Champion Read online

  Anyone.

  She’s a survivor. Unfortunately, it’s that survivor’s sensibility—that willingness to do anything to see the next sunrise—that will take her away from me. And as I lie here next to her, feeling her still-naked body pressed against mine, listening to her breathe, I realize I’m going to do something stupid.

  I’m not as big as Cohen Roth. I don’t have anywhere near as much experience on the sand as he has. Yet I think I can beat him, if they give me a few more weeks to train.

  But Roth will come for Sylvie tomorrow, and she will go with him. And I can’t even blame her for that. The other inmates give me space, because they know that if they meet me on the sand, they’re going to die. But they give Roth space because they know that if they piss him off, they’ll die in the bullpen. Or on the yard.

  Roth can keep Sylvie alive and largely untouched, at least for a while, because he’s feared like only a violent psychopath can be. He can give her what I can’t, because he’s willing to do what I won’t. To hurt people for no reason.

  But just because he won’t let the others hurt her doesn’t mean he won’t hurt her.

  I can’t stand the thought of him laying one hand on her. Which is how I know I’m going to do something stupid.

  I lie there with her for hours, listening. Watching the window for any sign of daylight; the sun is huge on the horizon here, and dawn breaks hard and fast. I should have made her get dressed before she fell asleep, but in the midst of an unexpected and bizarrely normal moment, I didn’t even think about it.

  For a few minutes, we weren’t death row inmates, locked in a cage. We were just new lovers, falling asleep naked and intertwined.

  But now… Now the sun could appear any moment, and with it will come as many of the other inmates as can crowd into the hall outside my cell. They cannot find her naked. Most of them won’t have the restraint to keep their hands to themselves once they’ve really seen her, even if Roth does threaten to kill them. She’ll start a riot, and not even the great Cohen Roth can fight a hundred men at once.

  She has to get dressed. But surely that can wait until—

  The first ray of light breaks through my window, a cold streak of pale yellow against the wall.

  “Sylvie.” I run my hand down her shoulder. “Wake up. You have to—”

  “Anderson.” Roth’s voice makes my jaw clench.

  I crawl over Sylvie and step into my pants, then I snatch her clothes from the floor and toss them to her. She sits up, her eyes wide and startled, but her spine is straight with determination. With an ironclad willingness to do whatever it takes to save her own life.

  Roth stands as far to the right as he can, trying to see my bed, which is largely blocked by the concrete section of wall. “Anderson, did you fuck my girl?”

  My teeth grind together so hard I can hear the stress creaks.

  He bursts into laughter. “Don’t look so serious, man, I’m just kidding. She’s yours until lockdown ends.” His laughter dies and he’s suddenly scowling, like flipping a switch. “After that, you better not fucking touch her without my say so.”

  “You’re bluffing.” I speak softly and stand an arm’s length back from the bars. “I know you don’t want this to come to blows.” Because he knows damn well I’m not one of the men he can beat without getting hurt.

  Roth scowls at me, hands clenched around the bars, and I can see that he understands the score. We’re at a deadlock. In fact, I’ve backed him into a corner. If I make him fight for Sylvie, he’ll risk injury days before his bout in the arena. If he doesn’t try to take her from me, he’ll look weak enough for other men to challenge.

  He needs a way to save face. So I offer him one. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “You’re already asking me to rent her out? Damn, was she that good?” He leers at her over my shoulder, and I can practically feel her tense.

  “I’m not asking you for shit. She doesn’t want to go with you.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what she wants.” His scowl deepens, and I understand my miscalculation. If Roth loses face here and now, winning in the arena won’t do him any good. Once he reveals a weakness, the others will be lining up to exploit it, even if that means forming an alliance to take down the champ. “The bitch can cooperate, or we can do this the hard way.”

  So then, that’s it. He’s willing to fight, despite the risk, not to claim her, but to preserve his own reputation.

  “Graham,” Sylvie says, but I don’t turn. I can’t look at her right now, because if I see what I’m losing, I’m going to lose my shit. I’m going to do something stupid.

