The Mistaken (36 page)

“Oh my God, Nick!” I called out, straining to lift
my head and shoulders so I could see him. The goon standing in
front of me whipped his hand up to my throat. His fingers dug into
the flesh around my windpipe.

One of the men holding Nick grabbed a handful of his
hair and pulled his head up. When I caught sight of his bruised and
swollen face, my stomach flipped, feeling as though it had lurched
up into my mouth. My heart raced, the adrenaline giving me
increased strength as I struggled to break free, but the massive
guards were unyielding and easily held me in place. The one behind
me yanked me back and the other punched me in the stomach. The grip
on my arms gave way, and I fell to the floor, doubled over in pain,
certain I would puke all over Dmitri’s clean tile.

“Ty? What are you doing here? I told you not to
come,” Nick cried out as I rocked on my knees, fighting the
overwhelming nausea.

“What about our deal, Tyler?” Alexi asked. “We had
an agreement. Why have you not held up your end of the
bargain?”

“I had...the wrong…girl. I told...you that,” I
ground out through the pain.

He walked over and stood above me with an angry
sneer. “Well, that is not my problem, now is it...
my
friend
?”

I leaned back on my heels, my arms still wrapped
around my belly, and looked Alexi straight in the eye. Even as
sharp spasms coursed through my gut, I couldn’t keep the smirk from
twisting at my mouth.

“It is now,” I replied.

Alexi glared down at me, his nostrils flaring and
his face red with rage. He gave a curt nod, and his henchmen pulled
me back up. They raised their fists and pummeled my head then
kicked my body with their booted feet as I slid back to the floor.
They were skilled at their craft, expert professionals who knew
precisely how to hit a man, inflicting as much pain and damage as
they could in as few blows as possible. I felt my nose and several
ribs break simultaneously. Thick blood filled my mouth and choked
off my airway. I coughed to clear it, causing knife-sharp pain to
shoot through me like a spear. I was seized by it with every ragged
breath. I rolled into a ball and lay still as a stone as warm blood
pooled on the floor around my face. Satisfied with their work,
Alexi called his men off with a bark.

They left me moaning and writhing on the bloodied
floor. I gasped for air, but could only manage to pant in small wet
breaths that wheezed and crackled through dense clots of blood. I
hacked and spit to draw in just enough oxygen so I wouldn’t pass
out, but the room spun and tilted at odd angles regardless. Stars
of vertigo swirled through my head, which felt rent in two, the
pain churning into wave after wave of nausea. I beat my fist
against the floor, a weak effort to deal with the pain and keep
myself from throwing up.

Alexi pushed me over with his foot and bent down
close to my face. The casual smile was finally gone. An enraged
sneer took its place, distorting his neatly groomed face with
contempt.

“You think this is my problem, do you? Well, my
friend, you would be wrong,
very
wrong., and you are about
to find out just how wrong you truly are.” He straightened his
back, turned to his men, and roared, “Take them to the cages!”

I screamed in agony as Alexi’s praetorians hefted me
up and dragged me toward the kitchen.

“No, Ty,” Nick wailed as I passed him. “Alexi,
Dmitri...please. Don’t do this. Please!” he begged. “We had a deal.
You
promised
me. You said I’d be enough. You swore!”

I didn’t know what Nick was talking about, but both
Alexi and Dmitri cackled in reply. I was hauled outside and thrown
into a waiting van, its rear doors flung open wide. Nick toppled in
behind me, and the doors slammed shut. The engine roared to life
and the van sped away.

Chapter
Thirty
-
Eight

Tyler

Nick and I were tossed about the van as it threaded
erratically through city traffic. Every sharp turn and pothole hurt
like hell. I tried in vain to stay oriented and figure out where we
were going, even as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Though
we traveled a good distance, I was certain we were still in San
Francisco. We drove alongside of a long industrial building—a
warehouse from what I could tell from the rear door
windows—stopping in front of a partially opened roll-up door where
several men were stationed, waiting for our arrival. The van doors
were thrown open, and both Nick and I were pulled, feet first, out
into the numbing fog.

