I was quick to learn the household staff.  Troy was a fit guy what looked after the lawns and I will admit that I was a little concerned the first time I saw him, he was fit and well toned, but the moment I shook hands with him and heard him speak I wasn’t worried about him chasing after Amy, if anything I think Amy should have been concerned about him chasing after me.

I learnt that Troy was a great guy and knew a lot about lawn care and gardening.  He kept the place looking great year-round, along with several of the high-class homes in the area.

Daria was the cleaner/maid, and she came in twice a week to clean the place, mopping, dusting and ensuring the food in the fridge was fresh and anything in the pantry was not beyond its use-by date.  She let me know if there were any food or ingredients I wasn’t to let her know a couple of days in advance, and she would ensure they were ready for me.

There were a handful of others, but they reported to either Troy or Daria. 

Both were a little taken aback the first time they met me; however, Daria, in particular, once she knew who I was, constantly grinned anytime she thought I wasn’t looking.  She knew that Amy had been in love with me for a long time, and the old adage that when the boss is happy, everyone is happy was true.

I also met Amy’s key Australian office staff. Her office manager, Cherie, was a harsh-looking woman in her mid-forties.  She had a background in corporate banking and didn't take any shit from anyone.  But get her with a white wine in her hand on a Friday afternoon, and she could have you rolling on the floor in laughter, in no more than three minutes.

Gary was her portfolio manager and looked after coordinating all the various investments and staff around the world.  He had a dozen project managers that reported to him, which helped to give the project status that I had seen on the big screen TV.

Conner was Amy’s IT geek. If every one of my really clever technology girlfriends needed someone even more intelligent than they were when it came to IT, it would be Conner. Conner was the type of guy who looked like he would piss his pants if you said hello to him, but get him talking about the latest Star Wars movie or tokenisation of Real World Assets on chain, and he just didn’t stop.

It was also Conner who introduced me to the world of Anime on an app called Crunchyroll. Of course, Amy had a subscription, and Conner had decided to introduce me to the deep end with shows like ‘Attack on Titan’ and ‘The Rising of the Shield Hero’.  Amy bent over laughing the first time she caught me screaming at the screen when our hero was initially betrayed because he had a shield as his legendary weapon.

Lastly, she also formally introduced me to her lawyer, George Brady.  George was an older man who always appeared to be wearing a double-breasted suit, even in the summer heat when everyone else was wearing shorts and t-shirts. 

George had an air of refinement about him that you would expect with a high-priced lawyer. At Amy’s insistence, I had added him to my legal team to represent me in the final stages of my divorce from Georgia, which, despite everything being complete, was still dragging.

George had been Amy’s lawyer of record from her first successes in the crypto market, and now that I was with Amy, George would represent me on anything except legal agreements between Amy and me.

At our first coffee, he let me know that despite their declining reputation in the community, my family still had some sway in local politics that he couldn’t fathom, and that had slowed everything down.

There was a meeting in two weeks that he let me know he wanted me to attend with him, where he would close everything out for me and stop the delay tactics.

Somehow, despite every interaction since I had found Georgia in bed with my brother, she believed there was a chance that I would stop the divorce and come back to her if she resisted enough.  George frowned a lot as we walked through the office files.  Shaking his head when he could see through the paternity test where I submitted my DNA, that while I was a very close match, I was not the father of Georgia's son.

He was appalled when I pointed out the times when they had tried to pass the kid off as mine, coming very close to having legal charges laid against them for paternity fraud and several other charges.

I told him that I would not do counselling, there wouldn’t be any reconciliation, and now that I had managed to get away, neither Georgia nor my family were going to get me to return to the Gold Coast for anything to do with them.

It was then that he put the file down, finished his coffee and looked down his glasses at me.

“Robbie,” he told me seriously. “My wife and I were never able to have kids.  That caused us to have some issues for a few years, but I have to say, when I met Amy.  Well... I tend to think of her less as a client and more as a daughter, if you catch my drift.”

