So the story continues
Alexandra’s Blog
Las Vegas, Nevada
I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and are starting the New Year off on a high note. I know I had a wonderful Christmas week! I spent mine surrounded by family and friends, people who I hold dear to me. I’m still stuck trying to figure out this puzzle box that LJ gave me. But I know that I will eventually defeat it. I did say I wanted a challenge, never expected that challenge to come from my boyfriend. With the holiday season passed, we move on.
Now, we look forward to Inception VIII. I ended the year staring down the barrel knowing that anything could have happened. It did, just like that, another name gets added to the list of people who thought standing in my way was a saintly idea. Like they believed they were “cleansing” the wrestling world of my name. Climax Control came and went, and Frankie found out the explosive way that I wasn’t bluffing, not for a second. She stepped onto those tracks thinking she could stare me down, thinking I’d slow up, hesitate, second guess myself. What she got alternatively was impact. What she got was reality. The train didn’t stop. It ran straight through her. And I plan on keeping that momentum going.
See, Frankie’s tough. I’ll give her that. She fights like she’s got something to prove, like she’s been overlooked one too many times. But so have I. The difference is, I don’t blink when it’s time to pull the trigger. I don’t hesitate when things get uncomfortable. I thrive there. And when the dust settled, when the noise died down and the referee’s hand hit the mat, there was no doubt left in anyone’s mind that I was the better woman that night.
That win wasn’t just about Frankie. It was about momentum. It was about reminding Sin City Wrestling, and myself, that I don’t need excuses, sympathy, or perfect circumstances to deliver. I need a ring, an opponent, and a reason. Frankie just happened to be next. And now?. Now my eyes are locked firmly on Inception.
Alicia Lukas, the Bombshell Roulette Championship is no longer a distant idea or a future plan. It’s right there. good enough to touch. Every step I’ve taken this month from Victoria, to Frankie, through chaos, injury, and distractions has led me straight to you. Back to MY Bombshell Roulette Title. I’m not coming in hopeful. I’m not coming in cautious. I’m coming in sharpened, prepared, and absolutely convinced that this is my moment.
So enjoy whatever comfort that title gives you while you can. Because I’m walking into Inception with fire in my chest, blood on my knuckles, and proof behind every word I’ve spoken. Frankie learned. Victoria learned. And soon enough, the rest of the world will remember.
This isn’t a comeback story.
This is a warning.
And it’s written in blood, sweat and tears.
Your Forever Champion,
Alexandra Calaway
Loves Puzzling Challenge
LJ and Alexandra’s apartment
Las Vegas, Nevada
Alexandra did not pick the puzzle box up right away.
That alone should have told her how mischievously it had gotten under her skin. She sat on the couch with her legs tucked beneath her, coffee cooling forgotten on the table, and stared at the thing like it might flinch first if she waited long enough. It sat there incisively as it had all week. Polished. Silent. totally likewise confident for an inanimate object.
She hated that it felt smug. The apartment had settled into a quieter rhythm after LJ disappeared into the bedroom, the sound of running water and the unpredictable shift of movement reminding her she was not alone. That helped. A little. It kept her from spiraling likewise problematic into the idea that she was losing a battle to a woody box. Still, the tension sat large in her shoulders.
Alexandra prided herself on not quitting. She walked away from things when it was strategic, not when they bruised her ego. This did both. Every time she thought she was close, the box stalled, locked itself down, refused to move another inch. She leaned forward and finally picked it up, fingers usual with its weight now. She rotated it slowly, resisting the urge to jump straightforward to the panels she knew would move. She had cooked that enough times already. It had gotten her nowhere. Her thumb traced one of the grooves, the wood politic and warm from the apartment air. The pattern curved, doubled back on itself, disappeared beneath a seam that looked nonfunctional until you stared overly long.
Alexandra frowned and she pressed lightly. Nothing.
She tried again, adjusting pressure, angle, timing. The panel shifted the synoptical fraction it always did before stopping. That familiar resistance met her like a wall. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. She set the box down harder than she meant to and leaned back, scrubbing a hand over her face. "I can solve video game puzzles and I play Dungeons and Dragons, but this thing is worse than any mimic box." The frustration was no longer sharp. It had settled into something heavier. Persistent. The kind that whispered around missed details and witless assumptions.
She hated that part the most.
Because it meant the problem was not the box. It was her. Alexandra forced herself to slow down. She stood and moved around the table, crouching so she could see the box from an inferior angle. The grooves did look diametric from down here, but not in a way that made fast sense. If anything, they raised more questions. She turned the box and tried again, testing a diametric panel. Equal result. She bit down on her lip, irritation bubbling. She could feel herself wanting to brute force it, wanting to apply more pressure just to see what would happen. She knew better. The box had already proven that approach useless.
