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She flicks the knife across his cheek, making a deep cut that weeps blood. Yara’s fingers dig into his wrist as she works to trap his leg with her knees. Alec rolls his shoulder forward and slams Yara into the opposite wall, his good hand going around her neck.
“You two runty girls don’t stand a chance,” he growls. “First, I’m going to choke the life out of your friend here, then I’m going to finally do what I should have finished in the desert. You’re going to get what’s coming to you, Mackenzie Malloy.”
That’s my cue. I lean over the stall, wrapping my tie around my fingers. Alec peers up at me as I come for him. “Marlowe,” he croaks out, his grip loosening on Yara. “These crazy bitches fucking broke my fingers. Get me out—”
I fling the tie around his neck, twisting the ends until he stops fucking talking. Alec claws at the silk, but I have the better angle. I brace my weight against the stall, lifting him off the ground. His eyes bug out and his feet scramble for purchase. One lands in the toilet bowl, splashing water everywhere.
“Gross.” Yara wrings the hem of the dress. “This is silk, and now it smells like a toilet.”
“Don’t kill him,” Claudia reminds me. “Not yet.”
One of the tricks you learn in underground fighting – especially if you’re up against a buddy and you’ve both decided to throw the fight for a bit of extra cash – is how to choke someone out until they lose consciousness. I hold on until I feel Alec go limp in my arms, then I drop his body. Alec slumps, his head banging against the toilet bowl.
I jump down and crowd into the stall, ready to drag him out. Claudia bites her lip as she throws out an arm to hold me back. Her chest heaves as she stares down at him. She draws back her foot and kicks him, again and again and again, her stiletto making a bloody mess of his face.
“How does it feel?” she yells as she pummels him with her fists. “How does it feel when you can’t fight back?”
Alec doesn’t answer.
I let her do her thing until her shoulders sag and she slumps against me. “Yara, get George and Gabriel,” Claudia says, her body trembling as the adrenaline dissipates. “We’re going to Colosseum. I have just the thing for our friend Alec.”
Claudia
When we arrive at the club, Colosseum is packed with the usual Saturday crowd. Antony greets us at the rear entrance as Noah drags Alec’s unconscious body from the trunk of his car.
“You’d better have a good reason for pausing tonight matches,” he growls as he lets us in through the old locomotive shed he uses as a staging area for his fighters. “They’re baying for blood out there.”
“Good.” They shall have it.
We come out in a large shed that must have once housed a locomotive and now serves as a locker room and training space. A couple of fighters warm up in a makeshift ring, while others sit around drinking and doing lines of coke. An old trench extends from one end of the shed to the other – once a space for the engineers to work under the locomotive, it’s been turned into an underground tunnel connecting this room to the arena, so the fighters can come and go without having to walk through the ravenous crowd. The room reeks of old sweat and blood. Noah props Alec up on a stone bench in one of the cells we reserve for prisoners, and shackles his arms above his head. The other fighters look on with interest. A few call out insults of Alec, but they return to their card game. They’re used to sharing their digs with the damned.
Antony’s lip curls back as he recognizes Alec. He looks to me, and understanding flickers in his eyes. “How the fuck did you get him out of Vault without anyone seeing you?”
I pat George’s shoulder. “It was all George’s idea. She pulled the fire alarm. We snuck him out a side door in the chaos. Right now, Nero’s people are too busy dealing with the fire department to notice a missing guest. The firefighters are going to insist on searching every room, which means that when they find Daphne he’ll have a hell of lot of explaining to do. He’s gonna be so pissed.”
Behind me, I hear a whoosh of water as Noah upturns a bucket over Alec’s head. I wanted to be in the room when he woke up, but I’ve got plans to make. The work of an Imperator is never done.
I take George’s hand and place it in Gabriel’s. “You don’t have to stay for this,” I tell her. “I won’t fault you if you leave. But I want you to know that I’m doing this for you. I am a shit best friend. I’ll probably forget your birthday. I won’t reply to texts. I’m flaky and damaged and self-absorbed and a general bad influence. But I can give you this. I can give you the justice you can’t take for yourself. Do you understand?”
George nods.
“I can get Tiberius to take you home if—”
“I’ll stay.”
My eyes narrow. “It’s not going to be pretty—”
Her eyes narrow right back. “Make him suffer.”
That’s my girl. I kiss her cheek, then touch my hand to Gabriel’s, rubbing my finger across his jaw. “Your job is to look after her,” I whisper. “Be your big-hearted, beautiful, broken self. Let her fall to pieces with you, because I don’t have it in me to be human tonight. Not where he’s concerned.”
Gabe nods. He leads George off toward the staircase leading to the private area reserved for Imperators. Noah drags a struggling Alec from his cell while I whisper my plans to Antony. He whistles. “And I thought the beating we gave him in class was brutal. I’ll make the preparations, cousin. This will be fun.”
I leave Alec in Noah’s capable hands and take Yara with me. We don’t follow George and Gabriel through the private entrance. Not yet. Both Nero and Constantine and their people are here tonight. I want to make an entrance. I want to make it clear just how much of a threat I am.
I drag Yara into one of the guest rooms, and we touch up each other’s makeup. Alec tore the hem of Yara’s dress, and I have his blood speckled up my arms. I don’t bother to wash it off. Let them see that their Imperator will get her hands dirty.
We link arms and emerge at the back of the crowd just as Noah enters the ring, his barbarian mask firmly in place. People leap to their feet, cheering for their favorite fighter, knowing they’re about to see something special. But no opponent enters the ring. Noah stands still as a statue, his naked chest glistening with sweat beneath the harsh floodlights, the mark of August clearly visible on his wrist. Yara and I start to walk toward him. Women gasp as Noah drops to one knee, his head bowed in reverence to me.
