A searing, white-hot pain sliced through my head, causing my eyes to slam shut. As I tried to breathe through the pounding headache, its intensity forced me to one knee.

You have to keep away from Alik. He’s obsessed with you and he’s dangerous.

Sand.

Sun.

One boy.

One girl.

Feelings.

Strange feelings gripped my gut, making me feel, piercing the numbness.

Memories…?

“Raze! RAZE! Can you fucking hear me?”

Blinking hard, my vision slowly returned and I gasped. Viktor had dropped to one knee in front of me. “You okay, son?”

Breathing steadily through the now diminishing ache, I sucked in a deep breath and hissed, “I’m not your fucking son!”

“Look,” Viktor, whispered in exasperation, “stay away from Kisa. Stay away from Durov until you meet him in the cage. You don’t fuck with the Volkov Bratva. All that surrounds them is death.”

Exhaling slowly, I stated, “I am death.”

I looked to Viktor from the corner of my eye and he paled. Then his gaze dropped to the number on my chest. My pecs tightened as if the ink were burning my skin. My head tilted to the side as I watched Viktor swallow.

“What?” I snapped and grabbed Viktor’s shirt.

“Where did you come from?” he asked, a nervy edge to his voice.

“Far away,” I said, remembering the place the guard had told me the Gulag was based.

Beads of sweat ran down Viktor’s head and he lowered his eyes. My lip curled at this pathetic weak man who I’d been saddled with, and I got to my feet. In minutes, I was in front of the mirror, power pressing, as Viktor cracked open a bottle of vodka behind me, slumped into a chair, and drank himself to sleep. With every press of the two hundred fifty pound weight, I heard Kisa crying as Durov fucked her, saw Durov smirk as he ploughed into her, licking his palm for me to see.

Hours later, when everyone had left the gym and the lights were turned off, I crept from where I had hidden in the bathroom and hunkered down on a training mat in my private training room. This gym would now be my home, until Durov was dead.

As I shut my eyes, Kisa’s face came into view, and a young boy’s voice started to echo through my mind…

You have to keep away from Alik, Kisa. He’s obsessed with you and he’s dangerous…

My eyes snapped open and a fractured image fixed itself in place.

Kisa? The boy in the memory had said Kisa.

Chapter Eleven

Kisa

The Dungeon was full. Men, thirsty to gamble for high stakes, leaked into the tunnel leading to the dank underground warehouse on the docks of Brooklyn. This place was well hidden from the public, normal everyday people who like to think that nothing sinister was happening under their noses. People who believed organized fights to the death were fiction, fantasy played out on TV. They were happy in their ignorance of my reality.

But the people here, now, they were criminals, the dregs of society. I came here every day of every week, but the next three nights were what The Dungeon was about—the prime fighters, the men who put on a show and died. They gave their all, they spilled blood, and they drew their very last breath in this place.

The Dungeon was what we Bratva were best known for. This was the biggest gambling ring on the East Coast.

As the Byki lined the outskirts of the basement, keeping control, the cage was center stage. I stayed in the back rooms, hearing the thudding of feet on the ancient stone floor. The excitement for spilled blood, for death, charged the air.

The Red kings, my father and Ivan, were in their private booth at the back, hidden from view but able to oversee their enterprise and watch their money rolling in. Abram would be with Alik. He always hovered close, pushing him, goading him, then watched his puppet from beside the cage.

There were eight fights tonight, the latter ones involving Raze, then Alik. They were both fighting strong, headline fighters. I fully expected both of them to win, but here in The Dungeon, nothing was a safe bet. Alik was experienced and full of confidence, and Raze? Well, Raze was a complete unknown, but the place was buzzing with the anticipation of seeing him fight. Papa had told Ivan of his skill in the cage, and Ivan had built up the hype.

Raze had trained all week, my father becoming a fixture at the gym to watch him. He was fast becoming Papa’s favorite. That fact only served to made Alik even more furious, more unstable, more possessive, and Abram wasn’t happy about his son’s newly arrived competition either.

And me? I had become completely obsessed with Raze. I watched him train through the blinds of my office window when Alik wasn’t in the gym to catch me. My body set on fire simply at the sight of his bare torso bending and flexing as he lifted weights or sparred in the cage or ran on the treadmill. My heart pounded and I often became lightheaded, such was the draw I had toward this man.