I leaned back, sweat dripping into my eyes, and got my first sight of the stranger in the corner who wanted kidneys from this victim—sweating, overdressed for the heat, his accent was a butchered attempt at Spanish. An American. Out of place. Wrong in a way that made my skin crawl.
Raven wasn’t done showing me off.
He angled my face toward the American as though he wanted the man to get a good look at whatever he thought he’d made. “He learns fast,” Raven said, voice warm in a way that never meant comfort. “Faster than any of the others ever did.”
The American made a faint grunt of approval, but Raven wasn’t watching him anymore. His focus was fixed on me—too intense, too proud, the way a man might look at a weapon he’d forged.
“He doesn’t flinch,” Raven went on, admiration thick in his voice. “Not like the other ones who cried or begged.” His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, anchoring me, guidingme closer to the dying man. “This one watches,” Raven added. “He listens. He remembers.”
The American’s brow lifted. “Are you training him?”
Raven smiled. Slow. Cold. “Already trained.” His fingers pressed into my neck—possessive, claiming. “He can tell you how long this one has left just by the feel of the heart. He knows where to cut to keep the rest intact. He knows how to keep a body alive long enough to take what needs taking.”
My stomach turned, but Raven didn’t let me step away.
Raven snorted a laugh. “Useful, isn’t he?” he asked the American. I was a tool, an instrument, athing.
The American nodded once, businesslike. “If he can keep them stable, that’s worth something to my clients.”
Raven’s smile widened until it was all teeth. “He’ll be worth more than you think.” Something in his voice made the room shift—as if he believed it, as if he’d already written the future in blood and expected me to play my part. He tapped two fingers against my chest, right over my heart. “I built him myself,” he murmured. “Piece by piece.” My pulse stuttered under his touch, and his smile widened. “See how steady he is? He was made for this.”
The American didn’t argue. Raven never needed proof. He just needed an audience. He yanked me to my feet, pulled me into his side, and held me so close I couldn’t breathe, pushing me toward the men who stood around the room—hissicarios, loyal cartel soldiers with dead eyes and blood on their hands. The only thing stopping any of them from touching me was my usefulness to the compound and to the boss.
“El Doctorcito,” someone said with an exaggerated bow, and Raven laughed so loud it shook his whole body.
“El Doctorcito!” he cried, and then shunted me from the room, past the ring of his men, one of them pushing me into the Sinaloa sunshine and dirt—heat rising in shimmering waves,the smell of dust and diesel thick in the air, cactus and scrub baking under a merciless sky—as I stumbled—cicadas screaming in the brush, a dog barking somewhere behind the shacks, tinny music blaring from a distant radio—every sound too sharp in the hot air, and the smells too—roasting corn from a vendor’s cart, sewage trickling in the gutter, cheap beer spilled and souring in the sun. I ran for my fucking life back home. Neighbors stood in their doorways, eyes following but never meeting mine, pretending they didn’t see. A woman pulled her child inside; a man turned his back. Everyone knew, but no one ever spoke.
No one cared that my shoes were too small, that my voice still cracked when I spoke.
No one cared that I was only twelve.
TWO
Doc
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
The Pit wasn’t a place.It was an infection, moving from ruin to ruin—never fixed in place long enough to pin down. Basements. Warehouses. Once, a gutted church where the blood soaked into ash, it was a fight club, it was people tearing each other apart, and it was mobile as fuck. Tonight, it was in an old meat-packing plant out beyond the tracks.
I was always early. Habit. Survival. First in meant first chance to assess the exits, the cages, the crowd, and set up my team on the outside. I walked the perimeter, cataloged the shadows, breathed the stale air of rot and bleach until I knew every corner.
The cage was the same as always—a chain-link enclosure, with stained canvas on the floor. The crowd never cared about aesthetics. They came for blood. Rules were a joke. No biting, no eye-gouging, no knives, but no one stopped you if it happened. Men came here to hurt, and I was the one called when the hurting went too far, to mend or remove bodies. It didn’t matter to me how it went, as long as I got paid. I watched, and eitherway, the money was up-front and in my pocket. Whether they lived or died never mattered to me—in truth, I almost preferred the clean removals over the messy patching. Less noise. Less whining. More silence and more profit.
Viktor Kane, the man who ran the Pit, didn’t invite me out of the goodness of his heart. He paid me. Twenty thousand for a night’s work to be here, on call for the fighters when things went south, and more importantly, for the cleanup service I provided when blood ran too much. Up-front. Always.
As I’d worked, watched, and learned over the years, I’d become familiar with every character in this complex underground world. Knowledge was power, and I knew far more than any of them ever realized—who placed bets, who owed Viktor, who fucked whom over on the street, who killed when the fight was done. The Italians, the Russians, the MC clubs, the gangs, they were in corners of pain and hate, and I played them all. They thought I was only here to patch the living or clear away the dead, but information flowed my way like blood through arteries, and I cataloged every drop.
“Who’s fighting?” I asked Viktor, part of our negotiation, me pretending to be ignorant, and him blustering about shit he thought I didn’t know. I already knew who was up tonight, but feigning ignorance gave me leverage, and leverage kept me alive.
“Red and Dragan,” Viktor said with what sounded like pride—one big guy in Mikhail Dragan, enforcer for the Russians. One slightly smaller but wiry guy in Kyle Rourke, aka Red, a newbie to me, but I’d already learned he was a prospect for an MC. Two men, one big fight, thousands laid down by the desperate, rich and poor alike. I could watch the purse, the bets, who’d staked what, and who’d be paying with blood when it went wrong.
The Pit felt familiar in all the wrong ways—no different from the cage fights and casual torture from my childhood, where men fought to the death. Those early nights had carvedsomething out of me, hollowed the boy, and left the watcher behind.
Gael never stood a chance in places like this.
Gael had died a long time ago.
Docwas the one who survived.
