The Mistaken

by Nancy S Thompson

  “Sit, please. Have a cup of tea. It will refresh and energize you.” With calculated civility, he poured me a cup then slid a creamer my way. “Earl Grey and milk for the Englishman, eh, my friend?” He winked and smiled, but it was anything but friendly.

  I had the uneasy feeling I was being maneuvered somehow, like a bait dog being forced into the pit. I remained silent and took my seat next to the stranger who glared at me without an ounce of humor. Dmitri had a similarly sour look. With a sharp clap of his hands, Alexi brought my attention back to him.

  “Tyler, we are all surprised that you do not have the girl with you. Why did you not bring her as I asked?” Alexi’s grin turned serious. Contrary to what he’d said, he didn’t look surprised, and that had me worried.

  “She’s in a safe place. Don’t worry, you’ll get your merchandise once I’ve seen that Nick is well.”

  Dmitri and Alexi turned to each other and shared an amused look and a remark spoken in Russian. I found both disconcerting. They were entertained by my discomfort. Dmitri looked over at his men and gestured with a snap of his fingers. Two of them jumped up and disappeared into the kitchen, returning a minute later with Nick. His flannel shirt was torn and open, his jeans splattered with blood. They dragged him roughly by the arms, both of which were fastened behind his back. He couldn’t even walk on his own. I jumped up out of my seat as they hauled him into the room. The remaining two guards popped up. One stood in my path while the other restrained me from behind, both my arms locked in a full Nelson hold.

  “Oh my God, Nick!” I called out, straining to lift my head and shoulders so I could see him. The goon standing in front of me whipped his hand up to my throat. His fingers dug into the flesh around my windpipe.

  One of the men holding Nick grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head up. When I caught sight of his bruised and swollen face, my stomach flipped, feeling as though it had lurched up into my mouth. My heart raced, the adrenaline giving me increased strength as I struggled to break free, but the massive guards were unyielding and easily held me in place. The one behind me yanked me back and the other punched me in the stomach. The grip on my arms gave way, and I fell to the floor, doubled over in pain, certain I would puke all over Dmitri’s clean tile.

  “Ty? What are you doing here? I told you not to come,” Nick cried out as I rocked on my knees, fighting the overwhelming nausea.

  “What about our deal, Tyler?” Alexi asked. “We had an agreement. Why have you not held up your end of the bargain?”

  “I had...the wrong…girl. I told...you that,” I ground out through the pain.

  He walked over and stood above me with an angry sneer. “Well, that is not my problem, now is it...my friend?”

  I leaned back on my heels, my arms still wrapped around my belly, and looked Alexi straight in the eye. Even as sharp spasms coursed through my gut, I couldn’t keep the smirk from twisting at my mouth.

  “It is now,” I replied.

  Alexi glared down at me, his nostrils flaring and his face red with rage. He gave a curt nod, and his henchmen pulled me back up. They raised their fists and pummeled my head then kicked my body with their booted feet as I slid back to the floor. They were skilled at their craft, expert professionals who knew precisely how to hit a man, inflicting as much pain and damage as they could in as few blows as possible. I felt my nose and several ribs break simultaneously. Thick blood filled my mouth and choked off my airway. I coughed to clear it, causing knife-sharp pain to shoot through me like a spear. I was seized by it with every ragged breath. I rolled into a ball and lay still as a stone as warm blood pooled on the floor around my face. Satisfied with their work, Alexi called his men off with a bark.

  They left me moaning and writhing on the bloodied floor. I gasped for air, but could only manage to pant in small wet breaths that wheezed and crackled through dense clots of blood. I hacked and spit to draw in just enough oxygen so I wouldn’t pass out, but the room spun and tilted at odd angles regardless. Stars of vertigo swirled through my head, which felt rent in two, the pain churning into wave after wave of nausea. I beat my fist against the floor, a weak effort to deal with the pain and keep myself from throwing up.

  Alexi pushed me over with his foot and bent down close to my face. The casual smile was finally gone. An enraged sneer took its place, distorting his neatly groomed face with contempt.

