Page 116 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“Was that really your cousin?” Sammy asks at last.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Wow. I knew you Clemenzas were bad, but⁠—”

“He’s a Vicario, actually,” I say. “My mother’s sister’s son.”

“Still,” Sammy says. “If I’d known how shitty your relatives were, I might’ve liked you more at the start.”

“Now you can like me at the end, I suppose.”

He smirks despite the fear in his eyes. If nothing else, this “adventure” has taught me that Sammy and I have the same dark sense of humor.

The Russian chuckles in his pen. “Your family,” he says to me, and spits through the bars. He looks at Jesse. “He’s right, though. You be a good boy, roll over for me once I’ve killed your friends, I’ll spare you a night or two. Maybe the pit master will let me keep you as my pet. I make a lot of money for him.”

“I’d rather die,” Jesse spits.

“Then you will,” Volkov replies with a shrug.

I let the last little piece of hope inside me go, and it hurts more than I expect. Dami will still be looking. He won’t stop looking. But I don’t even know where we are, and the one thing that could have led him to us was ripped out of me.

I close my eyes and breathe through it, because if I let despair take me now, I’ll be completely useless for Sammy and Jesse. “When they take us up there, stay behind me,” I tell Sammy in a low voice. “Let him focus on me first.”

“I can’t do that,” Sammy says. “I’m not going to stand there and watch.”

“We’ll protect each other,” I tell him. “Dami won’t give up on us. We can’t give up on him.” Jesse is staring at me with wide eyes now. “You too, Jesse. We all need to work together. Are you in?” I hold his gaze until he gives me a tiny nod.

I don’t think Dami will find us in time. But hope is the only thing I have left to give Sammy and Jesse.

Time drags. It could be ten minutes. Could be an hour. Other matches seem to be held; I hear the roar of the crowd. Can even start to differentiate between a hit and a kill.

Eventually, more guards arrive. They take the Russian first, and then we’re herded through another set of doors and up a short flight of steps. The crowd grows louder as we climb, voices layered into one animalistic vibration that throbs through me.

We’re pushed into a tiny cage with a gate on the other side. When it begins to rise, the light pouring through is blinding after the dim corridors. I lift an arm against it as the smell of sand and sweat and blood rushes toward us.

Behind us, the guards lower their rifles at us. “Move,” one says, and I step forward. Sammy comes through behind me. Jesse follows.

The arena is surrounded by tiers of packed seating. The fighting space is enclosed by a cage that must be eight feet high, open at the top, but with barbed wire ringing the edge.

There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

A voice starts booming over the loudspeakers in Russian. All I catch are the English words “Little Emperor” and my own name, which raises a loud hissing and booing.

I look up, look around the room to see where the MC is speaking from, and realize it’s Daniel King himself, finally speaking in his native Russian. Next to him, seated, looking bored, is my cousin Tiberius. Marcello is standing behind him, scanning the crowd.

Then, from across the arena, the Champion, Volkov, emerges from his own door, and the crowd erupts.

I reach up and press two fingers against the bruise at my collarbone. Dami’s mark. I press harder until pain blooms beneath my fingertips, sharp and familiar, and for one last second I let myself remember the man who put it there.

The marks he gave me are the last thing I have of him.

But I still belong to him. So I hope I can make him proud.

I hope I can die well.

I let my hand fall from the bruise and step forward into the ring.

CHAPTER 36