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He took over the house and took over me.
My first day back from school, he put boxing gloves on my hands and trained me to fight.
“In this world,” He had said in that booming, cadenced voice of his, “a woman has to learn to fight if she doesn’t want to get fucked.”
First, we sparred with gloves, then without them, until my knuckles bled. He made me lift weights, and if I wanted to eat, he made me run laps. He coached me like I was going to be the next Manny Pacquiao.
When I begged for an explanation, he would dismiss my concerns with a lifted finger.
“A woman who cannot defend herself is a burden,” and he’d send me off to finish my homework.
He would disappear for weeks at a time, giving me work to do, and if I did not do the exercises or run the drills, he would know. I don’t know how. But he always knew.
I once tried to ask him about his life, and he told me it was unimportant. That he was there, at that moment, and that was all I might have of him.
He threw me into the MMA underground. He didn’t care that I was small. He watched me get my face punched, my arms almost dislocated, and my body bruised. He made me wrap my own knees and aching joints, and forced me into ice baths to reduce the swelling.
When I turned 18, he gave me one single, solitary moment where he was almost a father.
“Trust your instincts,” he whispered, “And trust your fists.”
He had a bottle of San Miguel in his hands and I assumed he was drunk.
I asked him what the hell he was talking about, and he smiled sadly.
“I have taught you to rely on yourself,” I’m sure it was just my imagination, but his eyes seemed to soften, “but you’ll never need to. Not even when I stop breathing.”
He went back to his bottle and ignored me. He was good at that.
I don’t know how I pieced together that he was an assassin. It wasn’t just one thing. It was many little things. He was on a trip to Vietnam when a warlord was found floating, face down, in his pool. Some business mogul overdosed in his hotel room, and my dad was a town away, attending an investors conference for some bitcoin or other. It was a lot of little coincidences that painted a full picture.
When I graduated from high school, I was valedictorian. But Leopold Bonifacio did not show up. He was off on another business trip and was found with a policeman’s bullet in his head and drugs in his pocket.
“Are you listening to me, brat?” Jericho pulled me from my thoughts of the past.
“No, I sure wasn’t, boss.” I admitted, though my sarcasm was also undeniable.
“Amazing, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” he marveled. “I said that you need to pick a new name.”
With a wave of his hand, he motioned for me to follow him. He trotted up to the plane, up the stairs that led to the door. The inside of the plane was amazing. It smelled of leather and roses. There were actual tables bolted to the side of the plane. I could see rooms in the back. One looked like a bedroom, the other a bathroom. Was that a shower? Holy shit. This was not economy class.
“Take a seat.” He ordered me as he went to the cockpit. Maybe he knew the pilot?
I went to the leather seat, sat by a window.
“Hey, genius,” Jericho yelled at me as I fished for the little metal belt buckles in the cushions. “Up here.”
He was in the cockpit, his hands on the sides of the doorway that separated us from them.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Huh?” He mocked, then grinned. “Get up here, kiddo. Your training starts now.”
I got up and followed him. I was overwhelmed by the number of buttons and dials.Was he… going to teach me how to fly?
I heard the sound of the air-pressure door closing. Jericho pulled a latch to shut the portal to the outside world. He ran his hands over the seams and nodded to himself with satisfaction.
He went to the pilot’s seat and plopped into it with a sigh.
