A/N: Hey guys! First of all, thanks for giving my new story a chance. Please leave a review for anything you want to tell me. Reviews help me keep going and brighten my day!


"The truth is… I am Iron Man."

Joe came in and looked at the TV. "Man, rich folks just don't know what to do with their money," he commented.

I started giggling hysterically out of nowhere, none of the girls in the stuffed, filthy room minded me. Why would they? We were high all the time—drugs were the only way to keep us under control—and no one expected us to act reasonable. But this time, I actually had a pretty good reason to laugh; I was imagining their reaction if I told them the truth. That my father was Anthony Edward Stark. Joe would probably think I had a concussion, or had stolen some good stuff from his stash.

"Hey Liv, you are up tonight," he told me.

I closed my eyes, tilted my head back and took a deep breath. "Okay."

Joe didn't hang around for long, so I returned to watching that selfish, arrogant, irresponsible bastard pretending to be a hero in front of the cameras. Iron Man. Then he confessed how he had fried Obadiah Stane on his factory rooftop—which was, I assumed, something he wasn't supposed to say because the man in the military uniform standing behind him panicked for a moment—and earned my respect, or the closest thing to respect I could feel for that coward, for the first time in his life. If there was someone I hated more than Tony Stark, it was Obadiah Stane. He was the main reason I was living in this hellhole. Apparently, he had finally revealed his true face.

Maybe I should start from the beginning.

My mom died when I was 15. Her parents had disowned her when they learned that she got pregnant after a one-night stand with an infamous playboy. She said they believed in traditional family roles and were strictly against trends like single parenting and one-nighters. She raised me alone in a small, friendly town. She was a proud woman. I always knew who my father was, and sometimes watched him on the news or saw his pictures in the newspapers. We had two rules: I wasn't going to tell anyone who my dad was and I wasn't going to try to meet him under any circumstances. And I did so. I had a bunch of good friends at school, but they all thought my father was someone insignificant who died before I was born. After some time, even I started to believe that lie. Mom worked as a freelance writer, and we were self-sufficient and happy in our little world. Until one day she passed out in the living room. I called the ambulance, at the hospital the doctors said she needed to go under surgery immediately. She never made it out.

My grandparents attended to her funeral, but they refused to take my custody afterwards. They just made contact with Tony Stark to let him know that he had a child, and as you can guess, he freaked out when the paternity test proved their claim right. Honestly, I didn't remember much of his reaction, because he didn't even bother to look at my face.

His mentor, Obadiah Stane, took the matter into his own hands before it became a public scandal, and arranged a boarding school for me. All the prodigal son had to do was to pay the bills and I would be out of his sight and his mind for good. But instead of a boarding school, he brought me here, sold me to the Boss—no one knew his real name, that was how we called him here—telling me that my life as a Stark would be over before it began. From that moment, I knew he wanted the Stark empire for himself. No usurper wants to leave a rightful heir behind.

And this was exactly what happened. What we were doing here was sick: We fought and entertained rich men. Yes, some people loved to watch young girls fight, sometimes to the death. They paid a fortune to see it. This was the new Coliseum. The only difference was, the audience preferred young, pretty girls to tough gladiators.

Well, I didn't know who in their right mind would consider us pretty. Our bodies were full of scars, stitches and bruises. Some of our teeth were missing. Drugs consumed us inside out. We cut our hair as short as possible by ourselves to prevent the opponent from grabbing it during the fight. It didn't matter anymore. I didn't want to be pretty.


By listening to the noise coming from downstairs, I could tell the place was crowded tonight. Where we lived was an abandoned gym complex in the nasty part of the city, and the ground floor was used as the ring. I didn't know who my opponent would be tonight, I was only hoping it wasn't Ruth. Ruth was fast, and when she hit, she hit really bad. I remember spitting blood three days in a row after my first match with her. I also owed her my first broken tooth. I was here only for two years and starting to wonder how long it took for us to become totally useless.

"Come on, Ruth is waiting for you," Joe said and dragged me with him.

I moaned.

Joe gently lifted my chin with his rough, oily fingers. Of all people who ran this business, he was the only one with a slight hint of conscience. He was a tall, blond man in his twenties, but he looked like at least thirty. Gods knew for what reason he ended up working for the Boss. "You can do it, Liv."

He led me to the ring and I suddenly felt a chill down to my spine. The room was big and cold. There were at least two dozens of people, but they weren't enough to warm it up. I was wearing a pair of black shorts and a black sports bra as usual. There wasn't an actual ring, like the kind professional boxers fought on, there was only a square area on the concrete floor drawn by rusty iron fences. They weren't too high so that the audience could see us without any disturbance, except the nights they demanded a cage fight.

Ruth grinned at me across the other corner of the ring like a predator. She was going to kick my ass tonight. All I wanted was to keep my bones intact. Broken bones were the worst.

Joe gave the signal, and we started fighting as people called our names to encourage us.

Liv! Liv! Liv!

Ruth! Ruth! Ruth!

There was no technique, or any protection equipment. For us, there were only instincts and luck. I managed to dodge some of Ruth's attacks, and even to punch her in the face and kick in the stomach, but it only made her angrier. She slammed herself on me at the first opportunity, grabbed my head with both her hands like it was a ball, and started smashing it on the floor.

Suddenly, I felt disgusted by the thrill the audience felt, and I decided to make no further contribution to it. What good was it? After a good fight, I was rewarded with a shot, it made me feel good for a while, but the cycle would never end. What good was living this life? Would I go to hell for the things I had done? But I was innocent before this began. I was innocent. I never wanted any of this. So I gave up. I let Ruth end my suffering once and for all.

This wasn't how I was going to die, however. Someone threw a rope at us, she took it, turned me around, placed herself on me so that I couldn't escape, yanked my head and strangled me with the rope.

It was burning my neck. My fingers tried to loosen it, but it was in vain. I didn't even know why I was trying. It was me who asked for it. My body floundered under Ruth's weight as I choked and I kept resisting. Maybe I was one of those idiots who held onto hope till the very end.

With every second passing, I lost my sense of reality a bit more. My vision blurred, and at some point I thought the audience scattered around screaming when a man in red and gold suit flew into the hall from the broken window.