Page 85 of Brutal Union
Dust and grit fill his eyes. He roars—half in rage, half in pain—and I surge forward from the ground, finding only one knife, slashing upward with a wide arc. My blade kisses flesh, dragging a long, wet line across his left thigh from knee to hip. Blood pours fast. He staggers back with a hiss.
I stumble to my feet, ribs screaming, head spinning, and draw another blade—my second-to-last.
“This isn’t over yet,” I rasp, the words catching in my throat like broken glass.
Sho blinks through the pain, eyes narrowed, blood dripping into the dirt beneath him. He smiles. Just faintly. Just enough to remind me that even hurt, he is still calculating. “No,” he says. “But it’s about to be.”
He moves again with less speed, yet more precise, the pain in his leg slowing him but sharpening his focus. I swing hard, desperate now, but he sidesteps, and kicks—hard—his shin colliding with my forearm. The blade flies from my hand before I even register the pain.
Just as I draw my final blade—my last hidden weapon, the one I keep tucked between the seam of my waistband and my skin, for desperate moments like this—Sho catches my wrist in mid-motion. His grip is like iron, precise and final, and before I can react, he twists. A sickening pop echoes through my shoulder as tendons stretch past their limits. Pain bursts through my arm, white-hot and blinding, forcing a gasp from my throat. The blade falls, useless, forgotten, clinking against the dirt.
With a grunt, Sho forces me down, my knees hitting the blood-soaked ground, my arm still wrenched behind my back. His blade moves like a phantom, and I feel it—a whisper of metal at my neck. Cold. I can just barely see the dull gleam of it in my peripheral, like a silent promise. It isn’t theatrical. It is execution.
“You’re all out of tricks,” Sho grunts, breath uneven, like his strength is finally thinning—but I catch it. The wince beneath the words. He is still bleeding. Still human. Still fighting me as much as whatever haunts him. “Any last words?”
For a moment,my heart stills. Not from fear. From acceptance. This is it. My mission left unfinished. My purpose fails. I have lived through wars, betrayals, bloodbaths that turn entire rooms into crimson graves. And yet this… this is how it ends?
“Please…” I groan, the pain making my voice gravel-thick. “Just save Mia. If you take down the Yakuza, make sure you save her.”
Sho doesn’t respond immediately.
“Who is Mia?” he asks, voice sharper now—less soldier, more interrogator.
“She is my niece,” I mutter, the words tasting like rust in my mouth. “The Yakuza took her. Everything I’ve done—everything I’ve risked—it is all to get her back.”
Sho remains still for several seconds, and when he finally exhales, it is almost a scoff. “So I am just a pawn,” he says bitterly. “A bargaining chip.”
His silence stretches, tight and sharp. Then, his voice returns, quieter now, but not without a bite.
“Huh.”
Just one syllable—but the sound of something clicking into place. I feel him withdraw a half step, and the cold pressure of the blade leaves my skin. For a moment, the breath I have been holding loosens, and I brace to strike, to reclaim what little control I have left.
Because just as I brace to turn—ready to strike one last time—he turns toward the crowd and speaks.
“The woman before me,” he calls out, voice clear, dominant, unapologetically commanding, “has agreed to submit to me. She will serve me for the rest of her life.”
What?
My mind reels. I blink hard, sure I imagine the words. But the crowd has heard. I can feel the pulse of their reaction ripple outward, silence folding in on itself like breath held too long. It takes a full second for the words to register. And when they do, my blood surges in my veins like wildfire.
“I beg your unbelievable pardon?” I snarl, trying to shove off the ground. “I do not?—”
But Sho’s voice cuts clean through mine, louder, more authoritative. “Does Madam Aoi find this a reasonable conclusion?” he asks, tone clipped and formal now. “To spare her life in servitude to me?”
His grip on my injured shoulder tightens—not enough to rebreak it, but enough to remind me that I am still in the dirt, still unarmed, still on my knees.
Aoi doesn’t answer right away.She turns her gaze toward Bhon, who merely shrugs and chuckles like this is a delightful little plot twist in his favorite show. It is the kind of laugh that says, Let him have his prize…
“Are you prepared…” Aoi sings from the upper deck, her voice playful but laced with sadism, “…to give up yourself—mind, body, and spirit—to be his slave?”
The wordslavestrikes me harder than Sho’s kick ever could. It isn’t just a title. It is a declaration. A binding chain forged notfrom iron, but humiliation. And the entire pit—hundreds of eyes—is waiting to see if the Queen of the Russian underground will bend. This isn’t about survival anymore. This is about control.
I stare at the dirt in front of me, jaw clenched and trembling with rage and shame. My shoulder throbs in pain. My mind screams in defiance... But through the chaos of my heartbeat, one name whispers louder than all of it.
Mia.
My breath trembles. My heart pounds against my ribs like it wants out. My pride screams at me to spit in their faces, to take the execution and die like the queen I am. But Mia… she is still out there.
