"Jesus Christ, Dmitry," Megan said when she heard the door unlock and saw him stride into his apartment and strip down to his underwear. She turned on the lights and looked at him. He had shaved his head, and his ripped body was spotted with welts and lined with scratches. Blood dripped from his face onto the carpet.

He took a long pull from a bottle of Baikal vodka, and his eyes found hers. "My head's shot right now," he whispered. "I'm seeing double."

"You were out fighting again," she said with conviction. "Did you win or lose?"

He leered at her, and his mouth twisted into a wry grin. "I lost."

"You drugged me, took me against my will, and then you just locked me up here and left, you fucking bastard."

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. I made a promise to my brother to bring you back and keep you here until he returns. I don't usually enjoy kidnapping other men's wives," he quipped, a wicked smile forming on his handsome face.

"Keep your fucking jokes to yourself, sweetheart," she mocked. "Where's Mikhail?"

"Boris said you are not to see him until he comes back from Moscow. He hired a nanny to look after him."

"Well, fuck him. And fuck you, too. You should stop doing this to yourself," she said bluntly. "You're getting too old for this shit."

He pulled on a pair of cargo pants and looked her in the eye. "I'm thirty-three, Megan. I am not fucking old. Your champion husband's got nothing on me."

"I never said he's better than you. Your brother fights because he takes pleasure in subduing his opponents. I've watched you inside the ring, Dmitry," she said, and her eyes welled up. "You are nothing like him."

Megan paused for a moment, taking in the sight of him. "What do you get out of it? When is it going to be enough?"

"Fuck you, Megan. You don’t know shit about me. All you do is criticize. You don't know how it gets inside the cage."

"I don't know?" she demanded. "I'm the one who took care of your brother for the last four years. I am the one who cleaned up his mess every time he got home looking like a car ran him over. I am the one who moved to fucking Bogoroditsk for him. You think it's easy for me to see you this way?" she asked, poking his blood-soaked chest. "Two grown men trying to prove who is tougher than the other?"

He took another step, closing the distance between them. She lowered her eyes, and he felt her freeze up. "I’m not in the big league, honey," Dmitry said, his voice deceptively soft. "There are no gloves for me, no mouthpiece or medical crew behind the ropes. I fight because it's who I am."

He turned around and limped toward the bathroom. Megan followed him in, watching, as he opened the medicine cabinet and took out the gauze pad, bandages, and saline solution, placing them side by side on the sink. He slumped forward and started wiping his cheeks haphazardly.

"Let me do it," Megan said, walking closer. She took the cloth from his hand and started wiping his face. "You look like you're ready to pass out and I prefer to have you standing for this."

He sniffed hard and adjusted his body so she could reach up to him. "You smell nice," he whispered as she ran the pad gently over his mashed-up ear, cleaning the dried blood there.

She stopped for a second and looked into his unsettling eyes. "In your fucking dreams, Dmitry."

His face remained expressionless. "I guess one man is not enough for you, right, Megan?" He watched as she ran her palm across the bandage on his stomach, securing it in place.

"Don't think you know the first thing about me,” she said, throwing the blood-soaked gauze into the garbage. “What do you think Boris is going to do once you tell him about those men? Do you think he’s going to let me go? Unharmed? Your brother doesn’t love me. It took me four years to figure it out, and I don't want Mikhail to grow up and be like him."

"And how's that?"

She wiped her hands on the towel and looked deep into his eyes. "Heartless," she said and walked away, leaving him with a bruised ego and a raging erection.