Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Reid
Day twenty-eight.
Sulla is already awake, sitting on his cot in the dim light. When he sees I’m up, his face transforms—that rare, beautiful smile.
“Morning,” he says quietly.
“Morning.”
Everything between us is charged. Two nights ago we made love in a bothy during a storm. Last night we sat under stars making promises. Today we compete for a quarter million dollars.
And after this, we figure out what we are.
I’m pulling on my boots when there’s a knock on the tent pole.
“Reid Donahue?” A woman’s voice. Unfamiliar. “I’m Bethany Gayle, a senior producer who just flew in for this final challenge. Can I speak with you for a moment?”
I glance at Sulla. He looks as confused as I feel.
“Sure,” I say.
“Privately, please. Just for a few minutes.”
My stomach drops. Something about her tone. The way she’s carefully not looking at Sulla.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him.
His brow furrows slightly, but he nods.
I follow Bethany out of the tent. The sun is just starting to rise, painting the sky orange and pink. Beautiful. Why do I have a feeling that beauty is about to be destroyed?
She leads me to a production trailer, gestures for me to sit. She closes the door and sits across from me with a tablet in her hands.
“Reid, I need to tell you something before the finale starts.” Her voice is carefully neutral. Professional. “It’s about Sulla.”
My heart stops. “Is he okay? Is something wrong—”
“He’s fine. Physically. But there’s information you should have. Information that’s about to become public knowledge when the show airs, and we felt you deserved to know before the challenge begins.”
She turns the tablet toward me.
The screen shows a news article. The headline makes my blood run cold.
THE brUTAL SLAVE MASTER OF ANCIENT ROME
Below it, a photo of Sulla. Not from the show—older, from when he was first discovered. His face is harder in this picture. Empty. Carved from stone.
“What is this?” My voice sounds distant. Not mine.
“The truth about Sulla’s past. Before the ice.” Bethany’s finger scrolls down. “We’ve been sitting on this for dramatic impact. But you’re going into a forty-eight-hour challenge with him. You deserve to know who you’re partnered with.”
More headlines appear:
THE MAN WHO BEAT GLADIATORS FOR DECADES
CASSIUS’S STORY: HOW ONE MAN’S CRUELTY STOLE A LIFE
“I don’t understand—”
Bethany taps the screen. Video starts playing.
It’s an interview. Cassius. He’s speaking in Latin but the words are translated on the bottom of the screen. He spent years without his memories. Sweet-faced. Kind eyes.
But in this video, those kind eyes are haunted.
“Sulla was the ludus master,” Cassius says to the interviewer. “That means he controlled everything. Training. Discipline. Punishment. He had absolute power over us.”
The interviewer leans forward. “Can you tell us about the incident that caused your amnesia?”
“I was angry, insolent. Sulla wanted immediate compliance.” Cassius’s voice is matter-of-fact.
Detached. “He smashed a clay jar against my head. I don’t remember it.
My entire life before the ice was just… gone.
For years, I didn't know who I was, where I came from, who my family was.
I had to piece myself together from nothing. That's what Sulla's jar took from me.”
The video cuts to another interview. Thrax—massive, scarred, intimidating. But his voice when he speaks is raw.
“He was an asshole with a whip. Made us fear him. Brutalized us for years. You didn’t cross Sulla. You didn’t question him. You did what he said, or you paid for it.”
Another voice. Another gladiator.
“We call him an asshole, a fucker of the highest order. Most of us won’t sit at the same table with him. Can’t look at him without remembering the satisfaction he took in making us comply at the end of a lash.”
The video shifts to historical context. A narrator’s voice, clinical and precise.
“In ancient Rome, the ludus master held absolute power over gladiators. These men were property, and the ludus master’s job was to make them profitable.
Sulla wielded that power with cruelty and precision for decades.
Historical records suggest he was known for his brutality even among other trainers. ”
More footage. This time it’s Sulla at the sanctuary. Sitting alone at a meal while others laugh together at different tables. Walking the grounds by himself. Standing at the edge of a gathering, watching families interact, his face completely empty.
Isolated. Alone. An outcast.
The narrator continues, “Sulla lives at Second Chance Sanctuary, but he is not part of the community. The men he brutalized for decades cannot forgive him. He sits alone. Sleeps alone. Exists on the margins of a place called ‘second chance’ because even there, some sins are too grievous to absolve.”
The video ends.
Bethany is watching me carefully. “You have fifteen minutes before the finale briefing. I’ll leave you alone to process.”
She stands, walks to the door. Pauses with her hand on the handle.
“For what it’s worth,” she says quietly, “we’ve been watching you two all season. The way you look at each other. The way you work together. Whatever he was before—he’s different with you.”
Then she’s gone, and I’m alone with the tablet.
I watch it all again. Every interview. Every headline. Every damning word.
Ludus master.
Brutalized us for years.
