His mouth opened as if wanting to speak, but with a swift turn of his heel he pounded out of the room. I watched him go. Left alone, hanging from these chains, I replayed the image of his bunched muscles as he left, and his fingers as they alternated from fisted to rigid by his sides. When he’d pushed me for that answer, when I’d screamed how I’d been so alone, something within him snapped. I saw it in his face. I saw it in his stance.
I saw it clearly in his expressive blue eyes.
I now knew he really wasn’t a monster at all. I knew he had no choice in performing these horrible acts. I knew his life had been as impossible as mine.
Knew he wasn’t truly as evil as he seemed.
He was just like my Anri and Zaal. Like me.
Broken.
9
LUKA
A fist of iron slammed into my jaw, snapping my head back on impact. The taste of copper filled my mouth. I spat the blood out onto the floor.
Nodding, I looked at my opponent who was pacing the cage. His eyes were lit with rage, with the fire that I too had burning inside me. Catching him off guard, I ran at full tilt, slamming into his body and tackling him to the floor. Rolling to straddle his waist, I sent two swift punches straight into his face, blood spraying on my chest, before he bucked his hips and I jumped to my feet.
My opponent pushed off the floor. The whole place fell silent as other fighters gathered round to watch. We circled and circled, panting hard, dripping with sweat, both braced to strike. Then a gunshot rang in the air, signaling the end of the match.
I didn’t move. I didn’t take my eyes off my opponent. Neither did he with me. I crouched low, ready to strike again. Then someone stood between us. My blood haze ebbed away, ushering my return to the here and now.
“Break it up, boys,” Viktor called. I took three steps back as I worked on calming down. I glanced across the cage and caught my opponent doing the same. Closing my eyes, I breathed in and out ten times. I thought of Kisa, my wife, and my unborn baby. I thought of our home and my position as knyaz. I had to. I had to remind myself that I was no longer in the gulag. I was no longer a death fighter, a prisoner in the cage.
Feeling a hand hit my arm, I opened my eyes to see Viktor staring at me with a raised eyebrow. I nodded my head, letting my trainer know that I was back. Luka was back. The bloodlust of my alter ego, Raze, had been assuaged, if only for today.
Viktor moved aside and I walked to my opponent, Zaal, whose eyes were closed as he too centered himself.I waited until his eyes opened and he looked over his shoulder at me. As I held out my hand, Zaal took a deep breath and clasped his hand in mine. I shook it once and released his grip. Zaal’s chest was still pumping fast when he said, “It will take some getting used to, this”—he gestured between the two of us—“resisting the urge to kill. Not drawing out your last breath. Pulling my killer instinct back at the last second.”
My jaw clenched as I instantly related to his feeling. “One day it’ll come.”
Zaal stared for a second too long, then asked, “You too?”
Dropping my eyes, I nodded and replied, “I pray that one day in the future I will wake up no longer harboring the urge to kill or draw blood.”
Zaal closed his eyes, then glancing to the locked office door—the locked door of the office holding our females—said, “Then I will pray for that day also.” Grabbing his towel from the floor, Zaal wiped the blood off his chest and face and said, “I want to be a stronger, more normal male for my Talia. Not this version of me who dreams of stopping hearts and cracking skulls. I still do not understand this life. At times, it becomes too much for me to take.” He tapped at his head. “It gives me pain, in here.”
Looking over my brother’s shoulder to make sure the office door was shut, I closed in and said, “We’re different, Zaal. We were conditioned all of our lives to be like this. Our females know this.”
A pained expression crossed Zaal’s face, and he asked, “Then why do they stay locked away when we spar? Why do her brown eyes get sad when she sees us fight and draw blood?”
I sighed and ran my own towel over my face. But I had shit to say. Kisa accepted that I would never be the boy she used to read to when we were kids. But Zaal was right. The women might have accepted it as part of who we are—the monsters we’d become—but I knew they both struggled to see us like this, choosing rather to ignore the violence within. Like Zaal, I pray for the day we don’t wake up in a cold sweat, programmed to kill merely to survive.
Turning to survey the gym, I found it was teeming with fighters, all training under the watchful eyes of their coaches. Viktor, our newly appointed Dungeon Manager, walked among the fighter scum, checking all was well.
Dropping the towel into the cage-side basket, I had started to move toward the showers when I heard my Mikhail, my head byki, barking in Russian for someone to shut up.
Snapping my head toward the entrance, I stood next to Zaal, who was also staring in that direction. Both of us were ready for the fight. My heart pumped in my chest at the thought of someone coming to attack. Then Mikhail entered the lower level of the gym, dragging an old gray-haired man behind him.
I straightened from preparing to fight and narrowed my eyes on whom he held in his hands. I noticed the office door open. Talia walked out. I watched as my sister looked at Zaal beside me. Her face dropped. Zaal’s face was bruised and his lip was split. I knew she hated seeing him hurt.
I held out my hand to my sister, signaling for her to stay put. I saw Kisa appear beside her, her big blue eyes immediately searching for me. I tensed as she did, but my wife just smiled and nodded her head—she’d accepted that I had to do this.
The man in Mikhail’s grip shouted out when Mikhail brought him to stand before us.
“Knyaz,” Mikhail announced as the old man kept his head down, “caught this fucking krysa hiding upstairs. He was looking for a way in.”
Striding forward, I crossed my arms over my bare chest and peered down at the man. “Who are you?” I asked coldly in Russian, and saw him tense as he absorbed the question.
He said nothing in reply. Mikhail lifted the old man’s head up by his hair and advised, “You answer the knyaz when he asks you a question.”
The man slowly lifted his eyes, but when he did they didn’t stay on me for long. Instead they landed on Zaal and remained there. I watched Zaal tense and narrow his eyes. The old man paled.