  “You think this is my problem, do you? Well, my friend, you would be wrong, very wrong., and you are about to find out just how wrong you truly are.” He straightened his back, turned to his men, and roared, “Take them to the cages!”

  I screamed in agony as Alexi’s praetorians hefted me up and dragged me toward the kitchen.

  “No, Ty,” Nick wailed as I passed him. “Alexi, Dmitri...please. Don’t do this. Please!” he begged. “We had a deal. You promised me. You said I’d be enough. You swore!”

  I didn’t know what Nick was talking about, but both Alexi and Dmitri cackled in reply. I was hauled outside and thrown into a waiting van, its rear doors flung open wide. Nick toppled in behind me, and the doors slammed shut. The engine roared to life and the van sped away.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Tyler

  Nick and I were tossed about the van as it threaded erratically through city traffic. Every sharp turn and pothole hurt like hell. I tried in vain to stay oriented and figure out where we were going, even as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Though we traveled a good distance, I was certain we were still in San Francisco. We drove alongside of a long industrial building—a warehouse from what I could tell from the rear door windows—stopping in front of a partially opened roll-up door where several men were stationed, waiting for our arrival. The van doors were thrown open, and both Nick and I were pulled, feet first, out into the numbing fog.

  I looked around and tried to get my bearings, but the mist was too thick to see much of anything. From the rhythmic hum and click of tires droning above my head, I assumed we were south of Market at the waterfront directly below the Bay Bridge. The warehouse was strategically located; no one would ever hear us scream.

  With a sharp squeal and thundering bang, the rolling door was slammed shut just after we passed through. The warehouse darkened into a murky gloom. Alexi’s men dragged us across a great expanse of empty space. The staccato click of their heels echoed in a seemingly endless repeat. We paused at a tall barricade of chain-link fence set back into the farthest corner of the warehouse. The guards unlocked a gate and swept us through then locked it again behind us, metal grinding and clanging against metal, resonating off the hard walls as if in a prison.

  At the end of a long, fenced corridor, we moved through another locked gate and into a wide, circular opening some twenty-five feet in diameter, the perimeter of which was more chain-link fencing, roughly eight feet high. Within the walls of the circular fence were gates with numbered placards above. Each gate had a secure lock and opened to a cage about ten feet square. Capping the top of the cages was a galvanized steel ceiling which served as a second floor above. A railing stood along the inside perimeter of the second deck to prevent anyone from falling onto the concrete floor of the circular arena below.

  Two of the gates leading into the cages were unlocked and opened. I was dragged in and dumped onto the floor of one, the gate and lock quickly secured behind me. Nick was pushed face-first against the other gate in the adjoining cage. The hand of one of the men pressed against the back of Nick’s head while another cut away the zip-tie that fastened his hands. With unnecessary force, they pushed him through the open gate, closed, and locked it. Nick hobbled over to the fence separating our cells, his fingers weaving through the web of metal between us.

  “Tyler, are you okay?” he whispered. “Look at me, Ty. Talk to me.”

  With a grunt, I rolled onto my back and looked over at him with my one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. I tried to move closer to Nick, but the pain in my ribs was sharp and relentless.

  “Nick...
where...are we?” I grunted, still breathless.

  “Dmitri’s fight cages. This isn’t good, brother. We’re in deep shit.” He shook his head and rattled the chain-link. “Why did you come for me, Tyler? I told you not to. Now we’re both going to have to fight tonight,” he cried out, his voice anxious. “You need to pull yourself together.”

  I pushed my body backwards with my feet, sliding across the smooth concrete floor until I felt the cinder-block wall rise up behind me. I rolled and twisted my body until I could sit, propped up against the wall in the corner next to Nick’s cell, where I moaned in pain. Nick slid over and knelt next to me, the chain-link an impenetrable barrier between us.

  “Nick, what is this place? What do you mean by fight cages?”

  “It’s kind of like dog fighting. Crowds gather on the walkway above to watch the fights below.”

  “And what, they want us to fight each other?” I asked.

  “No, not each other. Other men will be brought in like we were.”

  “Who? And why?”

