Rising to my feet, I walked through the entrance, the smell of sweat and blood filling my nose. It calmed me right down.
“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” My attention snapped to a short, squat man sitting at a small desk. He had pulled out a gun and aimed it right at my forehead. I kept my hood low, shielding my eyes. I would never meet another’s eyes. Something deep inside never let me.
His eyes widened in fear when I stepped forward, the gun not fazing me. “I want to fight. Want in the cage. I want to kill,” I growled in a deep, rumbling voice. I saw the man sizing me up, pissing himself—I wasn’t surprised. I was tall, built like a fucking tank, tattooed, scarred… fucking dead inside.
I had nothing to lose. I feared nothing, not even death. Death would be a welcome end to the life I’d lived. But before my end, I would be taking down one Alik Durov with me… and I wanted to finally know why.
“You got a sponsor?”
I said nothing, and the asswipe took my silence for a no.
Standing up, he kept the gun aimed at my head. He took out a cell and called someone. I recognized the device; the guards were always yapping on the fucking things, depriving me of sleep. Someone obviously answered and a sharp grunt sounded through the speaker.
“Yiv? You’re needed out front.”
He snapped the phone shut, but I never once moved. I wanted this fucker intimidated enough to let me in. I needed to fight. I needed to kill.
“What the fuck’s wrong at this motherfucking hour?” a graveled, gruff accent complained, and then a big middle-aged guy came into view.
As soon as he saw me, his eyes narrowed and he folded his bulky arms across his chest. “Who the hell are you?” he snapped.
“Your fucking cage’s wet dream and your fighters’ worst nightmare,” I replied icily, bringing my fists to my chest and cracked my knuckles. The sound of each crack echoed off the bare walls.
The dick holding the gun and this Yiv glanced to each other. Yiv pushed the gun from the guy’s hand and stepped forward.
“You fought in a cage before?”
“Yes.”
His lip curled. “This ain’t no pissant MMA or WWE ring, you get that? Stakes are higher. Prices are paid with blood… with pieces of flesh. This is The Dungeon.”
My silence encouraged him to step forward, sizing me up. “You Russian?”
His question caught me off guard. I didn’t fucking know. My number was 818. I was raised in the Gulag. I was trained to kill. I had slaughtered over six hundred opponents. This was all there was to me. No history, no name, no family.
Just numbness.
The guy said something to me, only this time it was in another language. “I said are you fucking Russian?”
He’d spoken a different language than the guards, but somehow I understood it. He was speaking Russian? How the fuck did I know Russian?
Without thinking, I replied yes in the same language, and the guy’s face lit up.
“You haven’t got a sponsor, which means you’d be a buy-in.”
“What have I got to do?” I asked, the strange language pouring from my lips. My body tensed with the fact that I might get a way into this hellhole, this fucking heaven on Earth to me.
“You need to pay. That’s the only way in. We got a trainer that’s just lost a fighter, but it’s going to cost you.”
“How much?” I asked. Yiv jerked his thumb at the guy who handed me a slip of paper with a number written down.
As Yiv was walking away, he shouted, “You get that cash, you’re in. Training has already started for the rest of the men. The Dungeon begins in two weeks. It’s a three night ultimate battle to the death. The survivors fight in the final. You win, you win big. You have until then to get it together.”
The Dungeon.
Two weeks.
Revenge.
Alik Durov.
Kill.
I was going to do anything to get that cash.
Slamming the doors open, I fisted the paper in my hands, secured it in my pocket, and tried to think of what to do next. Then I saw a bunch of men sleeping on the street, hats out in front of them, begging money from passersby.
In a split second, I headed in that direction, grabbing a candle jar off some house’s tree. Tipping the candle to the ground, leaving it in my wake, I found a spot on the street, sat down, pulled my hood farther over my head, and placed my jar on the ground.
Two weeks.
I had two weeks to get the cash.
And I’d do anything to get in that cage and slice open Durov’s chest.
Chapter Five