With every blow the fighters delivered, my legs twitched. With every spray of blood on the concrete floor, every body smashed into the wire surrounding the cage, an envious pain sliced through my stomach.

I wanted in, I wanted to rip those fuckers apart. I wanted to feel the cold steel of my knuckle-dusters back on my fingers, feel my spiked blades slowly pierce my opponent’s flesh, and I wanted to watch as the life leaked out of his eyes. I wanted to bring death; I wanted to rip out someone’s fucking soul.

The monster within me wanted out and I was losing the battle to keep him at bay. Six months … six months of being away from that cage, yet every instinct I had was telling me to go back. That it was where I belonged, that I deserved to keep fighting. My nightmares were getting worse … more memories of my killings becoming clearer … the guilt, and the fucking uphill battle of trying to adjust to this godforsaken world. A world that was becoming more and more difficult to be in.

Shit! I couldn’t fucking breathe!

I sat forward, raking my hands through my hair, fighting my thoughts, the urges in my head. I wanted to embrace the demons inside, but at the same time, I wanted to fucking leave this shit hole of a fight ring and not feel the coming sense of death clogging up the air. I wanted to get the fuck away from the cage. It was in a cage where I’d slaughtered over six hundred men. It was in a cage where I’d killed my only friend.

I winced as 362’s face flashed into my mind: his grin as he met me in the gulag as a kid, teaching me how to survive, and his face as I took his life, stealing his chance at revenge on those who had condemned him to the life of a fucking monster.

I saw nothing but red as I straddled his waist and speared a bladed fist into his neck. Felt nothing but rage as my second bladed fist skewered his temple. Felt nothing but single-minded determination to slaughter Durov as I lifted both fists and, pointing them straight down, plunged them into 362’s chest, the wheeze of his dying breaths assaulting my ears, wrenching me from my anger.

I’d killed him. I’d watched as his dark eyes frosted over with the coldness of death. I’d watched as the color from the fight drained from his face, and I’d listened to that final beat of his heart until there was nothing but the deafening scream of silence.

“Revenge…,” 362 had uttered, choking on blood washing back down his throat.

I’d fucking promised him my revenge on the people who sentenced him to the gulag’s cells; the people I still hadn’t found; the people I still hadn’t killed in cold blood.

I was failing 362, my only friend. And I couldn’t fucking live with it.

Jerking on my chair as the crash of memories assaulted my mind, my heartbeat drummed too fast, and the screaming rush of my blood racked through my ears. In that second of panicked movement, my eyes went to the center of the cage as a fighter gripped his weapon of choice—a jagged hunting knife—and sent it straight through the eye of his opponent, the crowd noise soaring in volume.

My father and the Pakhan got to their feet and clapped, demonstrating their superiority to the bloodthirsty crowd below. The bloodthirsty crowd who were already exchanging money and placing bets on the next fight. All of the desperate and sadistic fuckers thanking the Russian kings for this damn dungeon of death.

My father looked down at me and aggressively flicked his chin. He was ordering me to stand, to clap, to stand like a fucking regal God at the window, to show the fuckers jamming up the Dungeon that I was the Bratva knayz, the Russian Mafia prince. The sole heir and the one destined to take charge. We constantly had to show our strength.

But I couldn’t move. This suit I was forced to wear was fucking suffocating me. This silk tie, although loose, still feeling like a damn leash tying me to this Bratva role I couldn’t bear to embrace.

I tried to move, but I couldn’t force myself to lift from this chair. Memories of 362 bleeding out below me were stabbing harder at my brain, stealing my fucking breath.

My eyes squeezed shut, sweat pouring down my cheeks. I was losing it, I was fucking losing my shit.

Six months of this fucking torture. Six fucking months of slowly going insane, too many painful memories and flashbacks scourging the fuck out of my brain.

I abruptly lurched to my feet, and the Pakhan darted his gaze to me. “Luka?”

The room began to spin, the walls fucking closing in on me.

My father stepped forward. “Son? What’s wrong?”

But I couldn’t answer them. I had to get out, needed to get the fuck out of this tiny fucking box.

Staggering to the steel door barricading us in, I used all my strength to smash it open, snapping the top hinge clean off the frame.

“Luka! Come back!” I heard my father shout as I disappeared into the dark hallway. I ignored him as I turned to race down the steep staircase that led to the packed crowd.

“Mr. Tolstoi?” one of the byki called as I ran past him. Heads turned as I pushed through the mass of scumbags trying to get to the side of the cage to fucking see the carnage inside. But all the fuckers moved out of my way, sensing that I’d rip them in two if they got in my fucking path.

I headed for the hallway, the familiar hallway that I’d walked down when I was Raze, the death-match fighter I’d been conditioned to be since a child. The hallways where I’d lived as a Dungeon fighter, stayed each night, only one focus in my mind: revenge on Alik Durov, my childhood friend that, along with his father, had condemned me to a life of killing.

Ignoring the trainers and fighters filling the narrow space, I staggered to the locker room I used to occupy. Smashing my shoulder into the door, it burst open and I slammed it shut, blocking out the world.

It was quiet in this room, no noise fucking with my head. This locker room made me feel safe.

Walking into the center of the room, I kicked off the leather shoes from my feet, feeling the cold from the asphalt ground. Tipping my head back, I stood in the sliver of moonlight slipping through a crack in the wall and ripped off my tie. Hands shaking, I roared when I couldn’t undo the buttons of my shirt. Gripping the expensive material, I pulled hard, the shirt slicing in two, shreds drifting to the floor.

Bare on top, my chest heaved at the severity of my breathing. I tried to calm down … to think of my life now, away from all the gulag shit, but it wasn’t any fucking use.

Walking to the wall, I slammed my palms against the cold hard stone and closed my eyes, just trying to fucking breathe. But this room made me feel like the old me. I felt like him, Raze. I felt like the death-match fighter 818. I felt like the Georgian gulag’s bringer of death. Luka fucking Tolstoi was a stranger to me. The knyaz of the New York Russian Bratva was a total fucking stranger.

The same feelings of how to kill, how to position my bladed knuckle-dusters just right to cause the most pain, circled my mind … and I fucking embraced it. It was familiar … it felt like … me.

Suddenly, a hand gripped my shoulder. Sensing the familiarity of a gulag guard attack, years of being a “fuck thing,” a punching bag for those abusive pricks taking me back to that lost kid I used to be, I turned and gripped the fucker’s neck under my hand, smashing him back against the wall. A red mist fogging my eyes, I gritted my teeth and lifted the asshole off the floor.

No one would hurt me again … ever. I was stronger now, tougher. I was a built and conditioned fucking stone-cold killer.