“I do, George, and I have heard nothing but similar remarks from so many of the people up here that know her,” I told him. “Amy is one of the smartest people I know.  She is technical, articulate in a way that most nerds aren’t, she is beautiful, and everyone wants to be there for her.”

George nodded,

“So let me just add George, that if at any time I think that you are taking advantage of my girlfriend, whom you think of as a daughter, then I won’t hesitate to have the same words with you that you are threatening me with…”

Less than five heartbeats later, Georgia was smiling, and we moved on to talk about my upcoming fight and the training I was undertaking. It turned out that Georgia was a bit of a fight freak.

By the time Amy joined us, almost an hour later, George and I were looking at fight videos on my phone where he was pointing out issues with McGuinness. 

“Good to see you boys getting along,” she said, sitting down at the table. “I will admit that I was a little worried, you're both proud men.”

“Pfft,” George said in a very un-lawyering fashion. “Robbie here is going to clean the clock on anyone that tries anything with you, and I will make sure to have his back.”

From that point on, I knew George and I would be good friends. And I could see many times in the coming years where we would start seriously, and then find topics of passion we could bond over.  I would also learn that Cynthia, his wife, was an MMA enthusiast and was the person who drove Georgia to get into the sport. 

She had taken up martial arts many years ago, when several of the women in George's office had caught wind of her infertility and made a play for him.  When Sylvia had laid out one gold digger cold in front of the entire office as an example, well, they had found their love of MMA.

Although it wasn’t a difficult job, Cherie, Gary, and George all helped me fast-track my passport renewal, which was required since it was less than six months from expiry. Gary helped me obtain the necessary visas in plenty of time, as we were due to depart only a couple of days after the divorce was finalised, which was only a few days after my scheduled fight with Cody McGuiness.

That was the other thing that was worrying my mind. 

It was the first real professional fight I had ever had.  Sure, I had been in the cage with a dozen professional MMA fighters; I’d even won a bout or two, but they saw those matches as training, not serious fights.

This one was going to have the lights, the glitz and the glamour of a full-on professional fight, including the sports reporters and the television cameras.

The guy, Cody McGuiness, was a pro who was doing a tour during the off-season from the United States professional season.  Somehow Darren had gotten me in as the ‘warmup’ match before his big professional fight down in Sydney two weeks after he ‘finished with the Gold Coast chump’ as he had titled me.

I was expecting a vicious fight. I had been watching as much about him as I could, his bouts, his winning fights, his losing fights.  I had been stalking his YouTube channel and Instagram for months, since Darren had got me to agree to the fight.

I was struggling to figure out a way that I could hold my own against him.  Sure, I was a big guy and trained a lot, did a few fights, but I wasn’t Cody’s league, and we both knew it.  I was pretty sure I could force a draw, but I wasn’t expecting a win.

When people watch WWE, they see a little blood and go wild.  That is all fake, acting.  When you get in the ring in an MMA fight, you see the red stains on the mat.  You know it's not fake.

I was surprised the day after I met with George when Amy let me know that Darren and Toni would be coming up to stay with us for a couple of weeks.  George had sent someone down with paperwork, and they had signed it without hesitation.

Darren would be leaving his gym in one of his managers' hands to train me exclusively in the lead-up to the fight, and Toni would be looking after my diet.

Both were surprised when we met them down in the village and explained that Amy was a wealthy person beyond most people's imagination.  Though a moment later, Darren laughed.

“Good,” he said, a malicious grin spreading over his face when he looked at me.  “That means I’m going to be able to push your boyfriend twice as hard, and you can afford the medical.”

That afternoon, he tore into me.  He had me running sprints along the beach, before making me run up the hill past our home to do fifty squats and then back down, back along the beach and another fifty push-ups.

As the sun set, I got a twenty-minute meal break, before he got me into the gym and had me pounding the punching bag with combinations of kicks and knees.

It wasn’t the hardest I had ever been pushed, but it was dam close and over the next three days, I don’t think I even noticed when Amy slipped into bed beside me in the evening. I was out of it.