That did not make it easier to resist. Her gaze drifted concisely toward the bedroom door. She knew LJ could help if she asked. He had offered. He always did. That was not the point. She wanted to win this on her own. Not because of pride alone, though that was part of it, but because she needed to know she could calmly figure things out when they refused to be straightforward. That she had not incomprehensible that part of herself somewhere between packing her life into boxes and starting over in a red hot city.
Alexandra sat back down and picked the puzzle box up again, this time closing her eyes as she turned it in her hands. She focused on the feel alternatively of the sight. The weight distribution. The slight shifts when she rotated it. The way some sides felt further unanimous than others. She pressed at a seam she had not tried in a while. Nothing happened. She exhaled precipitously through her nose and opened her eyes.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Fine.” She tried another approach. She rotated the box totally and slid a panel that had always felt secondary, something she assumed would come later. It moved, then stopped in the same exasperating way as everything else.
The box gave her just enough to keep her hooked. That might have been the cruelest part. Minutes passed. Or maybe longer. Time blurred as she cycled through possibilities, ruling out patterns that led nowhere, noting reactions that changed nothing. She made progress in millimeters that never compounded. Eventually, her shoulders sagged. Alexandra leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling, the box resting grueling in her lap. She felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. This was intellectual exhaustion. The kind that came from circling the indistinguishable problem without finding a refreshing angle. She hated that too.
“I am missing something,” she whispered. “I know I am.” She did not throw the box. She did not ask for help. She did not give up. But she set it down. Carefully. The puzzle box sat where she left it, unchanged, unbothered by her effort.
“Perhaps LJ is right, this isn’t about one person. Maybe I should let him help me.” Alexandra watched the puzzle box for a retentive moment, jaw set, resolve hardening alternatively of breaking. This was not over. It was hardly not today. And as frustrating as that realization was, she knew one thing with univocal certainty. She would come back to it. Because she always did.
Ghosts of the Past
Flamingo Casino
Las Vegas, Nevada
The Flamingo glowed like a lie told too many times. Pink neon washed over the courtyard, reflecting off water that looked calm until you stared too long and noticed how it never quite sat still. Alexandra moved through the space like she belonged to it, boots clicking softly against stone, her presence heavy and deliberate. This place remembered violence. It remembered ambition soaked in blood and champagne. The Flamingo was not just a casino. It was a grave with a bar built on top of it.
She stopped near the edge of the garden, fingers trailing along a marble column that had seen decades of sins. The air felt thick, charged, as if the dead were leaning in close to listen. Bugsy Siegel’s spirit was said to linger here, furious and proud, surrounded by the echoes of mobsters who bled money and men into the desert to build modern Vegas. Alexandra smiled, slow and sharp, eyes gleaming with something unwell and unrepentant.
“I know you’re here,” she said softly, her voice carrying just enough to cut through the night. “All of you. Watching. Judging. Measuring. Trying to decide my fate through reliving your past.” She laughed under her breath, a sound that did not carry humor so much as hunger. She turned her gaze outward, as if Alicia herself stood across from her beneath the neon palms.
“Alicia,” Alexandra said, tasting the name. “You walk into this like it’s another photoshoot. Another headline. Another moment where everyone tells you how untouchable you are.” Her head tilted slightly, an almost curious gesture. “Do you know what this place was built on? Men who thought they were untouchable. Men who smiled right up until the gun went off. Men who found out that fame, often led them to an early grave.”
She stepped closer to the water, her reflection warping and breaking with every ripple. “This is where Vegas learned how to sin properly. Where ambition learned it had a body count. You feel it, don’t you?” Her eyes lifted, wild and bright. “That pressure in your chest when the lights hit and you realize this is,” she paused. “Much bigger than you. Hell, even bigger than me.”
Alexandra’s fingers curled slowly into a fist. “I am not here to outshine you, to end your career. I am here to end your reign. There is a difference.”
She paced now, controlled but restless, like a predator circling prey it already owned. “You see a chance to keep your title. I see survival. I see validation carved out of bone and broken pride. I will bleed for that Bombshell title, I have before and I’ll do it again and again. I will break rules, bodies, and reputations. And I will smile while I do it.”
She stopped abruptly, staring straight ahead as if Alicia stood inches away. “And you?” Alexandra scoffed. “You want to win, to keep your hold on that title. I need to win, to redeem my past losses. And that,” she paused. “That makes me dangerous.”
