14. Roman
FOURTEEN
Roman
I wake to noise and cold and the pressure of the shock collar at my throat. Light bleeds through my eyelids. I’m sitting on something like a bench. My arms are behind me, my wrists cuffed to something. My feet are bound as well.
I’m having a hard time breaking through to full consciousness. I must have been drugged.
I try to wake up, try to remember, then one thought spears into my confusion. My head snaps up. The world around me spins. I dimly register being in a huge, brightly lit space, but that’s all background. My eyes latch onto a black-clothed figure.
“Lucas,” I demand.
Surprise flashes across O’Neil’s face at hearing me speak. His hand twitches on the collar’s remote.
In my peripheral vision, the setting clarifies. I register a plexiglass wall and an ice rink. I’m in a hockey stadium.
“ Lucas ,” I repeat.
O’Neil turns sideways and jerks his chin. “Up there.”
My eyes sweep across the bleachers, where a crowd of maybe two hundred is gathered. At the top, I find him.
The stadium is too small for a real VIP section, but there’s an empty space between the main crowd and the smaller group. Several of Crowley’s guards hold the perimeter on his side. I don’t know the man on Crowley’s right, but he has his own men standing ready. And on Crowley’s left, right beside him with Briggs hovering behind, is Lucas.
I growl.
“So here’s the deal, big guy—”
O’Neil cuts off when I swing my gaze to him—when he realizes that a toothbrush isn’t enough to save him. None of the crumbs he’s swept my way—books, blankets, soap—will save him.
He’s managing me now because I’ve always behaved best for him, because they think I’m tame with him. Because he’s the only one smart enough to have realized that manipulation is easier than force.
That doesn’t earn him a pass, not when he’s keeping me here, bound to this bench, apart from Lucas. Not when he’s the one who brought us the food that put us both down so that this could happen.
Absolutely, one hundred percent, I am going to kill him.
He swallows hard like he sees that in my eyes. I hope he does. I hope he knows that this is his one and only chance to use that tranq gun at his belt. Because as soon as I’m out of these cuffs, as soon as this collar is off, they won’t be going back on.
I won’t be returning to New York. I will never set foot inside my cell again, and neither will Lucas.
Even though Crowley doesn’t know I’m from Boston, he knows this new venue is an opportunity for me. That’s why he has Lucas beside him. That’s why O’Neil has that tranq gun at his belt.
None of that will stop me.
There is a deep, deep rage inside me that risking my life means risking Lucas’s. If I’m killed, they will kill him.
But that’s inevitable. If I don’t get us free, it will eventually happen anyway. This is my chance, and I will be taking it.
O’Neil snags a radio from his belt. Wary eyes on me, he speaks into it. “Epinephrine might not be a good idea. He’s already pretty hot.”
Crowley’s voice crackles through. “Do your fucking job, O’Neil.”
“Copy,” O’Neil replies and clips the radio back on his belt. He pulls a syringe from his pocket and walks around the bench to get behind me. A needle pricks my bare arm. I’m wearing no shirt, only pants. Boots too, I realize, as he crouches to free my feet.
My feet scrape and snag on the floor. I’m wearing cleats. For the ice.
By the time O’Neil is unlocking the handcuffs, my heart is racing from the injection.
“Up,” he orders. “Walk to the gate.”
I get up. I walk to the gate with my cleats ripping up a floor meant for skates.
O’Neil makes a slow, cautious approach. I hear it, sense it, but I keep my eyes on the ice. It’s still empty. I’ll be going out first. I won’t lay eyes on my opponent until he joins me.
That doesn’t matter. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill anyone between me and Lucas.
“Nice and easy, big guy,” O’Neil says as he steps behind me. He works the shock collar’s buckle, tugging the prongs against my throat, then he pulls it away. He steps back in a hurry.
“Win this fight, and you can have your boy after.”
I wasn’t going to look at him again, but that lie makes me do it. He swallows visibly. He knows that I know why that tranq gun is at his belt. I won’t get to see Lucas after. I’ll wake up back in my cell, maybe alone.
“Go on,” he tells me. “You’ve got no choice.”
I know that too.
I step out onto the ice. The cleats punch and grip the slick surface as I walk out to the center. I don’t let my head swivel in an obvious way, but I run my eyes over everything I can. Exits. Guards. Lucas.
He’s sitting rigidly upright. His sedation has long since worn off. Good. I’ll need him alert.
My heartrate is picking up more. I’m getting shaky, sweaty, agitated. Because of that, I have to look away from Briggs hovering behind Lucas. I can’t let my anger hijack my brain. I have to think like a man even while I act like a beast. I have to be both at once tonight.
Movement in the other team box catches my eye. Three men—no, four—tromp through. My fists clench as they file out onto the ice in their cleats. Adrenaline, natural and chemical, surges through my body. I’ll need it, every bit of it.