I looked around and tried to get my bearings, but
the mist was too thick to see much of anything. From the rhythmic
hum and click of tires droning above my head, I assumed we were
south of Market at the waterfront directly below the Bay Bridge.
The warehouse was strategically located; no one would ever hear us
scream.

With a sharp squeal and thundering bang, the rolling
door was slammed shut just after we passed through. The warehouse
darkened into a murky gloom. Alexi’s men dragged us across a great
expanse of empty space. The staccato click of their heels echoed in
a seemingly endless repeat. We paused at a tall barricade of
chain-link fence set back into the farthest corner of the
warehouse. The guards unlocked a gate and swept us through then
locked it again behind us, metal grinding and clanging against
metal, resonating off the hard walls as if in a prison.

At the end of a long, fenced corridor, we moved
through another locked gate and into a wide, circular opening some
twenty-five feet in diameter, the perimeter of which was more
chain-link fencing, roughly eight feet high. Within the walls of
the circular fence were gates with numbered placards above. Each
gate had a secure lock and opened to a cage about ten feet square.
Capping the top of the cages was a galvanized steel ceiling which
served as a second floor above. A railing stood along the inside
perimeter of the second deck to prevent anyone from falling onto
the concrete floor of the circular arena below.

Two of the gates leading into the cages were
unlocked and opened. I was dragged in and dumped onto the floor of
one, the gate and lock quickly secured behind me. Nick was pushed
face-first against the other gate in the adjoining cage. The hand
of one of the men pressed against the back of Nick’s head while
another cut away the zip-tie that fastened his hands. With
unnecessary force, they pushed him through the open gate, closed,
and locked it. Nick hobbled over to the fence separating our cells,
his fingers weaving through the web of metal between us.

“Tyler, are you okay?” he whispered. “Look at me,
Ty. Talk to me.”

With a grunt, I rolled onto my back and looked over
at him with my one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. I tried to move
closer to Nick, but the pain in my ribs was sharp and
relentless.

“Nick...where...are we?” I grunted, still
breathless.

“Dmitri’s fight cages. This isn’t good, brother.
We’re in deep shit.” He shook his head and rattled the chain-link.
“Why did you come for me, Tyler? I told you not to. Now we’re both
going to have to fight tonight,” he cried out, his voice anxious.
“You need to pull yourself together.”

I pushed my body backwards with my feet, sliding
across the smooth concrete floor until I felt the cinder-block wall
rise up behind me. I rolled and twisted my body until I could sit,
propped up against the wall in the corner next to Nick’s cell,
where I moaned in pain. Nick slid over and knelt next to me, the
chain-link an impenetrable barrier between us.

“Nick, what is this place? What do you mean by fight
cages?”

“It’s kind of like dog fighting. Crowds gather on
the walkway above to watch the fights below.”

“And what, they want us to fight each other?” I
asked.

“No, not each other. Other men will be brought in
like we were.”

“Who? And why?”

“Guys like us who owe Dmitri something they can’t or
won’t pay.”

“But what’s the point? How the fuck does Dmitri
benefit from this?”

“It’s for sport. For gambling. Dmitri will make
money on every wager, whether for or against us.” Nick’s face was
pinched with fear. “This is serious shit, Ty. These are often
fights to the death.”

I rolled my head against the wall and cursed.

Chapter
Thirty
-
Nine

Tyler

About eight hours later, the pain had eased enough
that I could move around, though my head still felt as if it were
split down the middle. The swelling had lessened around my eye, and
it was getting easier to breathe without feeling like a knife had
been slipped between my ribs. Hunger began to gnaw inside me, and a
thirst so great, my throat felt as dry as a sandy desert.

Nick and I whispered to each other through our
cages. We cautiously searched every inch of our cells, but they
were both sturdy and free from defect. We tried to come up with a
plan to escape. It didn’t look very promising with all the armed
men Alexi had posted. While we waited, Nick explained how the
fights worked, giving me advice on how to survive. He’d spent the
last two nights forced to fight here. He relayed, in great detail,
how he had beaten his opponent into unconsciousness the first
night. However, last night was different.

“He was tough,” Nick said, “a lot bigger than I am,
and he wouldn’t go down. I thought I was a dead man, Ty. I knew if
I didn’t kill him, he would kill me, plain and simple.”

