Alik pressed his clammy forehead to mine and he forced me into the holding room he always used here at The Dungeon. Once the door was closed, he forced me against the wall, his hands roaming over my body. I noticed bottle after bottle of creatine, steroids, and testosterone pills.

As his finger plunged into my channel, I closed my eyes and let myself drift away on a ship of memories… Alik’s free hand hitched up my dress and he began fucking me against the door.

I pictured a beach. Sand. Sun and the sea… and I pictured my Luka kissing my lips… my Luka looking at me with head tilted to the side and his full lips pursed. Then I pictured Raze’s hard face. Raze, with whom I was becoming more than obsessed. I pictured what Luka’s face would look like older, stubbled, and with scars, worn down by hardships thrown in his path… and a part of me excitedly but foolishly hoped my Luka could be the fighter in the other room…

That Luka could be Raze…

Chapter Twelve

RAZE

“What the fuck was that?” Viktor hissed as I stood in the center of the room, my head spinning from flashbacks… A hot sunny beach, a boy and girl kissing… a girl pissed at a boy but forgiving him with a smile.

Kisa’s question about my name and age stabbed at my brain. But nothing, nothing came through; no answers emerged to answer the questions she had asked. I’d always been numb. I’d learned to only ever be a fighter of the Gulag who had a burning need for revenge. I’d learned to never give any thought to my name. I’d learned to never think about my age, where I’d come from. I’d learned to always accept I just… was…

Fuck!

“Raze!” Viktor snapped. For the first time, the booming of his familiar accent made me freeze.

I stared into the drunk’s eyes and stomped forward until I towered above him. My head tilted to the side as I studied his face. Viktor was well built, tall, and, if his accent was anything to go by…

The tattooed 818 on my chest felt like it was burning, and I said, “You’re not Russian. Everyone here is Russian, but you… you sound different.”

Viktor paled and glanced to my tattoo, then again to my face. He shook his head and answered, “No. I’m not Russian.”

Stepping even closer, smelling the burn of alcohol on his breath, my teeth ground together and I demanded, “Where are you from? And don’t lie.”

Viktor swallowed hard, a defeated expression veiling his face. “Georgia.”

“You speak like them,” I growled, thinking of the guards, the guards of the Gulag who would beat me, belittle me, dismantle me piece by piece… come into my cell at night…

Viktor slumped to the chair behind him. “That’s because I was one of them,” he whispered. I burned with rage. A storm, a fucking hurricane of violence built up inside me.

“You were a guard?” I hissed through clenched teeth, my neck aching from the tightness of my muscles.

“Not a guard, a transporter. But I attended the fights in the Gulags, even helped train some of the fighters.”

“Gulags?” I repeated, shock in my voice. “There’s more than one?”

Viktor nodded and sighed. “There are many. Places where souls are forgotten, places where young men disappear from the face of the earth, places where they become nothing more than fighting monsters.”

“And me?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Do you know me?”

Viktor shook his head. “No, not personally. I’ve never seen you fight. But that tattoo on your chest comes from one and only one gambling ring: Georgian. Your tattoo tells me you came from a Georgian Gulag. I knew it the instant I saw you. You have the same dead look in your eyes all the inmates have. The look that remains after they’ve had their humanity ripped out of them.”

“I’m from Alaska. My Gulag was in Alaska,” I pushed.

Viktor looked up at me and said, “I went there only once. I took the fighters where they needed to go, delivered the fighters to the Gulag’s door. I had no choice until I’d paid my family’s debt. Then they took me on as a trainer. I spent years training fighters for the Gulag’s cage until I was bought by the Pakhan and came to train fighters full time here in New York, for the Bratva.”

My eyes narrowed. “You were successful in the Gulag? Your fighters won?”

Viktor nodded. “I was. They did. My fighters were undefeated until I was brought here. I’d have been killed if I failed.”

“And had you heard of me? 818… Raze? The guards called me Raze because I would raze down anyone in my path. The warden forced me to have the tattoo on my back, for the spectators.”

Viktor stared just that second too long, telling me everything I needed to know.

“Everybody in the Gulag had heard of Raze.” His eyes dropped and he pointed to my chest. “Of… you. Everyone believed you were the meanest son of a bitch out of all the death cages.”

Reaching down, I hauled him to his feet, his drunken eyes losing focus. I didn’t give a shit what he’d done in his past. He could train champions. All I needed was for him to get me to the final… against Durov.

“Then you’ll train me. You’ll train me to kill Durov.”

Viktor glanced away, a strange look on his face. “I can’t create any more death. I can’t deal with how many kids I turned over to those sick fucks. Can’t deal with how many kids I got killed, training teens to be monsters. I’m fucking broken because of it.”