Page 122 of The Beast Who Begged Me

Volkov points at me, then calls out to Dami, “When you’re dead, I’ll fuck him on top of your corpse.”

The crowd roars. Dami’s face changes. Volkov sees it too, and comes forward before Dami can. He’s faster than a man that size should be, and his first blow drives Dami’s raised arm back against his own face.

Dami staggers, but comes back with a punch that catches Volkov under the jaw. The Russian’s head snaps sideways. Dami hits him again, and for two glorious seconds I think he’s going to put him down right there.

Then Volkov catches his arm. Dami tries to pull free, his other hand closing on the Russian’s shoulder, but his bloody fingers slip. Volkov drives him backward into the cage hard enough to make the wire bow, and the people on the other side scramble out of the way.

I’m on my feet before I know I’ve moved. The guard above us shifts his rifle, and Sammy catches my ankle with his good hand. In the ring, Volkov hits Dami in the stomach. Once. Twice. Dami folds over the second blow, and the crowd screams for another.

“Get off him!” I shout, though nobody can hear me. Dami’s knee buckles, but he gets an arm between them and forces enough space to turn. Volkov’s next punch hits the cage. Dami catches him across the face with his elbow and comes off the wire, dragging in a breath.

Blood runs from Volkov’s mouth. He wipes it with his wrist, looks at it, and stops smiling.

Volkov comes at him again. Dami gets out of the way of the first punch, but the second catches him in the ribs. He tries to answer it, and Volkov drives into him, taking them both down. The impact knocks the breath out of Dami in a sound I hear even over the crowd.

The Russian lands on top. Dami’s head hits the sand, and then Volkov is leaning across his throat, pinning him there while Dami’s feet scrape uselessly against the floor.

He’s trying to get a grip. His fingers close on Volkov’s arm and slide off, leaving blood smeared over the tattoos. They close again. Slip again.

I reach for the wooden shield lying beside Jesse, and throw it as hard as I can. It catches Volkov high on the back and falls to the sand, doing no more damage than the sword did. But his head turns toward me.

That’s all Dami needs. He gets an arm between his throat and the Russian’s weight. Volkov turns back to finish it, but Dami is already twisting beneath him. For a moment all I see is a tangle of limbs. Then Dami is on his side, coughing, and Volkov is trying to get hold of him again.

Dami gets behind him as they struggle to rise. He locks an arm around the Russian’s neck, using his other forearm to hold it there. Volkov surges to his feet, dragging Dami up with him, and slams into the cage so hard I think Dami’s arm will break.

It doesn’t. He holds on. Volkov hits him against the wire again, and Dami’s face twists, but his arm stays where it is. The Russian’s hands are clawing at it now. His mouth is open, and now the crowd starts shouting something different.

Around the cage, the guards raise their rifles.

Then a single word booms through the arena in Russian, followed by the distortion of a microphone. It’s repeated. Twice. Three times.

I stare up at Daniel King in his box. The polished, suave gentleman has vanished into the Russian gangster, because there’s a knife pressed against his throat.

Ricky Benedetti is holding it there. His face is pale, but the blade doesn’t move when King tries to turn his head. Beside me, Sammy makes a hoarse sound.

Sophia Vicente has a gun on King, too. Victor Gallo is covering King’s bodyguards: one man is on his knees, and the other has his hands raised.

The crowd has fallen silent. All those guns remain pointed at us, but they don’t go off. Dami still has Volkov gripped against him, though the Russian fights him for every second.

King screams another order. The guards around the cage begin lowering their weapons. One backs away from the gate at the far side.

Dami looks at me. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Over Volkov’s struggling body, in front of hundreds of witnesses, my beast asks for permission, and I nod.

There’s one short, brutal movement. The crack is smaller than I expected. Volkov’s body goes slack, and Dami staggers under the sudden weight before letting him fall.

For a moment, everyone else is as still as the man on the sand.

Then one of the guards loses his discipline and swings his rifle toward Dami. But before he can shoot, a handgun cracks from the box. The guard drops, and Sophia brings her gun straight back to King. He screams his order again, louder this time, with an unmistakable warning in his tone.

The room holds. Ricky and Sophia start walking King toward the stairs from his box while Gallo follows, keeping the bodyguards back. Dami crosses the sand toward me, his breath coming painfully short.

“Can you walk?” he asks Sammy. Sammy nods, although his skin is clammy and he can barely stand when I help him up. Dami reaches for him, his bloodied hand closing on empty air before he tries again.

The gate behind us opens, and Dami turns at once. Nick Fontana comes through with Dami’s jacket over his arm. He pushes it into my hands and bends to gather up Jesse.

I pull the jacket around my shoulders and get Sammy’s good arm over mine. Dami stays on his other side. Matt Dellacroce steps into the cage to retrieve Dami’s gun from the sand, then falls in behind us as we follow Fontana through the gate. Teo Vitali is holding our path toward the stairs.

King’s men draw back as Ricky and Sophia bring him down from the box. One guard near the passage turns and runs, and I don’t give a fuck where he’s going as long as it’s away from us. Gallo joins us at the stairs, and we climb up.