  “Guys like us who owe Dmitri something they can’t or won’t pay.”

  “But what’s the point? How the fuck does Dmitri benefit from this?”

  “It’s for sport. For gambling. Dmitri will make money on every wager, whether for or against us.” Nick’s face was pinched with fear. “This is serious shit, Ty. These are often fights to the death.”

  I rolled my head against the wall and cursed.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Tyler

  About eight hours later, the pain had eased enough that I could move around, though my head still felt as if it were split down the middle. The swelling had lessened around my eye, and it was getting easier to breathe without feeling like a knife had been slipped between my ribs. Hunger began to gnaw inside me, and a thirst so great, my throat felt as dry as a sandy desert.

  Nick and I whispered to each other through our cages. We cautiously searched every inch of our cells, but they were both sturdy and free from defect. We tried to come up with a plan to escape. It didn’t look very promising with all the armed men Alexi had posted. While we waited, Nick explained how the fights worked, giving me advice on how to survive. He’d spent the last two nights forced to fight here. He relayed, in great detail, how he had beaten his opponent into unconsciousness the first night. However, last night was different.

  “He was tough,” Nick said, “a lot bigger than I am, and he wouldn’t go down. I thought I was a dead man, Ty. I knew if I didn’t kill him, he would kill me, plain and simple.”

  The memory tormented him. He sat crumpled up with his knees pulled into his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around them as he rocked back and forth. He stared into space, his eyes wide and haunted, and his brow furrowed as he worried his split lip with his teeth, gnawing at the blood congealed within the deep cuts.

  “I just went nuts,” Nick recalled. “I tore into him like a fucking madman. I didn’t let up, even when he was on the ground, barely moving. I stomped on the back of his neck.” Nick shook his head, disgusted at himself. “It snapped like a dry twig, and the guy slumped into the floor, like he was melting. I stood over him, watching his blood puddle up. I was shaking so hard, I could barely stand. And the crowd above was screaming and cheering, everyone patting each other on the back, high-fiving, and fist-bumping.” Nick held a pained expression, his brow drawn tight and worried.

  I looked him in the eye to offer him my support and experienced a moment of profound discovery. Even though Nick had grown into a man, I continued to think of him as a boy. But as I looked into his eyes, I saw that he looked old, as if he had aged twenty years in the last three days alone. What I saw was guilt and a lonely tiredness, a willingness to give up, to believe that nothing was worth the effort any more. That look, that lack of wanting more, frightened me. He was tired of trying to keep up with me, with what he thought I wanted him to be. It was the saddest look I’d ever seen in a man’s eyes, and I knew I was the cause.

  Uncomfortable with my probing, Nick broke away and stared at the floor. He weaved his fingers through his hair. “I can’t do it again, Tyler. I won’t make it.”

  “Yes, you can, and you will. If you have to, to survive, you will do it again. We have to get out of this alive, Nick...together. Whatever it takes, okay? Promise me.”

  He nodded, taking in a ragged breath as he wiped away his tears.

  Suddenly, the gate from the long corridor just outside the fighting arena opened, and Alexi and Dmitri walked through. They stood before my cell, each with their own brand of smug satisfaction.

  “So, just whose problem is it now, Mr. Karras?” Dmitri asked with a snide grin on his fat, ugly face. He waited patiently for me to answer.

  “It’s my problem, Dmitri. Mine alone,” I replied, trying to placate him for Nick’s benefit. I was worried about my brother and would do anything to keep him from fighting again.

  Dmitri smiled and turned to Alexi, mumbling a few words in their native tongue. They both laughed at some inside joke I wasn’t privy to. “I don’t think that’s entirely true,” he said as he glanced over at my brother.

  “Okay, our problem, then,” I countered, my temper and control wearing thin. “But let me take the blame, okay? Not Nick. This is my deal. He has nothing to do with it.”

  Dmitri shook his head. “You are wrong there, I’m afraid. Nick has everything to do with this. More than you know, apparently. Perhaps you are too proud to see the truth. Or too blind. Either way, you are not grasping the big picture here.” He signaled to one of his men who stood on the railed walkway above the cages directly across from us.