Permanent brain damage.
Applied cruelty with precision.
My hands are shaking.
My heart is breaking.
This is the man I fell in love with. The man who saved me on the rope bridge. Whose voice held Trevor through a panic attack. Who whispered “mea lux” against my skin while making love to me like I was precious.
This is also the man who beat gladiators for decades and without apparent hesitation. Who gave Cassius amnesia with a clay jar. Who made grown men fear him so thoroughly they still can’t sit at the same table.
Both things are true.
How can that be possible?
I think about the confession he made during shelter building. “I wasn’t a good man. Before the ice. I hurt people.”
Hurt people.
Such a small phrase for decades of brutality.
I think about him asking, “What if you knew the full truth?” and me thinking, “I know who you are now. That’s what matters to me.”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.
He said he’d tell me eventually. When there were no cameras. When we had time.
But he was going to wait. How long? Until after I fell deeper? Until I couldn’t walk away?
The betrayal sits in my chest like shrapnel that missed the exit wound.
He had time to tell me, as we grew closer. As I fell for him. When I trusted him with my body in that bothy.
And he said nothing.
Let me fall in love with him without knowing what he was.
I look at the time. Five minutes until the briefing. Five minutes until I have to see him. Work with him. Trust him with my life for forty-eight hours.
How am I supposed to do that when he’s a monster?
The word echoes in my head. Monster. That’s what the narrator called him. What the gladiators implied. What the evidence shows.
But the man who held me in the bothy wasn’t a monster. The man who ran across a failing bridge to save me wasn’t a monster. The man who helped Trevor, who stood between Blake and Heather, who looked at me like I hung the stars—
Or was that all performance?
How do I know what’s real?
Three years ago, I trusted my commanding officer. Believed him when he said he had my back. He lied. Let me take the fall for Ramirez’s death. Protected himself.
I swore I’d never trust someone like that again.
And here I am. In love with a man who wielded power over others for decades. Who hurt them. Who kept the truth from me until it was too late.
I stand. My legs feel unsteady, but I force them to work. Two minutes until briefing.
I walk across camp in a daze. Other contestants are gathering. Aiden and Jacks. Trevor and Zay. Two other teams I barely know.
And Sulla.
He’s standing near the briefing tent, and when he sees me, his whole face lights up. That smile—the one that transforms him from stone to human. The one I thought was just for me.
He starts to move toward me.
I can’t. I can’t smile back. Can’t pretend. Can’t look at him without seeing Cassius’s haunted eyes and hearing Thrax’s raw voice.
My face must show something because he stops. The smile falters.
“Reid?”
“We need to move.” My voice comes out flat. Cold. “Challenge briefing starts in two minutes.”
“What’s wrong?”
I finally meet his eyes. See the concern there. The care. Maybe even love.
Or maybe it’s all just another lie.
“Nothing.” I walk past him toward the briefing tent. “We’ll talk later.”
Behind me, I hear him following. But I don’t turn around. Can’t look at him right now.
Because if I look at him, I’ll either start crying or start screaming, and I can’t do either. Not here. Not with cameras everywhere and a challenge about to start.
Inside the tent, Mac is setting up maps. I take a seat on the opposite side from where Sulla sits. Put as much distance as possible between us.
He’s watching me. I can feel it. But I stare straight ahead.
Mac begins the briefing, reviewing what he told us yesterday. Forty-eight-hour escape and evasion. Hunter force tracking us. Thirty miles to extraction point. Must avoid capture.
I take notes mechanically while my mind is spinning.
Ludus master. Decades of cruelty. Brain damage. “We call him an asshole, a fucker of the highest order.”
And, “Mea carissima.” The way he touched me. The tenderness. The vulnerability.
How are both things true?
The briefing ends. We have one hour to eat and prepare before the challenge begins.
Sulla catches up to me outside the tent.
“Reid.” His voice is low, urgent. “What happened? Talk to me.”
I keep walking. “Not now.”
“Something’s wrong. Between the tent and the briefing, something changed. What is it? Reid, is your father okay?”
I stop. Turn to face him. He deserves this much—to know that I know.
“They told me.” My voice is a whisper, eerily calm. “About the ludus. About Cassius. About what you were.”
All the color drains from his face.
“Reid—”
“You have one hour to prepare for the challenge. I suggest you use it.”
I walk away.
Behind me, I hear him say my name one more time. Broken. Desperate.
I don’t turn around.
Can’t.
Because if I do, I might forgive him.
And right now, I don’t know if he deserves forgiveness.
All I know is that the man I fell in love with is also the monster who brutalized people for decades. And he let me fall in love without telling me the truth.
That’s betrayal.
That’s unforgivable.
Isn’t it?
I have forty-eight hours in the wilderness with him to figure it out.
Forty-eight hours to decide if love can survive the truth.
Or if some truths are too devastating to overcome.