After a month of sneaking on fishing boats to the mainland, stealing food, and hitching a ride on cross-country freight trains, I arrived in New York City.
I wasn’t prepared for what awaited me: bright lights, a bustling city packed with ever-moving tides of people—completely the opposite of all I’d ever known. Yet strangely, it all felt familiar and comfortable—the stink of thick smog, the vapors of tobacco and liquor, and the sounds of fast cars with their horns blaring.
Stumbling into a back alleyway on the edge of Brooklyn, a searing pain shot through my head. I pressed down hard on both temples. Disjointed images were zapping through my head, a group of kids playing, a small group of older men kissing three boys on their heads, proudly smiling as they were introduced to a large gathering of people. My head felt like it was going to explode and that conditioned feeling of fire running through my veins engulfed me as memories tried to push through. For a month now I’d had no shots, no drugs the guards pumped me full of daily to keep me big, to keep me strong, to keep me angry, and more and more unfamiliar images were filling my head.
The visions dissolved as quickly as they came and I found myself huddled against a hard, damp wall with sweat drenching my skin. Then the numbness I’d felt my whole fighting life settled back into place.
I ran the name and address through my mind. Within seconds, I was jogging down unfamiliar streets, somehow knowing exactly where to go. My feet were carrying me forward to an area with large brownstones, expensive cars, and well-dressed people.
As I entered one particular street, a sense of excitement coursed through my body. Quickly, I searched the numbers of the houses … until I found myself outside a block of luxurious apartments. Somehow I was certain it was the address I wanted.
Security guards paced menacingly in front of the glass-walled entrance. I slunk back into the mouth of a nearby alley, melding with the shadows, eyes fixed on the door.
I waited for hours, hours spent skulking around the building, scoping out a way in. But it was impenetrable, far too protected. Then when dawn broke, a large dark-haired man with a buzz cut, looking as though he was in his mid-twenties, walked out of the building, strutting his built frame like he owned the fucking world. Every hair on the back of my neck pricked, followed by rage igniting in my stomach.
It only took one glance to know I was looking at Alik Durov, the cunt I was going to kill. Everything about him from his Slavic face and closely shaven head to his built body screamed wealth and arrogance—I detested the fucker on sight. I would take pleasure in making this kill. I’d draw it out to intensify the bastard’s pain.
A few seconds later, a large black car pulled up in front of the building. The dick, Durov, stepped in the driver’s side and took off down the street. Like lightning, I took off at a sprint, hugging the still-darkened edge of the pathway. I tried to keep up with the car, but I knew even at my fastest pace I couldn’t track the car.
Two blocks down, the car was held up in heavy traffic. Crossing the busy road, horns blared at me, but I had a single-minded purpose—to confront this asshole alone, somewhere.
The car turned right and I followed it three blocks down to a deserted parking lot, a deserted parking lot next to a large warehouse, a warehouse that Durov parked in front of, and slowly he got out.
Reaching into my pockets, I slid on my prized bladed knuckledusters and clenched my fists, enjoying their cold touch on my skin. I stared at Durov’s back, imagining where I would sink the spikes—his skull so I could watch his blood spurt like a geyser, the top of his neck, circling around his body to witness the life leave his eyes, his kidneys so I could watch his body die slowly, internal organs shutting down one by one, or straight into his heart, quick, effective, mortal.
Moving stealthily round the lot’s perimeter, I made my approach, stopping only to swipe dirt below my eyes, leaving the choice of killing blow to my instincts. Suddenly, a side door flew open, an older, hard-faced man stepping through.
“Durov! Get your ass in here. You’re late!”
Durov.
It was Alik Durov.
My target … my kill.
Durov laughed at the man and, within seconds, he was in the building. Pissed at the missed opportunity, I checked around to make sure I wasn’t being watched. Then I jogged across the warm asphalt, making sure my hood covered my head and hid my face. Something about this whole scenario felt too much like I’d been here before. Like I hadn’t spent my life trapped in the Gulag hell, killing for survival, piercing flesh and taking lives. No, something, some twist of my gut told me Brooklyn, New York, meant something to me, like some sense of my past was clawing its way out from under my skin.
Circling the warehouse, I found a small window. Ducking down to the ground, my chest to a patch of dirt, I peered inside and my blood began pumping at the sight.
A training gym … and Durov walked up to a bag and began throwing punches.
He was training to fight.
Fight.
I was made to fight.
It’s all I knew how to do.
My eyes flared, anticipation running through my veins. I knew this setup. I’d lived this for years and years. And the cage … every link of metal, every spring of the floorboard, every inch of razor wire was my home. Every stain of blood on that white surface had made me the man—the monster—I was today. But what really made my heart race was the row of weapons lined on the wall. The chains, daggers, and blades told me all I needed to know: the fights in this place were to the death.
This was a death match ring.
It called to everything I had become—a stone-cold killer, a fighter—and by the look of things, Alik Durov was also a fighter to the death.
As my nostrils flared, my hands began to shake with the rush, the adrenaline, with the plan of revenge forming in my mind. I would join this fight ring, I would slaughter this cunt, and I wouldn’t lose. Never had.
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.