Chapter 79

"Follow me." Viktor stamped a bill on the bar counter and walked through a cascade of thick wooden-beaded curtains that led to a dimly lit corridor with his friend on his tail. It had doors on either side. He knocked and opened a door that had a man sitting behind a counter. That, with 3 chairs and a TV made up the tiny stale-smelly room.

Viktor spoke with him and deposited some bills on the dirty counter. The man said hollered something in Russian but Viktor waved it away as he pulled open the floor.

It shocked Sean, but what almost knocked the breath out of his chest was what was below. He would never have thought in a thousand years.

They were hit first by contesting blows of luminosity and noise from a crowd of not more than a hundred men surrounding a caged boxing-sized ring. Some faces, he'd seen before; they were permanent residents of his different 'homes'. A heated fight was the source of the hollers and tumult. They were so loud that he wondered why he didn't hear them from