NIKAELEON *** Scorpion had been right in his guess that I would be sent to the ring by the boss. The ring turned out to be an illegal street fighting syndicate. Scorpion had contacted me two days after I met the boss, and I was told to train with him everyday for a week. A day after, and here I am. We trained at the warehouse where i had met up with him before I was taken to the boss while wearing a blindfold. I was in the changing room with some of the other fighters but the roar of the crowd still penetrated through the walls. We were deep underground, in a basement arena that had been built for this purpose. I wondered how they were able to construct the place without law enforcement being suspicious of it’s purpose, but with money, a lot of things were possible. They policemen were probably on the bosses’ payrolls. The arena were soundproofed in a way that the sounds from down here wouldn’t get to the surface. There were almost three hundred spectators, mostly men and some wome

NIKAELEON***I groaned and tried to open my eyes but for some reason they felt so heavy. I would have just continued sleeping, but staying dormant like that felt so wrong, like my body was tired of sleeping. Or maybe it was my mind that was tired of the inactivity, who knows.My body also felt weirdly heavy and I couldn’t even move despite how much effort I was trying to put into lifting something, anything. Dread filled me as I realised that I may be paralysed, and I tried to remember why I was stuck like this, what could have led to it, but my memories were blank. Seems like my body and mind were on strike today.I began to hear movement and faint voices.“He’s stirring, get the doctor.” One voice that sounded so far away said and feet shuffled, probably to obey the order.“Nik.” I heard another voice that sounded closer, calling out to me.It was easier to try to pull myself out of whatever abyss I was stuck in when someone was calling for me, guiding me back to consciousness. All

NIKAELEON *** I stayed at the hospital for three more days before I asked to be discharged because I couldn’t bear the constant inactivity. It normally wouldn’t have been allowed, but my father just ordered the doctor’s to discharge me and they immediately signed me out. Father… it sounded so surreal anytime I thought about it. I have a father now, I’m not an orphan, I’m not a nobody. It was crazy to think that I spent so many years thinking I had no family when they were out there somewhere looking for me. I still wasn’t able to call him father out loud so I still called him the boss. He asked me to at least call him by his first name, Marco, because it felt wrong to him for his own son to call him boss. But calling him by his first name seemed worse to me. It was so weird to have such familiarity suddenly expected of me. We left the hospital with the boss’ entourage and were driven to his house, a different place from the other mansion. I was told that he only used that place fo

NIKAELEON *** Three months. It’s been three months since the incident with Levi. It took me about two weeks to recover fully. During those two weeks, my father and Antonio took turns making Levi’s life miserable, torturing him till he gave up the information we needed. But it turned out that he didn’t really know much, he was just a lackey, a means to an end for the people he betrayed my father for. The next connection to the so-called organisation which Levi said was called black knights was Connor, and I was our way in with him. These past months, I spent most of my time training physically, then the rest of the time, my father showed me the ropes of the business. He hadn’t yet formally introduced me to his business partners and associates as his son. He wanted me to be fully prepared before meeting the important people. He knew as well as I did that they would scrutinise me, try to put me down, try to see if they can break me, check if I’m worthy by their standards. I need all th

NIKAELEON *** They say that before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. How you’ve lived, your regrets, things you never got a chance to do, things you wished to do, about sixty seconds of it all. As the car fell over the bridge and plummeted to the water below, I experienced none of those. Why? I was determined not to die, it wasn’t my time yet. That was the last thought in my head as the bonnet of the car hit the water and we submerged immediately. I was the only one with my seat belt on so I stayed glued to my seat. The driver moved forward because of the momentum and smacked his head against the windshield. Because it was made of reinforced glass, it didn’t break, but he became unconscious as the side of his head began to bleed. Antonio was able to stop himself from sharing the same fate as the driver and only fell to the floor of the car, but my father smacked his head against the driver’s seat and slumped. Because of the water pressure, I knew that opening the door at