have answered Dooley.
“You’re too good at what you do to hate this life,” the head of the underground operation said, almost conversationally. “Every last one of the combatants out there would kill to possess your skill, Savage.”
Savage. It was the only surname he’d ever known. One he didn’t remember being given, and as such, he may as well have been born with it. Either way, the name was an apt one.
“Killing’s what they do anyway,” Hugh pointed out jeeringly.
Every muscle in his body went taut and strained and pulsed as the realization hit him.
We. Not “they” . . . we.
For tonight, Hugh would be expected to take part in that same barbarism. If he wanted to live, that was.
Sweat slicked his skin.
It had been inevitable.
This moment.
This exchange.
He’d known this night was coming. He’d just managed to convince himself that Dooley believed Hugh’s value as a fighter was greater. That it would spare him from being thrust into a death match.
“Here.” The other man tossed something at him. “You asked for these?”
Hugh caught the strips of thinly cut, white linens. There was no such thing as honor in the rookeries. Men took any advantage they could. It was why, without compunction, he sat and proceeded to loop his thumb and wrap behind one hand.
“Does that really work?”
“It worked for the Greeks and Romans,” he muttered. The cloth wraps protected a boxer’s bones and skin. It was a strategy not known by the other fighters in the streets.
“Interesting.”
There was an absurdity to the casual nature of their exchange, one so at odds with the fact that, in mere moments, Hugh would leave this room and either meet his end or turn himself into a murderer.
Dooley probed him with his gaze. “What do you know about the Greeks and Romans?”
A lot. It was another detail he couldn’t explain about his past; however, while he may be forced to fight, he’d not give anything more to this man. Any of them. Hugh checked to see that he had adequate tension in his hand. He tugged the linen and then made a fist, testing to be sure it didn’t constrict his movements too much. “Is that what you’re here to talk about? Ancient civilizations?” He looped the linen around his wrist, then paused midway through the third loop to glance over at Dooley. “If so, perhaps you’d want to talk about the mere mortal Cronus, how he castrated and took apart his father, Ouranos’s, brain?”
The handler paled. Hugh’s meaning had not been lost.
Dooley quickly recovered. “Or mayhap we focus instead on how Zeus cut that foolish lad into pieces for ever daring to think he could have vengeance on a god?”
A god.
Hugh’s lip curled in a sneer. Was that what the other man took himself for? But then, in a way, in this world, wasn’t he? Dooley and the lords who ran this ring ruled all.
The only difference? This hell would never dare be mistaken for anything but a Devil’s paradise.
“Either way, Savage, I’ve not come to argue with you.” Dooley strolled over. “Not on fight night. Not when you’ll require your every wit about you.”
Hugh wasn’t one who’d ever dare believe Dooley’s words were born of any real concern. Nay, he and the others here, they were commodities, ones who could be dispensed with as easily as a street peddler hawked her basket of eggs or bread.
His hands larger than most, Hugh wrapped them with the second strip of linen, taking care to smooth the cloth free of any wrinkles or lumps.
“It’s . . . taken a turn. I know this might come as a surprise to you, but I’m not one who necessarily . . . approves of the new direction.”
Hugh made no attempt to mask his contempt. “Because you’re so concerned about us boys?” And now girls who’d been brought in to take part.
Dooley scoffed. “My concern is the profit to be made.” Wandering over, he stopped so that he didn’t have to crane his neck so much to meet Hugh’s gaze. “Training fighters is costly. But more, it is time-consuming. If we’re losing even two boys a night, it’s too many. That’s two more I’ll have to find and train, and even then, they’ll never have the same skill as you lifelong fighters.”
Hugh’s gut clenched. Aye, that was precisely what they were.
Dooley released a belabored sigh. “Alas, try telling that to the lords who run this place. And I?” He shrugged. “I merely answer to them. Just as we all do