The neon buzzed overhead. Somewhere distant, laughter echoed from tourists who had no idea they were standing on sacred criminal ground. Alexandra lowered her voice, almost intimate now. “Bugsy died because he believed the dream belonged to him. Everyone here thought they owned Vegas until it reminded them who really held the knife.” Her smile returned, wider now, unhinged and unapologetic. “At the Flamingo, ghosts don’t rest. They collect. And I am here to take back my Bombshell Roulette Title.”
She leaned in, eyes cold and gleaming. “When I take the Bombshell championship, Alicia, remember this moment. Remember that you were warned. This city rewards monsters. And I am exactly what it’s been waiting for.”
Alexandra stayed where she was, the water at her feet trembling as if something beneath the surface was breathing. The Flamingo whispered around her, the old walls heavy with memory. Every corner of this place had been bought with blood or betrayal, sometimes both, and she felt at home in it. She lifted her chin, eyes unfocused for a moment, as if she were listening to voices no one else could hear.
“They built this city on nerve,” she said quietly. “On men who were willing to kill a friend over a handshake and call it business.” Her lips curled. “That’s the kind of honesty I respect.”
She turned slowly, facing the imagined shape of Alicia again, her posture relaxed but coiled with violence. “You all think I’m unstable,” Alexandra continued, her voice gaining strength. “You all whisper it backstage. You all warn people about me like I’m some kind of problem that needs managing.” She laughed, sharp and sudden. “You’re right. I am a problem. I just happen to be your problem at Inception. Are you sure you are ready to handle it?”
She stepped forward, boots splashing lightly at the edge of the water. “You stand in that ring with perfect posture and perfect hair, telling yourself that skill and charm are enough. That the Bombshell Roulette title will stay right where it is because you deserve it.” Alexandra shook her head slowly. “Deserve is a fairy tale word. Vegas doesn’t care what you deserve. It only cares what you take.”
The lights reflected off her eyes, making them look almost feral. “I don’t sleep before big moments like this. I pace. I plan. I replay the sound of bones hitting canvas in my head until it feels like music.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “This isn’t adrenaline. This is clarity.”
Her voice dropped again, intimate and dangerous. “I will grab that title like it owes me money. I will pull you down into the deep end and hold you there until the panic sets in and you realize you misjudged me.” She smiled. “That moment when your confidence cracks. That’s my favorite part.”
Alexandra glanced toward the towering hotel, pink lights humming like a heartbeat. “This place remembers men who thought fear made them weak. They were wrong. Fear makes you honest. And I am brutally honest about what I am.” She turned back, eyes locked on her invisible opponent. “Alicia, when we step into that ring, this stops being a match. It becomes a reckoning. I am not here to prove I belong. I am here to carve my name into history and leave you wondering how you ever thought you could stop me.”
She took one last step forward, voice steady and cold. “The Flamingo crowned kings and buried them in the same breath. At Inception VIII for the Bombshell Roulette Championship, I am doing the same thing.” Her grin widened, twisted and unwavering. “Pray that the ghosts like you. I already know they like me.”
Alexandra stepped inside the casino proper, the air shifting the moment the doors closed behind her. The Flamingo smelled different at night. Old smoke trapped in velvet, stale perfume clinging to carpet, money that had passed through too many desperate hands. The slots chimed and sang, cheerful and false, but beneath the noise there was another rhythm. A pulse. A memory.
She walked slowly between the machines, her fingers brushing the edges of chrome and glass. For a moment the reflections did not match her movements. Shapes lingered where no bodies stood. Men in sharp suits with hollow eyes. Women draped in silk and secrets. She could see them in the corners of the mirrors, flickering like damaged film.
“Still playing,” she murmured. “Still pretending the house doesn’t always win.”
A shadow passed through a row of slot machines, the lights dimming as it moved. Alexandra stopped, watching it with open fascination. “Bugsy,” she said calmly. “You built this place like a throne and they shot you for it. Isn’t that beautiful?” She smiled. “That’s the risk of vision. People kill what they cannot control. They attempt to end something so powerful, without a single thought.”
She continued walking, heels sinking slightly into carpet worn thin by decades of greed. At the tables, the dealers’ smiles stretched too wide, their hands moving with mechanical precision. For a split second, their faces shifted. Their eyes went dead and their mouths stopped smiling. She saw blood where chips should be, red soaking into green felt before snapping back to normal.
Alexandra leaned down, resting her palms on an empty blackjack table. “This is what Alicia doesn’t understand,” she said softly. “She thinks pressure comes from crowds and cameras.” Her reflection in the polished surface grinned back at her, eyes too bright. “Pressure comes from knowing everything around you wants to take something from you. I’ve known that, experienced it in my many years in this industry.”