The memory tormented him. He sat crumpled up with
his knees pulled into his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around
them as he rocked back and forth. He stared into space, his eyes
wide and haunted, and his brow furrowed as he worried his split lip
with his teeth, gnawing at the blood congealed within the deep
cuts.

“I just went nuts,” Nick recalled. “I tore into him
like a fucking madman. I didn’t let up, even when he was on the
ground, barely moving. I stomped on the back of his neck.” Nick
shook his head, disgusted at himself. “It snapped like a dry twig,
and the guy slumped into the floor, like he was melting. I stood
over him, watching his blood puddle up. I was shaking so hard, I
could barely stand. And the crowd above was screaming and cheering,
everyone patting each other on the back, high-fiving, and
fist-bumping.” Nick held a pained expression, his brow drawn tight
and worried.

I looked him in the eye to offer him my support and
experienced a moment of profound discovery. Even though Nick had
grown into a man, I continued to think of him as a boy. But as I
looked into his eyes, I saw that he looked old, as if he had aged
twenty years in the last three days alone. What I saw was guilt and
a lonely tiredness, a willingness to give up, to believe that
nothing was worth the effort any more. That look, that lack of
wanting more, frightened me. He was tired of trying to keep up with
me, with what he thought I wanted him to be. It was the saddest
look I’d ever seen in a man’s eyes, and I knew I was the cause.

Uncomfortable with my probing, Nick broke away and
stared at the floor. He weaved his fingers through his hair. “I
can’t do it again, Tyler. I won’t make it.”

“Yes, you can, and you will. If you have to, to
survive, you
will
do it again. We have to get out of this
alive, Nick...together. Whatever it takes, okay? Promise me.”

He nodded, taking in a ragged breath as he wiped
away his tears.

Suddenly, the gate from the long corridor just
outside the fighting arena opened, and Alexi and Dmitri walked
through. They stood before my cell, each with their own brand of
smug satisfaction.

“So, just whose problem is it now, Mr. Karras?”
Dmitri asked with a snide grin on his fat, ugly face. He waited
patiently for me to answer.

“It’s my problem, Dmitri. Mine alone,” I replied,
trying to placate him for Nick’s benefit. I was worried about my
brother and would do anything to keep him from fighting again.

Dmitri smiled and turned to Alexi, mumbling a few
words in their native tongue. They both laughed at some inside joke
I wasn’t privy to. “I don’t think that’s entirely true,” he said as
he glanced over at my brother.

“Okay, our problem, then,” I countered, my temper
and control wearing thin. “But let
me
take the blame, okay?
Not Nick. This is my deal. He has nothing to do with it.”

Dmitri shook his head. “You are wrong there, I’m
afraid. Nick has everything to do with this. More than you know,
apparently. Perhaps you are too proud to see the truth. Or too
blind. Either way, you are not grasping the big picture here.” He
signaled to one of his men who stood on the railed walkway above
the cages directly across from us.

A sick feeling settled in my stomach, and it wasn’t
caused by the beating I’d taken earlier. Dmitri was capable of
terrible violence and enjoyed playing sadistic games. I pulled
myself to my feet—snarling in pain—and walked over to the gate to
get a better look up onto the walkway above.

An unknown fear clawed along the edge of my mind.
Before I could decipher what it was, two men walked out from a
doorway on the back wall. They pulled a woman along with them. She
screamed and fought like a stray cat. Her head thrashed back and
forth, and her legs kicked at her captors without effect. Together
they hauled her up against the metal railing. One of them pulled
the hair at the back of her head and, with a sharp yank, settled
her down. I jumped up to the front of my cage and pulled against
the fencing, nausea rising from the pit of my stomach.

“Hannah? Oh God, no. Hannah!” Terror surged through
me. I heard her whisper my name before the men yanked her backwards
the way they had come. I shook the confines of my cage, screaming
her name over and over. I looked back at Alexi and Dmitri, still
standing before my cell, noting their satisfaction had turned into
unmitigated amusement. “I’m going to fucking kill you both!” I
shouted. “Do you hear me? You’re dead!
Dead!”