Page 118 of Bratva Knight

I held up the badge I’d been given when I first arrived. It had my name (fake name, anyway), my picture and my level of clearance.

“I was told to report here in the morning to begin work.”

The guard nodded. He scanned the barcode under my photo, checked something on the computer and gestured me inside with a flick of his head. I thanked him and walked in.

Another thing I’d quickly noticed about the place was that there were different types of guards/soldiers. There were the ones like me, whose main job was to patrol. We were given a baton and some mace to use in case any of the guests stepped out of line. Then there were the other ones. The ones who had the guns and were dressed in tactical gear, like they were about to run off on some secret, undercover mission. I suspected they were Talon’s personal security team and the ones he trusted the most, hence the weapons.

The bottom floor was buzzing with activity, people coming to and from quickly with a sense of urgency. Today was the first day of arrivals, guests already starting to make their way to the island, and it was clear people where freaking the fuck out about it. I tried not to look out of place, like I had no idea what exactly was meant to happen as I made my way over to the elevator.

A few of the men I’d met the night before were standing at the elevator, waiting for it to arrive. Luke was an average man with close-cropped hair and a slim build. From what little I knew of him, he was shy, nervous and skittish. Ryan was next to him. He was a little more sure of himself. Confident, strong. His honey-blonde hair was short and styled neatly. He kept one hand on the baton at his waist, like he wanted to be prepared in case anything happened. The last man was John. He was someone to be weary of. It was in the eyes. Dark brown—almost black—and filled with malice.

Luke looked up at me when I stopped at the elevator. “You’re Damien, right? I’m Luke. We met last night.”

“Yes. Hello.” I offered my hand and he shook it, a little timid. He was in the wrong place. There was no way he’d be able to handle the brutality of what was to come.

I nodded my head in greeting to the other men. Ryan returned the gesture but John just stared at me with those dead, soulless eyes. I looked away. Not because I was afraid of the man, but because I didn’t need to cause any trouble. I needed to stay as inconspicuous as possible. But he was on my list.

The elevator arrived with ading. We all climbed in and it took us to the tenth floor. We made our way across the floor to the conference room we were taken to last night for orientation. My gaze wandered around the space covertly. It had been night time when we first walked through there, so all of the other rooms had been pitched into darkness, making it impossible to see anything.

Now they were teaming with light and completely overflowing with people. Up ahead on my left, through the floor-to-ceiling glass window, I spotted a whiteboard that took up an entire wall. Photographs of people were pinned on it like mug shots. Twenty-four in total. I slowed my steps so I had more time to look at it.

They were arranged in some sort of order, similar to a bracket challenge people used during March Madness. Two photographs were placed side by side with a line, running to another two photographs that were sitting directly underneath them. Then there was an empty slot in the space beside them. It was the fight order for the games. Who would be versing who. The empty slot was for the winner, which meant the losing team would be eliminated, most likely meaning they’d been killed.

I dropped to one knee, undoing my shoelaces quickly and then started doing them back up again slowly as I continued to study the board as discreetly as possible.

One side was marked “Morning” and the other “Evening”. They were holding two fights on the same day. I ran my eyes over the photographs swiftly, searching…searching…there.

I was staring at a picture of my father. It took everything within me not to physically react. He looked just as menacing in that picture as he did in real life. The hateful glare, the firm line of his lips, his clenched jaw. Oh, he looked positivelyevil. Angry and evil. Next to his picture was one of a woman.

It was clear in the way it was arranged that the fights were two versus two. And that woman was his partner.

“Damien? Are you coming?” Luke called out from the open door of one of the conference rooms.

Shit.

I wanted to study the board more but if I took any longer, it would start to get suspicious. I over exaggerated the final loop of tying my shoelaces and jumped to my feet, running to catch up to them.

“Sorry.”

Luke just smiled. Ryan shrugged. But John…he narrowed his eyes with scepticism.

Double shit.

“Come on in, gentleman. Quickly. We have a lot to get through and not a lot of time to do it in,” Andrea said, sitting at the head of the table. She had a laptop open in front of her, her fingers typing furiously as we all took a seat. She was dressed in business attire, a dark, freshly pressed pantsuit with her blonde hair done up tightly in one of those buns you just knew was incredibly uncomfortable.

“As you know, you’ve been brought here to help with crowd control. This is the biggest Til Death Games we’ve ever hosted before and we’ve had an influx of guests added to the invite list, due to who we have fighting this year.” She didn’t look up from her laptop once, her brows snapped together in a frown, filled with concentration. “The first round begins tomorrow morning, so we’ve got all the guests arriving today. Be courteous. Be polite. Do whatever they ask you to do as long as it doesn’t go against the set of rules I gave you last night. I need one of you monitoring the Arena at all times as I don’t have any other men to spare right now. Every year, some idiot tries to sneak in and get a look at the fighters before the games begin. They think it might give them an edge, betting wise.No oneis permitted access to the fighters.”

I raised my hand, offering myself for the position. Not too fast that it seemed like I was super eager, but fast enough to beat out the other three men. It wasn’t lost on me that she was referring to them as “fighters”, not “prisoners”. Compartmentalising at its finest. She probably didn’t even think about them as human beings, just merchandise to make herself some money.

Andrea nodded. “Thank you, Damien. You can report there now.”

I nodded in thanks and left the room, a fresh round of excitement sizzling in my veins.

I was one step closer to my goal. I just needed to figure out how the fuck I was going to get into that Arena without blowing my cover.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Nikolai Volkov

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