Day to day, Darren’s gym down on the Gold Coast was known as one of the few places that you didn’t come to if you wanted to bulk up.  If you attended his gym for any length of time, you learnt how to fight.  That was how we met. I was looking for a place to train in martial arts, and he took pity on my poor form and began to train me.

It was after a few months of watching me train with one of his staff that he decided to take me under his wing personally.  Before then, we had talked casually; he’d given me a few tips, but nothing deeper.

“Robbie,” he told me. “You have natural talent in this space.  You have size, endurance, and you know how to take a hit.  But you also throw a punch like a pussy, you let opening after opening go by and sorry, but your footwork is like no one ever showed you how to position yourself for what comes next.”

From that moment, I was his student, and he pushed me well past what I thought was possible.  He showed me ways to think, to move, and how to use momentum when I fell to come up fighting.  In essence, he built me into a fighter rather than someone who thought they could fight.

The first time Darren put me in a real fight, I had my ass handed to me, although the guy was a head smaller than me and was nowhere near as strong.

Later, Darren laughed at me as I iced my split lip.

“Remember this, Robbie,” he told me. “You can hear it from everyone, I can tell it to you until I am blue in the face, but until you have experienced it. You will never understand what it means not to underestimate your opponent during your fight.”

He was right, almost a year later, I faced off against the same guy again, and this time I beat him, but only just.

During that time, I was happy, had a young, hot wife, we were talking about kids, I was taking on running more and more of the family business, and the mental discipline that training with Darren was helping me. And, I was pushing hard in a sport I loved. 

In the end, I still had the sport…

Until now, I had been doing the fights for fitness and fun.  We’d knock each other around in the cage, one of us would walk away for a grand, the other five hundred.  Then we would all go down to the pub afterwards and shout a round for our supporters.  It was a good life.

Of course, that changed with my discovery of betrayal, and somewhere along the way, someone saw me with way more aggression in the cage than normal, filmed it, and it made its way to Cody McGuinness's management team.

The request from the head of the Australian MMA was a welcome surprise.  And win, lose or draw, Darren and I would receive a decent paycheck.  For Darren, it would be the equivalent of almost three months of wages if I failed, and since I didn’t have a job and was staying with Darren and Toni when I accepted, I figured I could give him my half as well.

Now, it would all go to Darren, though I wouldn’t tell him until later, but there were a few moments where he was pushing me well past my limits that I thought against giving him the money, but while I didn’t want to freeload off my mega rich girlfriend, Darren and Toni could use the money a lot more than I could.

Every second day, Darren would change up our routine, ensuring every muscle was stretched and pushed, then give just enough time to recover before pushing it again.  Since I wasn’t working, he pushed me sunup to sundown, and in the evenings we would spend time going over both Cody’s and my fights.

After the first few days through, the highlight was the evenings in which, after a shower, Amy would give me a massage to relax me, of course, being totally naked while doing it had no effect whatsoever…

So, while Amy worked during the day and Darren found new ways to push my limits, Toni was preparing our meals.  Designed to reduce saturated fats and increase my muscle density, Toni was a master of caloric control, ensuring the proper enzymes reached my body at the correct times of day and keeping me hydrated.

I was honestly happy that she made sure there was plenty of flavour in everything.  I had been through extreme diets before, and sometimes, with these diets, it was hard not to make the food taste like cardboard.

I was also really happy to see that when she wasn’t preparing our meals, if Amy was home, then Toni would spend a lot of time with Amy.  For the most part, they would hang out on the main balcony, drinking wine and yelling encouragement to me as they both laughed about one thing or another.

What was great was that I saw a big sister mentality in Toni towards Amy.  Sadly, Toni had lost her younger sister in a boating accident many years ago.  To see that my girlfriend, who had basically lost one of her two older sisters, was enjoying time with Toni warmed my heart.

Three days before the fight, Darren wound my workouts right down, us doing just enough to keep me loose and ready.  I also liked that since I wasn’t passing out after falling into bed, I also got to enjoy my girlfriend's amazing and luxurious body.

