now he was Pav who some still whispered Zhatka for when he walked past them. He’d forgotten a lot about who Pavel was, and he hadn’t been given enough time as this person to know much about him, either.
But he wanted to learn.
Didn’t that count for something?
The silence between the two of them stretched on, and Pav’s own restlessness grew with each passing second. There’d been a part of him that had been itching to go back to a place he’d come from—a place his father had always cared for, and had looked after time and time again. He had been allowed to go back a couple of times as he’d grown older, but someone was always with him to make sure he never stepped out of line.
Where was home?
Was that what he was missing?
“It’s harder to hit a moving target.”
Viktoria glanced back at him. “What?”
“It feels like we’re sitting ducks here, even with the people watching the place. Sitting ducks, nonetheless.”
“A bit.”
“What would it hurt to move around for the night?”
Viktoria grinned, catching on. “Do you have a place you’d like to go?”
“A couple,” he admitted.
“What about the men watching the hotel?”
Pav shrugged. “One at the back, and the front. They’re not watching every exit because one can only leave the exits, but they can’t enter. They’ll see us when we come back in the morning, but what will it matter, then? What’s done is done.”
Viktoria’s laugh colored up the room, and he hadn’t even blinked before she was in front of him again. Leaning in, she caught his lips with her own in a bruising, hard kiss. It took his breath away and made his lungs ache.
He kind of loved that.
And her.
Wasn’t that what this feeling in his chest was? All tight, heavy, and yet warm and wonderful at the same time? Like he was going to hurt if she was gone, but he was okay while she was here? Like life really wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t looking at her every single day of it?
Love?
It felt like it.
He’d figure it out later.
• • •
Pav kept his arm locked tight around Viktoria’s waist as they maneuvered through the crowd of people getting closer to the cage in the middle of the warehouse with every passing second. He dragged her closer to his side, wanting to breathe in her vanilla and pear perfume, and feel her warmth soaking through his clothes.
At the same time, he murmured in her ear, “The first time they brought me to these fights, I was fourteen.”
He didn’t tell her the rest—that he’d found someone he’d recognized from his past who had lived in the large loft where he and his father stayed. That the person told him, no matter what, he could come back home, and they would always recognize him. He didn’t mention how he had gotten the shit beat out of him that night in the cage, but this was one of the places where he’d learned to fight.
Here, he’d learned how to survive.
“Did you fight, too?” she asked.
Pav laughed low. “I did.”
“And?”
“I lost—terribly.”
Understatement. He’d suffered a broken nose, a cracked rib, and the guy who was at least a half of a decade older than him had been going in for the kill—pretty usual in these fights—when someone stepped in to pull Pav out of the ring before his opponent could end him. He’d had a concussion so bad from the fight that he only had brief memories of different things that happened throughout the night.
But he remembered that person.
That familiar face who’d said his father’s name …
“And what about now?” Viktoria asked. “Do you think you would win now?”
“Guess we’re going to see, aren’t we?”
“What?”
Her question echoed, along with the call of the man who was judging the fights from the safety outside of the octagonal-shaped cage.
“Next fight—Gunner versus …” The man climbed a little higher on the cage, causing the people around him to shout and move closer yet again. “Anyone who wants to challenge.”
Pav didn’t have a clue who Gunner was. The man in the cage waiting for his challenger didn’t look particularly familiar, and he seemed to be the same size and height as Pav. He never found it to be very fair when they put a much smaller man up against a large man. But that was just how these fights worked—nobody gave a shit, honestly. It was all illegal, and far too many people lost their lives on that dirty, bloodstained mat.
Had they cleaned it