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was not a mixed martial artist, nor a cage fighter. The self-defense techniques he’d learned in secret, being revealed to the world beyond Alexander for the first time, were bred for outlasting an opponent in the streets. Fights to the death inevitably about survival, not title belts. He knew success was not about thought, but instinct. Think and you’re dead.
    Feel, react, respond …
    And that’s what Michael did. He felt Segura launch himself into a bull rush a split instant before the giant dropped down. So, as Segura’s huge arms moved to wrap Michael up, Michael had already clamped his hands over the giant’s bald skull, fingers lacing together to bring his face down as Michael’s knee came up.
    Impact was stunning. Michael felt Segura’s nose compress, bone shattering and cartilage cracking, behind a burst of blood that sprayed downward. Then, as Segura’s head whiplashed back upward, Michael rode the momentum by taking hold of his already damaged arm and angling himself to cut the giant’s legs out from under him. Michael had never practiced the move before, had never even seen the precise movement to mimic. Instinct had taken over, Michael reacting to a weakness gleaned from some primordial sense of thought normally foreign to civilized man. The world around him had slowed, everything crawling except his own motions. Sight sharpened. Sound vanished. Life unfolded in snippets held in memory as still shots.
    One final knee launched upward against the side of the Executioner’s skull.
    Segura hitting the mat with enough force to rattle the cage.
    The crowd going crazy, erupting in cheers and applause so loud Michael’s ears bubbled.
    â€œTyrant, Tyrant, Tyrant!”
    The chant resumed as Seven Sins security finally got the cage door open enough for Alexander to push himself through over the Tyrant Girl Kim’s unconscious frame. He reached Michael just as he sank to his knees and the cheers hit a new crescendo.
    â€œTyrant, Tyrant, Tyrant!”
    The crowd had leaped to its collective feet, especially the women rooting him on, a hero who’d vanquished a villain intending to do harm to innocents. The simplest of all stories, but also the most complex in his case for the pain that it carried and scars it had left inside him. Scars on the outside, the kind with which Dorado Segura was riddled, were nothing compared to those on the soul. Don Luciano had needed a notebook to remind him of his sins, but Michael needed no such ledger to remind him of his pain.
    â€œTyrant, Tyrant, Tyrant!”

 
    NINE
    L AS V EGAS, N EVADA
    Melissa escorted Devereaux toward the private bank of glass elevators reserved only for the underwater suites and extending ten levels down into the resort’s Daring Sea.
    â€œNo other luggage?” she asked him.
    â€œI travel light,” he said, wheeling his two carry-ons with one attached to the top of the other.
    They reached the three elevators serving the Daring Sea suites and Melissa pressed the single button, lighting it up.
    â€œYou’re not claustrophobic, are you, sir?”
    â€œNot at all. Is there something I should be concerned about?”
    Melissa smiled. “Just a question we’re required to ask. Here at the Seven Sins even an elevator ride is an experience.”
    It was indeed, Devereaux thought after the glass elevator began its slow descent into the Daring Sea. He might not have been claustrophobic, but there was something initially disconcerting about descending through water on all sides with tropical fish curving agilely around the glass. Imagine all this, in the middle of a desert yet! What kind of man could not only dream up such a thing, but also have the persistence and resources to make it a reality?
    The kind of man I came here to find , Devereaux thought. And he found himself staring up through the compartment’s glass ceiling, noticing a frothy red film descending beyond, that