‘And you? Are you going to step in here?’
Chapman sat back down, pressed his fingers together, and smiled.
‘I have a representative.’
A worried whisper spread like a disease through the room, immediately out-heard by the scraping of metal on the cold, concrete floor. A few inmates near Chapman parted and Ravi stepped through, his shirtless torso rippling with ink-covered muscles. His broken nose, purple and swollen, sat between two eyes that bore through Sam like a pneumatic drill. Around his wrist was a thick, metal cuff, linked to a long, rusty chain. Without breaking his stare, he reeled the twenty-foot chain up, until he held an identical cuff in his hand. With the intention clear, and to the delight of the onlookers, he tossed it across the fight pit to Sam.
‘Put it on.’ Chapman demanded coldly. Before Sam could answer, he followed Chapman’s gaze as he looked towards Sharp, who nodded. The implication was clear, and Sam doubted that it was an empty threat. To host an evening such as this, there would be someone with their finger on the button, ready to electrify the entire prison at the first hint of unrest.
For Sam, there was only one way out of the situation. As much as it pained him, all other paths had been closed off.
He had to fight.
With a resounding sigh, he pulled his T-shirt up over his head, the silence that greeted his body wasn’t unexpected. Despite carrying half the bulk of Ravi, Sam was in peak physical condition. His lean muscles were well rounded, and his chest was as broad as it was thick.
It was the scars that stopped them dead.
Remnants of the explosion all those years ago that had rendered him MIA in a small town in Afghanistan, peppered the right side of his body. There were scars in his shoulder and his stomach, fresh bullet wounds he’d experienced in the heat of his war on organised crime. A long, painful scar ran down his spine, the stitches only recently removed from the near fatal attack suffered at the hands of the Hangman of Baghdad.
And the two, white, round scars on his chest, from where Wallace had tried to kill him all those years ago.
He didn’t bear the same tattoos as Ravi, but his scars held more meaning.
A permanent index of the war he’d raged.
Slowly, he bent down and lifted the cuff, looking once more to Sharp, then to Ravi, and then to Chapman.
‘Last chance.’ Sam spoke calmly, the other inmates watching in pent up euphoria. Ravi stepped forward a few paces and cracked his neck, his answer clear. Slam snapped the cuff around his left wrist. ‘Fine.’
Instantly, Ravi hauled his left arm back, tugging Sam towards him as he himself stepped forward. A roar exploded from the room, the thirst for blood reaching fever pitch as Sam adjusted his feet and took hold of the chain with his right hand. Ravi swung a ferocious right hook, but Sam ducked it, looping the chain over the man’s bulging forearm and hooked it in tight. In one fluid motion, he snapped the chain tight, slid his shoulder under the man’s elbow, and then pushed himself up while pulling the chain down.
The snap of Ravi’s bone cracked like a fortune cookie, and the sickening sound echoed off the walls and stunned the room into silence. Ravi roared in agony, his broken arm gushing blood from the bone protruding through the skin. A red mist ascended in his eyes and he foolishly swung his chained arm towards Sam.
Sam knew he’d already won.
He sidestepped the intended blow easily, the pain and quickly escalating blood loss affecting Ravi’s balance and before Ravi could stumble forwards, Sam wrapped his arm around the man’s thick neck. In one swift movement, he drove Ravi’s body backwards, while drilling a knee expertly into the base of his spine.
Ravi dropped to his knees, his back jarred out of position, and as he tried helplessly to tend to his destroyed arm, Sam looped the chain twice around his throat and pulled it tight. Sharp had seen enough, and he stomped through the crowd, his hand to his hip, ready to take Sam out.
But Chapman stood, held out his hand to stop him and then he planted his eyes firmly on Sam. Returning the gaze, Sam yanked the chain, arching Ravi back and gently resting the back of his head on his knee. With the man fighting for breath, and just one quick snap away from a broken neck, Ravi looked at Chapman with the desperation of a rat caught in a trap.
‘Do it,’ Chapman barked, almost with glee.
The crowd cheered loudly, their thirst for death sickening Sam to his stomach. With a final glance to Sharp, who was trying his best to hide the fear in his eyes at Sam’s brutal dismantling of Ravi, Sam then loosened his grip of the chain, placed his boot on Ravi’s back, and pushed him forward. The hulking fighter fell onto his front, blood pumping from his arm as he whimpered in agony. Sam held Chapman’s furious stare, unblinking as the crowd began cheering.
Seething at Sam’s victory and subsequent defiance, Chapman angrily nodded at Sharp and two seconds later, Sam felt another surge of electricity race through his body, paralysing him and sending him jerking to the hard ground.
As the pain jolted his body, he could feel the cuff being removed from his wrist and his body being dragged through a joyous crowd, with the odd boot slamming into his ribs as he went. As he was hauled down the darkened corridor towards the solitary confinement cells, he afforded himself a wry smile, before he was hurled into one of the narrow, sparse rooms and as the metal door slammed with a mighty thud, he was enveloped by darkness.
Chapter Fourteen
FOUR YEARS AGO…
‘Here you go, pig.’
A bowl of vegetable scrapings was tossed carelessly into Mac’s cage, spilling across the piss stained
