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“You—”

A terrifying scream rang from within the locked doors, and Roma pivoted immediately, uncaring if his sudden movements earned him a knife in his back. He was already reaching into his coat pocket and drawing his gun, shooting once, twice, three times until the glass panel of the door crumbled entirely, opening a space for him to insert his arm through and turn the lock on the other side.

“Alisa,” he bellowed, slamming open the doors. “Alisa!”

He skidded into the emergency room, a hand slamming up to cover his eyes from the harsh lights fixed to the droopy ceilings. Nobody objected to his presence. They were far too busy grabbing ahold of Alisa’s writhing body, keeping her still for just long enough to press a syringe into her neck. She fell slack in seconds, the bloodstained strands of her lanky blond hair falling over her eyes.

“What did you do to her?” Roma demanded, rushing forward. He brushed her hair back, swallowing the lump in his throat. Her eyelids—so pale and translucent under this lighting that her blue-purple veins stood out starkly—fluttered briefly, then remained closed.

The doctor, the same one who had locked him out and assured him of his sister’s safety cleared his throat. Roma looked to him, barely holding back his anger.

“We have injected her to keep her comatose.” The doctor thinned his lips, then scrubbed his forehead vigorously, as if he was thinking through a fog in his mind. “I—we—” He cleared his throat, then tried again. “We do not know what is wrong with her. She must remain asleep until there is a cure.”

Eighteen

Roma descended the stairs. Though his physical body had carried him here, had moved him through the motions of waving his thanks at the bartender, through lifting the curtain at the back of the bar, his head remained miles away, still hovering outside the hospital room and watching Alisa in her induced coma—her arms and legs strapped down to the bed for her own safety.

“I am undefeated!”

At the roar that traveled up the spiraling staircase, Roma’s mind returned to him, and his anger slammed back into full force. Blood boiling, he jumped the last five steps, landing upon the floorboards with a heavy, wooden thump.

Roma ventured deeper into this shallow underground, navigating the room underneath the bar. The construction of this place had sucked up almost all of his father’s funds a few years back—the floors were uneven from overuse and the lights on the low ceiling flickered on and off at random. It smelled of sweat and piss and there were so many voices shouting over one another that this could have been a gathering for delinquents, but there was no doubting the exorbitant design of this place. One look was enough—at the fighting pit in the center of the room, at the flashes of silver built into the ropes that secured the ring—to know that this underground arena was one of Lord Montagov’s most prized investments. It was no wonder, given the betting charges down here had earned him back his losses within weeks.

“Don’t you two have better things to do than hang out amid all this?”

Roma dropped into a seat at a spectator’s table, inspecting the ceramic cups in front of Benedikt and Marshall.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Benedikt replied.

“This is the last time. I promise,” Marshall said. “Afterward—no, get him by the legs!”

Marshall’s attention had been drawn away momentarily by the fight. The crowd around the barrier cheered as the loser went down and the victor pumped his fists into the air.

“Terrible form,” Marshall muttered, turning his gaze back.

Disgruntled, Roma lifted the cup in front of Benedikt and took a cautionary sniff. His cousin snatched it from his hands.

“Don’t drink that,” Benedikt warned.

“Vodka?” Roma asked in response, at last identifying the smell that had been wafting under his nose. “In a teacup? Really?”

“Not my idea.”

Marshall leaned in with a sly grin. “Yes, don’t blame your sweet cousin. It was mine.”

Their table suddenly shuddered with the impact of another man going down in the ring, the crowd roaring with cheers. A woman was marking the scores with a piece of chalk. In flocks before every fight, spectators ran to her with cash, calling out bets on who would win.

Roma wasn’t entirely surprised to see Dimitri Voronin stepping into the ring next. He seemed like the type to spend all his free time down here, mingling with the filth that coated the floors and feeling right at home. Roma, meanwhile, made it his goal to avoid this place. He would come down only if the matter couldn’t wait, as was the case now.

“I just spoke with my father at home,” Roma said. He angled his head so he didn’t have to watch Dimitri pump his fists and bare his teeth to the crowd. “He has stopped caring about the madness. He thinks it is something that can be waited out. He thinks that Alisa will simply wake up and snap out of it when she has grown tired of trying to tear out her throat.”

That was a half truth. Lord Montagov no longer wished to investigate the madness, but it was not apathy. It was because Roma had hit a nerve and struck him right where it hurt most. This inaction was punishment. For calling his own father a coward, Lord Montagov would show him just how cowardly he could be, and let Alisa wilt away.

“He is an idiot.” Marshall paus

ed. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Roma muttered. It was as if his father did not realize that they could not run a gang without gangsters. Lord Montagov had too much confidence in himself—most of it undeserved. If the worst-case scenario arrived, he probably thought he could face off with death and demand their assets back.