I slept lightly the night before the fight, and I doubt I would have slept at all had not Amy sorted me out three times.

We decided that we would all travel down together in Darren’s truck, an older model Triton Ute.  After a run along the beach and a light breakfast, Amy, Toni, Darren, and I climbed in the Ute and drove to Brisbane.

I don’t recall much of the drive. I was so nervous; I was about to have my first professional fight, and I was close to shitting bricks.  Even more was that the fight was being held in the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, in the suburb of Boondall, a little north of Brisbane.

I was trying to play it cool when we parked, getting my bag out of the tray, looking around like this was the most casual thing in the world, but moments after we were all out, Amy pulled me into a kiss.

“Relax, babe,” she told me. “Or you're going to knock McGuiness out with your nerves before the bell rings.”

I laughed and she kissed me, then took my hand in hers as we walked through the fighters' entrance, to a couple of buff security guards I was pretty sure should have been in the ring in place of me.

However, the moment my bag hit the floor in the dressing room, it all changed. While the nerves were still circling, I felt a strange kind of calm that I always got once I started getting ready for a fight.  It was the inevitability of what was about to happen, and that no matter what, I would give it my all.

“Yes, they’re going to be here,” Amy said while Darren was helping me with a warm-up.

“Who’s that?” Toni asked.

“Some of the team from the office,” she told us. “Most of them have never seen an MMA fight before, so they decided to come down to support Robbie.”

I heard what she was saying, but I was trying to block it out.  Amy had the best of intentions, but I was trying to focus right now.  Darren held my focus.

“Duck, strike, block, strike,” he was saying, and I was following.  Toni got that it was not the place to be jumping around happy, and guided Amy out for a few minutes as they went and peered at the cage where I would be fighting.

I’ll admit that I was happy to have everyone see me use my hard-earned black belt in Karate, combined with the extensive Muay Thai training Darren had put me through. As the time drew closer, I even felt a little excited. I wasn’t going to need to hold back tonight.

I could hear voices outside, and Toni and Amy came back into the locker room with the event organiser and let me know we would be lining up for the pre-fight interviews soon.

Darren picked up my bag and looked at me, then over at Amy.

“From this point forward, Amy, Robbie needs to maintain his focus and intensity.  We’re in fight mode now.”

Amy got a serious look on her face, which was adorable, and I barely kept my composure as we followed a guide and wound our way through corridors to the interview area.

Cody McGuiness was a six-foot-three barrel-chested giant of a man.  His broad shoulders with seriously pumped-up arms were what you noticed most about him.  From the research Darren and I had done over the past few months, Cody started in Boxing, actually earned a decent living from it before learning taekwondo and moving into Mixed Martial Arts.

Cody did well and joined the US MMA a few years ago, knocking out three opponents in a row in recorded fights.  It got the eyes of the right people, and he was now counted a successful professional sports personality.

Ultimately, he was a mid-tier fighter, which meant he was lethal and had maintained a fairly consistent ranking.  Not front-page news, but good enough to earn a living professionally and have most of his fights picked up by the sports channels wherever he fought.  When I saw his entourage, though, I wondered how he could afford to live when everyone on his team had to be paid.

He had to have a dozen people around him, trainers, medical staff, someone who looked like a Hollywood agent, and, unsurprisingly, a couple of groupies.

Once Darren and I had signed the register, Event Marketing asked Cody and me to do the obligatory pre-fight shots.

We more or less posed as instructed, with Cody trying to use his bulkier frame to appear the bigger guy.  I thought it came off as swamy.

Overall, I get the feeling that under the gloves was a reasonably nice guy. His main issue was that he’d enjoyed enough success and was surrounded by so many yes-men that I think he believed too much of his own hype.

Once the cameras were out of the room, he walked over and held out his hand.

“I want to wish you like tonight, Robbie,” he said with a smile on his face.  I smacked my palm into his hand and shook. “However, I do have to say that I’m sorry for your loss since I'm going to beat you black and blue.”

