A feeling of dread settled in my stomach. “I don’t know if I want to remember. I came here for one thing and one thing only: revenge. I didn’t come here for memories.” I dropped my head, staring at the tattooed tallies of my kills, my number 818, and said, “What if I don’t like who I was…? What if it sends me over the edge?”

Viktor slumped to his ass and ran his hand down his face. “Isn’t it better than the cold monster you became in the Gulag? That you are in The Dungeon’s cage? And after you kill Durov, what then? Where do you go then? Another death match ring? There’s hundreds over the country. You could keep killing, making money until you’re slaughtered…” Viktor took a deep breath. “Or you could live, son. You could live… get back your life.”

I shook my head. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I only ever had one goal: kill Durov.

“I can help you to defeat Durov, but you need to help yourself, to remember your past. Right now you’re an animal, a machine that can only kill. But you were more, you are more than that.”

My eyes were trained on the ground as my head felt numb, too numb to think, but then a question from Viktor’s mouth tore right through that haze.

“Why Durov, Raze? Why Durov?”

My chest tightened and my hands began to shake as a broken memory pushed through to my mind.

Three boys. Three boys by the falls. On a family vacation. Two of them best friends. The third had a knife. The third stabbed one of the others… Then… then what?

Energy filled my limbs again as I grew frustrated with the memory not showing me what I needed to know. Why Durov? Who were the boys? Who was stabbed? Was I there? Was I one of the boys?

I wanted to know why that was. I wanted to know what I made myself forget, at least forget everything but the name of the cunt I had to kill.

Alik Durov.

Brooklyn, New York.

Revenge.

Kill.

Sounds of fighters beginning to train filtered into my training room. Viktor got to his feet and held out his hand.

“Get up, Raze. Train. And stop letting your past hold you back. Instead, use it to fuel you. This is your chance to take back your life. Get your revenge! Then get back your life!” Viktor glanced to the door, then back to me again. “Then you can get the girl. When Durov’s gone, you get the girl.”

My anger faded as I thought of Kisa. She was my balm, my calm. My Kisa-Anna.

I held Viktor’s gaze for a while, just breathing, centering my focus, coiling the fire inside, then gave him a curt nod. The guy was just as fucked up as me. I could see it in his eyes. But he understood me. I didn’t like him, but he understood me. No one else could.

As I got to my feet, Viktor waved for me to follow him into the main area of the gym to use the ropes. As I entered the training space, the main doors opened from the underground parking and Durov walked in… his hand gripping my Kisa’s neck. Her expression was blank and her eyes unfocused.

I physically shook upon seeing her under that bastard’s control.

Viktor stayed close. “Ignore it. Control your anger. Kill first, live later. Then get the girl.”

I tried to curb my rage by taking hold of the ropes and lifting them to Viktor’s counts, but Alik stopped dead center in the gym, directly in my line of sight, and crushed his lips on Kisa’s. The hardest battle I’d ever had to fight was stopping myself from charging the prick and ripping my woman from his arms.

Kisa let it happen, but her body was stiff and unmoving. Anyone with eyes could see how frightened he had made her, but then that’s what he probably wanted, her too afraid to leave him. I wanted to decapitate him with a blunt knife. But she’d told me to act normal, to not give us away, so I was fucking acting normal.

Dipping my nose to my shoulder, I inhaled deep and could still smell her on my skin, her hands gripping my shoulders as she came. That scent kept me from killing Durov. I held on to the fact that she would see me tonight after the fight… and by the end of tomorrow night, he would be dead and she would be mine.

Durov let Kisa go, and she scurried off to her office without looking back. She looked beautiful in her black suit and her long brown hair tied back.

Then Alik was suddenly in my face, Yiv stepping behind him, ready for him to train. I kept my head low.

“Heard you’re against Goliath tonight.” I could see his face split into a shit-eating grin from my peripheral vision. “He’s a last-minute buy-in by my father. You know, to give the crowd a real show. Really test what you’re made of.”

His eyes dropped to my workout regime that I hadn’t stopped while he shot off his stupid mouth. He laughed. “Looks like you’ll be slaughtered tonight, Raze. That fucker’s going to kill you. Can’t say I’m fucking sorry.” He leaned in and whispered, “And when I win, I’ll drag Kisa back to the holding room and fuck her up the ass. She hates it, tries to fight me… but it only gets me harder.”

Fighting the explosion of rage inside, I let his comment go over my head and kept my focus, but I felt Viktor’s panic beside me. I wasn’t fazed by this fight tonight. I’d never been afraid in the cage. It was my domain, my home.

Durov moved out of sight, and I glanced to Kisa’s office, only to be driven further in my workout when I saw her peering through the blinds, watching me.

Intent refueled my muscles, and I didn’t give a fuck who this Goliath was. I was going to raze him the fuck down.

Just one more tally tattoo to add to my torso and one less person in the way of having Kisa as mine.