  A sick feeling settled in my stomach, and it wasn’t caused by the beating I’d taken earlier. Dmitri was capable of terrible violence and enjoyed playing sadistic games. I pulled myself to my feet—snarling in pain—and walked over to the gate to get a better look up onto the walkway above.

  An unknown fear clawed along the edge of my mind. Before I could decipher what it was, two men walked out from a doorway on the back wall. They pulled a woman along with them. She screamed and fought like a stray cat. Her head thrashed back and forth, and her legs kicked at her captors without effect. Together they hauled her up against the metal railing. One of them pulled the hair at the back of her head and, with a sharp yank, settled her down. I jumped up to the front of my cage and pulled against the fencing, nausea rising from the pit of my stomach.

  “Hannah? Oh God, no. Hannah!” Terror surged through me. I heard her whisper my name before the men yanked her backwards the way they had come. I shook the confines of my cage, screaming her name over and over. I looked back at Alexi and Dmitri, still standing before my cell, noting their satisfaction had turned into unmitigated amusement. “I’m going to fucking kill you both!” I shouted. “Do you hear me? You’re dead! Dead!”

  Dmitri brought his face up close to mine. “You hold onto that anger, Mr. Karras. It might just save your life. You live through this and perhaps you will even see your debt paid off tonight.”

  “And the girl?” I seethed.

  He just laughed at me. “You Karras men, always the heroes, eh?”

  “The girl, Dmitri! What about the girl?”

  “Ah, well, she is just gravy for me at this point, I’m afraid. Like whipped cream with a cherry on top.” He laughed. “Isn’t that what the Americans say?”

  “What are you talking about? What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “A little payback for old sins. You should forget her. She is out of your reach now. Though you never know, you just might see her again very soon,” Dmitri taunted before he turned on his heel and walked away.

  “No, Dmitri! No!” I slapped the quivering metal fence. “Dmitri, let the girl go, please! She has nothing to do with this! Let her go! Dmitri! Dmitri!”

  I screamed until I was hoarse and the words felt like burning sandpaper grinding along my throat. I fell to my knees and wept in despair, calling out for Hannah again and again.
<
br />   In the cell next to me, Nick lowered his head in silent defeat.

  Chapter Forty

  Tyler

  Two more hours passed. Physical and emotional exhaustion overwhelmed me. My whole body shook with tremors, and I was covered in sweat. My heart raced, and though I knew it was from my need for a drink, my anxiety over Hannah’s welfare made it much worse. Nick and I both sat quietly in our cages. I thought about what Dmitri had said, and wondered what he meant about seeing Hannah later. I was sure he had said it to taunt me, as if I might not like what I would see. That frightened me beyond words. I was terrified to think about what she might be going through while I sat there waiting. I prayed she wouldn’t do anything to further anger them. Not knowing was driving me mad and had my gut tied in knots. I had to get free. I searched for the means, but found nothing. I was trapped, left to contemplate a dismal future.

  “Nick, what did Dmitri mean when he said I might see my debt paid off tonight…if I lived?” My voice was a raspy whisper.

  “Well, not everyone is forced to fight. Some do it just to pay off their debt. For everyone, a percentage of what you owe is automatically wagered in your own favor, like a personal incentive. If you win, it’s deducted, but if you lose, your debt is even greater, that is if you survive. And although at least ten percent is automatically pledged, you can choose how much more of your debt you wish to wager in favor of yourself. If you stake the entire amount on one bout and win, your debt is paid in full. But I have no idea how that would apply to either of us. Dmitri doesn’t seem to want our money. I think he’s just fucking with us now.”

  “And these fights, who determines who wins or loses?” I asked.

  “Ty, there’s usually no doubt as to who loses.”

  “Right.” I closed my eyes and shook my head in utter disbelief. “What is this, ancient Rome? It’s fucking barbaric.” It sickened me to be forced to participate in such depraved conduct, but I realized I had succumbed to such behavior months ago when I put myself on this path of vindictive retribution. It was my own fault. “And what am I supposed to do about Hannah?” I asked.