So I don’t waste any time.
With a roar, I go charging at the first of the men. He’s not ready for me. He thought there would be posturing, that he’d get to strut and glower while I, outnumbered, tried to figure out what to do.
I dive to the ground and kick his legs out from under him. He crashes to the ice with a scream as I slide several yards before I can get purchase with my now bloody cleats.
I surge to my feet as the men shout. One charges. I stay low then barrel upward into him. I flip him over my shoulder. He slams to the ice behind me.
Another takes advantage of the fact that I’m busy and rushes at me. I duck his punch. The man I shoulder tossed is getting up, so I spin and kick him before he can make it to his feet. The cleats rip his face open. He falls back with a scream.
The man whose punch I ducked tackles me from behind. I can’t afford to get dogpiled, so I add to the momentum as we hit the ice and let us slide away from the others. It’s a nasty fucking scramble, but I manage to get free of him after landing a knee to his groin.
I make it to my feet just as another of my opponents charges. I spin out of his path, grabbing his arm in the process. I continue my spin and sling him back into another of the men.
If I intended to finish this fight, it would be far from over. I’ve done some damage, but no one is fully out of the fight. Even the guy whose face I shredded is on his feet.
My instincts scream for me to unleash myself. With adrenaline roaring through me, with my anger so strongly triggered, I want to rip these fuckers apart.
The drive is really goddamn strong. It’s been honed for years . But it only took a few weeks with Lucas to overwrite it.
I turn from the fight. I run.
The audience doesn’t react at first. Through the plexiglass, I see their confusion and stillness. But when I leap, they scream.
My cleats grab the boards enough for me to launch myself up the plexiglass shield. I catch the top of it and haul myself over. The audience, mostly men, a few women, starts to scramble.
Shots fire, but nothing hits me as I drop to the bleachers. I want to check on Lucas, but I can’t. I have to move. I race up the flight of bleachers as more shots fire. Pain flashes across my left forearm, but there’s so much movement, so much panic that nothing hits me full on in the seconds it takes me to reach the top.
Crowley realizes too late that his men can’t save him from me. By the time he draws his gun, I’m there. I grab his face and smash his head into the wall as hard as I can. Targeting him is a practical decision, nothing more. There’s no particular satisfaction in killing him because he’s not someone I think about. He’s been part of the structure of my confinement, but that’s all. He’s not the one I really hate. As he crumples, I pivot to deal with Briggs.
I expect to have to rip him away from Lucas, but what I find shocks the shit out of me. Briggs has indeed grabbed Lucas like he plans to use him as a shield against me, but Lucas has the neck of a broken beer bottle in his hand. He stabs upward over his shoulder blindly. Briggs screams as the broken glass stabs into his collarbone and chest.
I grab Lucas and shove him out of the way so hard that he goes tumbling into the aisle. I want to deal with Briggs, but other guards have guns on me. I have to take them out first, and I have to do it fast. My cleats destroy a knee then a groin. I seize a gun from a downed guard and put a bullet in Briggs as he draws on me, but I have to turn and scan the rest of the area. Crowley’s buddy is well on his way to the exit, hustled out by his guards.
I shoot another of Crowley’s men as he comes at me. One is fleeing. I shoot him in the back.
I note that Briggs is getting up, but I look for Lucas. He’s more important. I find him creeping toward Briggs with that broken bottle. There’s a wild look in his eyes, a feral look. I’ve seen it before on men pushed too hard. I’ve worn it myself, and the only reason I’m not wearing it now is that I can’t afford to. I have to think.
But what I think right now is that Lucas needs this—so I let him have it.
He lunges for Briggs and stabs him in the back. As Briggs arches and screams, Lucas grabs him in a wrestler’s hold and takes him to the ground.
Lucas told me about wrestling in high school. I could tell it was important to him, but I didn’t realize how good he was until now. He’s smaller than Briggs, but he’s quick and skilled. He twists himself around Briggs, gets him incapacitated—and stabs the shit out of him.
A shot fires, hitting the concrete wall near me. I duck instinctively and turn. I shoot someone I don’t know. It’s likely one of the guards of Crowley’s buddy.
I glance at Lucas, who’s making a mess of Briggs.
“Lucas!” I shout. “We have to go!”
He stabs Briggs again. I give him another second, which I use to put a bullet in Crowley’s smashed head, just in case.
I make another quick scan. More men are coming from the direction where Crowley’s buddy escaped. We’re out of time.
Lucas still has Briggs all twisted up, so I grab Briggs by his belt and haul him up. I pull Lucas up with him. Lucas finally lets go. I throw Briggs back to the ground. He’s not dead, but he’s unlikely to survive his wounds. I stomp on his face with my cleats anyway.
Then I grab Lucas’s hand and tug him along.