I snorted, let the game begin. 

When I had my first fights, we would shake hands, fight and go have a beer.  As I climbed in rank, even as an amateur, the higher you went, the less camaraderie and more mind games were played.

I looked Cody up and down, tilted my head to the side and raised a single eyebrow while looking at him.

“That’s funny, mate,” I told him, making sure my accent was over-the-top Aussie. “I’ve just pre-booked you an Ambulance for your trip to the hospital tonight.”

Cody laughed, then looked over at Amy.  She was dressed in jeans and a white collared shirt.  Her hair was tied back in a single ponytail, and she had a simple gold chain around her neck.  In essence, she looked incredible and was dressed the part as the girlfriend of a fighter about to step into the ring without looking like a Gold Digger.

“Sure, little man, sure,” he said, still purposely looking Amy up and down. “I’m ready to put you in the ambulance.  And if your woman needs a lift later, I’ll be glad to help out.”

With that, he looked at Amy and winked.

Amy’s neck had a red blush on it, and she clenched both her fists as Cody turned around and walked away laughing.  He had gotten the reaction he was after.

I turned, blocking Amy’s view of Cody walking away and put my arms on her shoulders.

“Amy, babe,” I said and waited for her to look at me.  It took a moment, but she did.  “Don’t sweat it.  He’s not serious; he was trying to get under my skin.”

“But he…” she fumed.

“He did, but he wasn’t serious,” I told her.  “It's part of the game, it’s a ploy to try and throw me off my game before I even get in the ring.  That’s why he came over to me.  If I went over to him and his team, I would have thrown a comment or two.”

She looked over at him, still standing his back to us.

“Really?” she asked, uncertain.

“Truly,” I replied.

She blew out a breath, and her shoulders relaxed, and I let go of her.

“That’s low, using me…”

“Don’t sweat it.  That was so tame compared to some of the exchanges,” I told her. “Some of the guys will push you over and over again, swearing at you like a sailor, and get in your face like an ex-wife.”

Amy laughed at that; however, I caught Toni looking awkward and then back out the doors and down the corridor that led to the arena.

“Speaking of ex-wives…” she said, looking at me.  “Your family are already sitting in the audience for tonight's fight.”

“What!” both Amy and I said at the same time, now looking out the doors towards the arena where the first sounds of the evening entertainment could be heard.  Cody and I were the main event, the ninth of eleven bouts that evening.  So it would be a while yet before we took the spotlight.

Toni nodded at me.

“When we walked out before, I peeked out and I could see them all sitting out there,” she told us. “Right-hand side, about two-thirds of the way up.”

“Why would you tell him that?” Amy said. “It’s going to throw him off.”

Darren shook his head.

“Better that he knows now, rather than it throwing him mid-fight.”

I could feel myself tensing, my mind going the wrong way. My family is here. Why? What could they gain?  They have never been to a fight before.

Suddenly, Amy grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the side of everyone.  She pulled me towards her like she wanted to kiss me, but stopped short.

“Use it!” she hissed at me, her face inches from mine, her eyes wild.

“Use what?” I asked her, not following.

“Them!” she roared, her face still inches from mine as she threw her arm back over her shoulder towards the door.

“They have come here tonight to upset you, perhaps thinking that you would get distracted and lose.  Making them think you might come crawling back.  Use it.  Use all that anger and pain they put you through.  Use every comment, every slight, every misrepresentation of the truth to beat the shit out of Cody.”

My girlfriend pushed me back up to a standing position, and she stood and put her hands on her hips, turning and looking at Cody McGuiness, but she still spoke to me.

“Show them how ultimately pissed off you are and how you're going to put this mother fuckers face into the mat.”

[:::: End of Chapter 15 ::::]

[:::: Go to Chapter 16 ::::]

[:::: Find all chapters at: The Nuclear Family story page ::::]

[:::: Read any of John’s Stories on John’s Story Guide ::::]