  I’m going to get us both hurt.

  “Aww, fuck,” someone calls from the hallway, as footsteps come to a halt. “Someone told Roth. Who the hell told Roth about the woman?”

  Roth turns toward the voice. “Fuck off, Vince. Spread the word. No one comes near me today, or I’ll start crushing skulls. Today I have personal business.” He rubs one hand over his crotch while he leers at Sylvie again, and I’m hyper-aware of the ticking clock. Of the fact that any second, lockdown will end, and my cell door will slide open.

  Vince leaves, shouting the news for the rest of the bullpen to hear, and Roth turns back to me. “That goes for you too. You had your fun. Now it’s my turn.”

  That low-pitched tone rings throughout the bullpen, followed by a cascading echo of metallic clicks, as the locks disengage. I exhale as my cell door grates open.

  Roth steps forward, and I lurch into his path. “I’d rather face you on the sand,” he growls down at me. “But if you want to die now, I can work with that too.”

  I hold my ground, pissed that I have to glare up at him. “Are you really willing to risk your life over her?”

  “Are you?” He looks unsure for the first time, clearly puzzled that I would risk so much for a girl I’ve already had.

  “Graham,” Sylvie says again, and again, I ignore her, because I know better than to turn my back on Cohen Roth.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “Hell yes, I’m willing to fight for her, if that means you won’t get near her.”

  Sylvie sucks in a breath behind me.

  Roth’s fists clench at his sides, and I back up a step, ready to duck his blow and come up swinging. But then he bursts into strained laughter and smacks my shoulder, as if we’ve just shared a good joke. “Great. I’m going to need someone to watch her while I train. We’ll work something out. If she wants to fuck you too, I don’t give a shit, as long as she’s available when I want her. After today.” He tries to step around me, practically puffed up with satisfaction, like he’s just negotiated the deal of a lifetime. Like I should be thanking him.

  Fucking psycho.

  He reaches around me, grabbing for Sylvie, and I knock his arm out of the way, stepping between them again.

  “Fuck off, Anderson. I’m not fucking playing.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Okay, that’s enough.” Sylvie inserts herself between us, clutching her bag, and pushes him back with one hand on his chest. “I’m cooperating. Just give me a minute.”

  For a second, I think he’ll rip into her for ordering him around, but he seems suddenly magnanimous with the realization that he’s won without throwing a single punch.

  “Graham…” Sylvie turns on me, and those blue eyes are flashing again, but not with passion this time.

  I put my hands on either side of her chin, my fingers stretching into her hair beneath her ears, thinking of how desperate she’d been for one good memory to take with her into what amounts to sexual slavery. “You don’t have to do this,” I whisper. “God, Sylvie, you don’t have to do this.”

  “This is my choice,” she says. But I recognize the emotion churning in her eyes now, and it isn’t determination. It isn’t even resignation. It’s fear. She’s going with him not just to save her life, but to save mine. She believes he can kill me. She believes he will kill me. “It’s my choice, Graham, and I’ve made it.” She steps o
ut of my grip and turns so that she can see us both. “And I think Cohen is being pretty reasonable.”

  He probably can’t see disgust in the way her lips curl up on the end of the lie, but I can.

  “I’ll go with him today, but I’ll see you again tomorrow. While he trains. Okay?” Her look is fierce again. She’s begging me to say yes. To smile and nod and pretend we don’t all three know that once he has her, he can do whatever he wants with her, and calling it her choice doesn’t actually make that true.

  You can’t just call a shit sandwich a soufflé and expect people to eat it.

  “Sylvie…”

  “Tomorrow.” She leans in for a kiss, and just before her lips meet mine she fixes me with that fierce glare and whispers. “Do not do anything stupid, Graham. I’m going to need you…” Then her mouth presses against mine before I can argue.

  Before I can even process what’s happening, she’s gone, that monster’s hand wrapped around her arm, hauling her down the hall so fast she has to jog just to keep up.

