It’s not a question, I shake my head anyway. The motion sends fresh agony spiking through my skull.
Fragments surface. Strobe lights cutting through smoke. The roar of a crowd, faces twisted with bloodlust. The mat beneath my feet, sticky with something I didn’t want to identify. A man twice my size with fists like cinder blocks. They called him Cement Mixer in Serbian.
I stopped blocking. I remember that much. Stopped defending, stopped fighting back. Just stood there and let him take me apart.
“The underground ring in El Sereno,” Tatiana says, as if reading my fragmented memory. “Imagine my surprise when I spotted you in the cage. Cal Logan’s supposed to be working an angle, not getting his face caved in for fun.”
Cal. The name lands wrong, like a suit that doesn’t fit anymore. Or maybe one that fits too well.
“You were there?”
“Following a lead. Some of Dragonov’s people have been circling that scene, recruiting muscle. Figured it was worth watching.” She straightens, moves across the room. Returns with a bottle of water and two rust-colored pills. “Ibuprofen. Take them.”
I manage to prop myself against the cheap particleboard headboard and it groans under my weight. She drops the pills into my open palm and I swallow them with a gulp of warm water.
Afternoon light slants through gaps in the blinds. Late afternoon, judging by the angle. I’ve lost most of a day.
“How long?”
“Dropped you here around four in the morning. You’ve been out since.” She settles into a worn vinyl chair across the room and crosses her legs. “Your girlfriend texted me a few hours ago. My burner. She had to dig through operational files to find that number, which means she’s desperate enough to risk exposing an active asset.”
Nina. The reminder hits like a physical blow.
Another flash surfaces: neon beer signs, gritty floor, the bartender’s face, wary, then scared, then relieved when someone finally hauled me out. The weight of my own body, legs refusing to cooperate. Tatiana’s voice, sharp with irritation, telling me she wasn’t carrying me if I passed out in the parking lot.
“Why?” I ask.
“You’re my handler. If you get yourself killed in some shithole cage fight, I’m the one who gets reassigned to some desk jockey who doesn’t know how to run an asset.”
“Touching.”
“Self-preservation. Don’t confuse it with affection.” But something flickers behind her eyes, there and gone. “What happened, Chris?”
I should deflect. Change the subject. Ask what lead she was running down, anything to redirect her attention from the wreckage sitting in this bed.
Instead I say, “I hurt someone.”
She waits. Patient in a way I’ve rarely seen from her.
“Not on purpose. I wasn’t there. In my head, I mean.” The words stick. “I became someone else. Someone he made me.”
Tatiana’s expression doesn’t change, but I see recognition in the stillness. She knows exactly what I’m talking about. Has probably lived some version of it herself.
“Vicente,” she says quietly.
I close my eyes. The ceiling was different in his bedroom. Plain white plaster crossed by dark wood beams. I used to trace them with my eyes while waiting for him to decide how the night would go. They reminded me of the bars of a cage.
“He trained me,” I say. “Conditioned me.” I can’t say the rest. “My body learned to connect pain and pleasure. Control and release. And Thursday night, with Wyatt, I?—”
“You dissociated.”
“I became him. Cal. The person Vicente needed me to be.” A broken laugh emerges, but lacks anything resembling humor. “I thought I could handle being on top. I insisted. And then I couldn’t.”
Tatiana is quiet for a long moment. When she speaks, her voice has lost its sardonic edge.
“I was fourteen the first time Corluka made me do something I couldn’t live with.” She’s not looking at me now. Studying her hands, the scarred knuckles, the carefully maintained nails. “Afterward, I threw up for an hour. Couldn’t eat for three days. Kept seeing it every time I closed my eyes.” She pauses for breath. “By the time I was sixteen, I didn’t throw up anymore. Didn’t feel much of anything, actually. Just did what needed doing and went somewhere else inside my head.”
“How did you come back?”