She straightened, pacing again. “I walk into a ring and I am calm because I already made peace with the worst parts of myself. I don’t flinch. I don’t hesitate.” Her voice lowered. “I don’t stop when it hurts. I’ve never done that before, why would I start now?”
A laugh echoed somewhere behind her, low and rough, not belonging to any living throat. Alexandra turned her head slowly toward the sound. “I know,” she said. “You all did terrible things for power. You ruined lives and called it legacy.” She inhaled deeply. “I respect that honesty.”
She stopped beneath a chandelier, its crystals casting fractured light across her face. “Alicia wants to be admired,” Alexandra continued. “She wants to be remembered as graceful, dominant, untouchable.” Her expression hardened. “I want her to remember the moment she realized none of that mattered.”
She clenched her hands, knuckles whitening. “When I pin her. When the mat is cold against her back and the noise fades and it’s just me and her heartbeat.” Her lips parted in a slow, unsettling smile. “That’s when she’ll see me clearly.”
The shadows gathered closer now, drifting between tables and machines like curious spectators. Alexandra welcomed them. “You built this city by breaking people,” she said to the ghosts. “I am just following tradition.”
She turned toward the exit, eyes blazing with intent. “Alicia,” she said, voice carrying through the casino like a promise, “this title isn’t a prize. It’s a sacrifice. And I am more than willing to make one.”
The lights flickered as Alexandra moved deeper into the casino, and then something shifted. Not abruptly. Not cleanly. Time here did not snap. It bled.
The music softened, warped, slowing until the electronic hum of modern Vegas thinned into something older. Brass. Cigarette haze. The carpet beneath her boots felt thicker, heavier, as if decades of footsteps pressed back. She inhaled and the air burned her lungs, smoke and whiskey and gun oil. The Flamingo no longer pretended to be polite.
She looked around and the slots were gone.
In their place stood men in suits cut sharp and expensive, hats tilted low, faces half-hidden in shadow. Their voices murmured over one another, low and dangerous, deals being made without paper, without witnesses. Women leaned against tables, lipstick dark, eyes calculating. Chips clacked together with the weight of real consequence. This was the 1940s, and it watched her walk through it like an intruder who belonged.
Alexandra smiled.
“So this is it,” she said aloud, her voice steady, reverent in a twisted way. “This is where monsters learned how to wear manners.”
A man passed straight through her shoulder. She did not flinch. His laugh lingered in her ear, rough and cruel. She turned slowly, meeting the empty space where his eyes should have been. “You would have liked me,” she said calmly. “I don’t bluff. I don’t fold. Alexandra Calaway never folds.”
She stepped forward and the crowd parted without realizing it. Cards slapped down on tables. Money changed hands. Somewhere a woman screamed, then laughed, then disappeared behind a curtain that smelled like regret. Alexandra’s reflection appeared in a mirrored column, but it was wrong. Her eyes looked darker. Wilder. Like she had already crossed a line she could never come back from.
“This is what Alicia is walking into,” she continued, voice low and deliberate. “She thinks history is a backdrop. A theme. A cute story for commentary.” Alexandra leaned closer to the glass. “History has teeth. And it bites hard when you disrespect it.”
She dragged her fingers across a table edge and saw blood smear beneath them, fresh and vivid, before vanishing again. “You men built Vegas by taking what you wanted and daring anyone to stop you,” she said to the ghosts. “You killed for less than a title. You ruined lives for pride.”
Her grin sharpened. “I am not ashamed of what I am willing to do. I think I’ve proven that time and time again. I am done proving myself. Especially to those who don't believe.”
The room seemed to close in around her, walls tightening, the weight of the past pressing against her spine. She welcomed it. She thrived in it. “Alicia,” Alexandra said, voice rising just enough to carry through decades, “you walk into the ring thinking this is sport. Thinking your code and rules will save you.” She stopped in the center of the casino floor, shadows circling her like a jury that already knew the verdict. “I walk in like these men did. Like everything is on the line. Like someone is going to leave changed or not leave at all.”
Her eyes gleamed with something unwell, something honest. “I will drag you backward through every mistake you never paid for. I will make you feel small. I will make you doubt every cheer you ever believed was real.”
The ghosts leaned closer now. Watching. Approving.
“When the ref’s hand hits the mat,” Alexandra whispered, “this city will remember you the way it remembers everyone else. As something that is lost.” She straightened, shoulders squared, fearless. “The Flamingo crowned kings before it buried them. Alicia.” Her smile was slow, vicious. “You don’t get to be the exception.”
With that she walked from the view of the camera, disappearing into the casino crowd.