  “Sucks to be you.” I look up to find Kyle something-or-other watching me from the toilet in his cell across the aisle, his pants around his ankles. “Don’t you hate it when your friends take your toys without asking, then bring them back broken?” He whistles and shakes his head. “Last kid that took my toys wound up face down in the stream behind my grandma’s house.”

  “Fuck off, Kyle.” I step into the aisle and slam the cell door closed, because my anger needs an outlet. The door bounces back, refusing to latch, and I slam it again. And again. And again.

  Kyle only laughs, from the toilet. And the real bitch is that he’s right. Not that Sylvie’s a toy, but that Roth is going to break her.

  That’s what he does. That’s how he got here in the first place.

  I can’t let that happen.

  I storm off down the aisle, kicking aside ripped vinyl canteens and cloth stiff with dried fluids I don’t even want to guess at. In the atrium, I turn left and am heading for D block when someone steps out of one of the other cellblocks and grabs my arm.

  “Nope.” Hardy pulls me backward, and I let him pull me into one of the empty offices. “Let it go.”

  “You don’t even know where I’m going.”

  “Everyone knows where you’re going. You’re always giving me advice, Anderson, so let me give you a little.” He’s up in my face, and normally I’d shove him back, but the truth is that this time he may have his head on better than I do. “You have to let this one go. She made her choice, and if you don’t learn to live with it, you’re going to die with it.”

  “He’s going to hurt her.” I grind the words out through clenched teeth, and they taste like fucking acid burning my tongue.

  “Look where we are, man!” Hardy spreads his arms. “He’s not the only one who’s going to hurt her. The only reason any of us are here is to hurt each other, and they don’t recruit women, which means this was her call. She knew what she was getting into, and so far, she’s gotten damn lucky. But we both know she’s a short-timer, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Nothing Roth can do either. So the only option you have is to take the time he’s giving you—”

  “Did everyone hear that?”

  “—and try not to think about what’s happening when you’re not with her. Okay?”

  I nod, because he’s making sense, but it takes every bit of willpower I have to make my feet move when he suggests we hit the weights. Halfway to the yard, they stop moving, and I can’t make them go another step.

  “Graham? Come on man. You need to be out here for a while.” Because sound carries in the bullpen, and I’m not going to want to hear what’s happening in there.

  “I can’t lift right now. My head’s not in the right place.” Lifting is mostly muscle memory, so my mind always wanders. But I can’t let that happen today.

  “Fine. Then let’s go move Ray’s corpse out of his cell. I’m thinking about moving in.”

  We turn, and I make it all the way into A block. All the way past my cell to the one where Ray sits on the ground, staring through the bars at nothing. His hands lay open and empty at his sides, and his blood-stained shirt has left a sticky puddle on the concrete.

  “Damn.” Hardy whistles. “Your girl did this?”

  “Yes. And if she tries it with Roth, he’ll put her in her grave.” And I think that’s the root of my fear. Not that she’ll cooperate—which fucking guts me—but that she’ll fight. And he’ll kill her for it.

  “That’s on her. We all got choices to make. Unpleasant things to bear. Grab his legs.”

  “What? Oh.” Hardy has Ray by the shoulders. I grab the corpse’s ankles, and we carry him down the hall, through the atrium, and past the yard to the second gate in the passageway leading to the arena.

  Though the first gate was open, this one is closed and locked, with two other corpses leaning against it. One of them is Craig, who died with his pants down. The other poor bastard has a puncture wound in his neck, identical to the one that killed Ray, as well as a bloody fucking hole through his left eye.

  “Holy shit.” Hardy drops Ray on the ground next to the first corpse, who only looks vaguely familiar. “Your girl?”

  I nod.

  “Tell me you took her weapon.”

  “Fuck no, Ray did, but I gave it back to her!” Son of a bitch.

  Hardy shrugs. “Well, now Roth has it.” He shrugs and kicks Ray’s feet aside. “Let’s go get some breakfast.”

