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The bell rang.
A Carabinieri officer approached. “Signore… what do we call you? Gladiator? Hero?”
“Say goodbye,” Decimus snarled, raising both blades for a final strike.
Lucius opened a crate. Inside, nestled in foam, was not a vase or a statue. It was a gladius —a short sword, its steel impossibly bright, its hilt carved with a wolf’s head. Beside it lay a bronze helmet with a scratched, silver visor.
As the elite scrambled, Marcus walked to the exit. He picked up his helmet, the wolf staring at him with empty eyes.
From the shadows, Lucius Vorenus stepped forward, phone in hand, recording everything. Behind him, the sound of sirens—real ones, called by an anonymous tip. Carabinieri flooded the warehouse.
Marcus stared at the gladius. “You want me to go in there? A US Army private, fighting a corrupt officer in a billionaire’s blood sport?”
Time stopped.
Decimus fell. Marcus pulled the gladius free and stood over him, breathing hard. He looked at the wealthy men in the audience—the senators of this new Rome. He looked at Tony Gage, whose smile had vanished.
Marcus grabbed a handful of sand from the arena floor. He threw it into Decimus’s eyes, rolled, and drove the gladius up through the gap between Decimus’s cuirass and belt.
Marcus stepped out. No uniform. No rank. Just the bronze helmet, the wolf-hilt gladius, and the scarred body armor of a Roman legionary, scavenged from the crate. The helmet’s visor hid his face, but the crowd saw his posture—not a showman, but a soldier.
“The nightclub owner?” Marcus frowned.
“What do you want?” Marcus’s hand rested on the knife in his boot.
“No,” Marcus said, his voice echoing off the metal. “I’m a private. That means I serve something bigger than you. Bigger than this pit.”
The Hypogeum wasn't a museum. It was a forgotten service tunnel beneath the Colosseum, where wild animals were once winched into the light. Now, it smelled of damp stone and gasoline. Flickering work lights revealed crates labeled Fragile: Mosaics .
