CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Miguel DeFriese turned out to be quite a good promoter. He e-mailed all of his acquaintances the details of the quarter million dollar purse, along with video recorded segments of Velasquez’s last six fights.
Velasquez was favored to win, 20-to-one.
So, the day of the fight finally arrived. Per Miguel’s instructions, I had to survive one round, and take him out in the middle of the second round.
The bell rang, and we came out fast. He tried to take me down fast, like he had his other opponents. I took some punches from him, but nothing I couldn’t absorb. I saw the shocked look in his eyes when I let him connect with a heavy right and I shook it off as if it were nothing. He then tried to take me to the ground since his strikes were having no effects on me.
I kept the fight on our feet instead, not letting him get me in a position where he could put me onto the ground. I used the first round to tenderize his body, hitting him constantly in the ribs and stomach while moving a lot to keep him in an aerobic state. By the end of the round, he was gasping for air.
When he came out for the second round, I could see that he was sluggish. He was used to beating his opponents bloody in the first few minutes; he’d never gone to the second round in all of his previous fights.
After two minutes of more tenderizing, it was time. Time for Malefic to do his damage. Time to teach this ass a lesson; to send him home in disgrace, never to return to the ring.
Velasquez was exhausted. His arms were heavy. His mouth was open and he was gasping for air. I gave him a solid front-heel kick in the solar plexus that knocked the air out of his lungs. He dropped his hands instinctively to guard his stomach and I came across with an elbow strike to the corner of his eye. The bone there collapsed and destroyed his eye. Before the referee could step in and stop the fight, I put everything I had behind a downward side kick to the inside of his right knee connecting perfectly at the joint and snapping the leg, with a loud crunch that everyone in the arena heard. The knee bent completely backwards and the bottom bone broke the skin. Velasquez fell to the ground screaming and the ref shoved me to the corner and told me to get out of the ring, that I was banned from ever fighting in MMA again. I shrugged and left the ring with my head held high. I had gotten what I wanted. Velasquez would never fight again. Plus, I’d won a pretty good bit of money by my side bets.
Genie wasn’t happy about me being banned, but she loved watching me fight and take that guy apart. Later on that night, she told me and showed me how much she appreciated what I had done. Boy that was a fun night!
Miguel DeFriese was on cloud nine. He’d put on a great show for his friends. That night, it was clear that DeFriese was ‘the man.’
And Malefic? Man, he just loved me!
Business continued as usual. Every few months or so, Miguel would put together an underground fight for high stakes. Of course, I won every fight easily.
I also used the illegal street fighting to gradually introduce Genie to my secretive life of crime.
Genie was a good person with a huge heart, and I knew I had to be very careful about what I told her. I felt that if she thought that if I was doing harm to the people I was stealing from, she would leave me and never come back.
As our relationship progressed, Genie shared more about her family with me, and I did the same with her, even telling here about some of my childhood thefts to gauge her reaction, let her know how much I trusted her.
What I learned about her family was good—she said that her parents both came from wealthy backgrounds and that they believed that they were better than other people because of their money. She called them snobs and pretentious fools. Her disgust for them and their ways of thinking were deeply rooted and unlikely to change anytime soon.
That told me that her heart would probably not bleed for the people I was relieving of their over abundance of cash. But still, I was cautious with everything I did. I slowly started revealing glimpses to her of a world that most people were not familiar with.
I placed good-sized bets in my favor and saw that the illegal gambling didn’t trouble her. My first bet was five-thousand; my second was twenty thousand. In no time, she was looking at a hundred thousand dollars. All made illegally.
I could see that she was loving the rush, that she was an adrenaline junkie. She was a little bit out there, but you know, so was I. My street fights were all bare-knuckle, with lots of blood, and I enjoyed them.
Genie wasn’t squeamish at all. When we talked about the fights afterward, her accounts always sounded bloodier and more gruesome than I remembered them.
Genie was excited for me, she was proud of me. She told me for the first time that she loved me. Man! If she only knew how much she really meant to me. I was head over heels for her, but too afraid to let her know.
I still wasn’t sure if she would accept me once she found out about who I really was, what I was really doing. Would she accept me or reject me? I vowed for it to be the former because I wanted to share everything with her.
My life was a freight train, a juggernaut. The only thing that could stop me was death, and death was the furthest thing from my mind. I was alive. If such a thing were possible, I was too alive.
My success at thievery and fighting gripped the attention of Miguel DeFriese. He was very impressed, fascinated by my skills, by my illusiveness. He had Brody set up a special meeting.
When we met, we went through the usual: a nice meal while having small talk, then to business afterward.
DeFriese told me that a close friend and business associate named Vienguilay Otemrouth was having some serious financial problems and needed some help. He told me that Otemrouth was a citizen of Thailand and was granted resident alien status here in America, and she owned several strip malls and businesses in the Miami-Dade metro area.
DeFriese also told me that this woman also had many business contacts throughout southeast Asia and that she’d made some bad investments over the past year and needed twenty-million dollars in U.S. currency. She’d come to DeFriese with the problem, and he’d devised a plan to help her. A plan involving me, and my unique skill set.
Vienguilay owned a strip mall in a wealthy area of Boca Raton, and most of the stores in that mall were owned and insured in her name. The plan was to have someone (me!) break into and clean out all of the jewelry from the very upscale jewelry store in the strip mall.
Of course, the jewelry would already be gone from the safe. My job was to empty all of the glass display cases in front , steal the safe and then set the place on fire to make it look like I was covering my tracks.
Everything went off without any problems. I disabled the security alarm, and that also disabled the fire alarms. The entire strip mall ended up being engulfed in flames, burning to the ground. Nothing could be saved.
The newspapers reported the damage and losses at close to thirteen million dollars. Vienguilay put the property up for sale and collected close to five million dollars for it. That, combined with the sale of the stolen jewelry, netted her well over twenty million dollars.
For the work I did, I got half a million cash. Not too bad.
Everything had gone as planned and Miguel was elated. He was able to help one of his long-time friends and he did it with me, his go to guy.
Unbeknown to me, Miguel was raving about me to his associates, his tight-knit circle and all but one saw me as an asset. You see, I was only interested in making money. I had no plans on making a name for myself or establishing a place for myself with his organization.
Unfortunately, someone thought differently.
The Boca Raton robbery got a lot of media attention. There was speculation that it might have been an inside job, done for insurance. Of course, nothing could be proven.
Genie mentioned the robbery one night during dinner. Something inside me was screaming, “Tell her!” “This is your opportunity!”
She shared with me what she had heard from the local news station on television. She even voiced her approval about it being for the insurance money.
Now was my chance. My window of opportunity.
I asked Genie if I could trust her, and she replied, “With my life.”
I looked at her for a few moments, this woman that I’d fallen in love with. I looked into her eyes and read her aura, weighed her spirit. I saw nothing but love and trust there. So I told her.