  We leave the bodies against the gate, where they’ll be picked up in the middle of the night by the patrol, after they’ve closed and locked the first gate to secure the passageway. Then we head back through the yard and the atrium into a cafeteria empty of everything but a series of steel tables flanked by stools bolted to the floor.

  Well, that, and three still-functioning packaged meal and supply dispensers, which work by scanning the prisoner numbers on our palms.

  We’re halfway to the front of the line when a scream cuts through the air—and right through my heart.

  Sylvie.

  I spin and take off through the atrium, but Hardy’s right behind me. “No, man, she’s fine.” He grabs my arm. “Let it go.”

  “She’s not fine,” I growl. “Women don’t scream like that when they’re fine.”

  “Graham, you can’t help her.”

  I rip my arm from his grip and take off down the hall, into the oddly deserted D block. “Fuck that.” I’m the only one who can help her.

  8

  SYLVIE

  “My name is Sylvie,” I say as Cohen Roth practically drags me out of Graham’s cellblock.

  “I heard.”

  “Oh.” Men leer at me from every cell we pass. Two of them are touching themselves, and I don’t know if that’s because there’s a woman in the bullpen for the first time ever, or because they’re men, and jacking off is like their national pastime. “So, where are we going?”

  “To my cell.” Roth pulls me across the back of the atrium and into D block. His fingers are digging into my arm but complaining would be pointless. Pulling free would only give him an excuse to grip tighter.

  “So…is there any chance we might be able to eat first? I’m kind of hungry.” I know that delaying the inevitable is pointless, and it might even be better to just get this over with. But all I can seem to think about is putting it off, even just for a few more minutes.

  Roth snorts and pulls harder on my arm. “I guess you also want flowers and a movie? What the fuck do you think this is?” He comes to a stop in front of the last cell on the right and nearly throws me inside. “Strip.”

  I turn, letting my backpack slide to the floor, and am horrified to see that a crowd has already gathered behind Roth, who’s standing in the cell doorway, watching me like I’m built out of all his favorite foods.

  “Um…okay. But, do you think you could maybe get rid of the audience?”

  “Why? There’s no privacy in the bullpen.” And in D block, t
hat seems to be true. Roth’s bed isn’t shielded by a concrete section of wall. His bed, his toilet, his sink, and what remains of a desk built into the wall are all completely exposed. As am I.

  “I just… I mean…” I grit my teeth to keep my jaw from trembling. I have no problem fighting. I’d love to be fighting right now. But this is… This is…

  Humiliating.

  Roth crosses his arms over his thick chest. “Take your clothes off, or I’ll rip them off.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t expect this. Just because Graham wouldn’t give them a show doesn’t mean Roth won’t.

  “Please. Please make them go away.” I hold his gaze, because if I look at any of the rest of them, I’m going to cry.

  I cannot cry right now.

  “I warned you.” He takes two steps toward me, and I back up until I hit the wall. Clearly begging is not the tactic to take with Roth. That seems to make him feel more powerful and give him an excuse to play rough.

  “Wait. I’ll do it.” I only have one change of clothes, and I can’t afford to lose this one. So I pull my shirt off, glad that my prison-issued bra is a large, shapeless thing. Not that that’ll matter in a minute. “I just thought… I’m a perk, right? Because you’re the champion? I guess I just didn’t think the champion would have to give everyone else a taste of what he’s having. I mean, if you take someone’s brownie in the cafeteria, do you go around giving out bites to everyone else, just so they know what they’re missing?”

  His eyes narrow. His jaw bulges. But he doesn’t say anything, so I push my pants over my hips and let them fall to the floor. And that’s when the catcalls and obscenities begin.

  I keep my head high, trying not to show that it bothers me. Roth has to think he’s getting rid of them because they’re infringing upon his privilege, not because they’re making me uncomfortable.

  “Fuck, she’s hot,” some asshole says, leering at me over his shoulder. “Make her take the rest off. Make her touch herself.”

  Roth spins around and drives his fist into the man’s solar plexus like a fucking battering ram. The man flies across the aisle and stumbles into the open cell across from me.