NERO
Life, they say, is pain. At least, I’ve heard people say that.
But I can say with full authority that there ain’t no pain like the kind that gets doled out by a furious Russian guy who thinks you’ve kidnapped his only daughter.
I mean, I did.
But I’m guessing the details of how that whole thing has evolved in the last, oh, twelve hours will mean fuck-all to Marko Kalishnik right now.
That is, if I could even tell him.
I grunt into the dirty rag stuffed into my mouth, my head wrenching to the side as his fist crashes into my cheekbone. Black spots dot my vision and pain explodes through my face. I swear my jaw dislocates and then slips back into position.
We’ve been at this for two hours. The punching part, that is.
The first hour was the warm-up round, with only one question. But I couldn’t answer him then, just like I can’t answer him now, rag or no rag in my mouth.
Answering that one question—“where the fuck is my daughter”—could get her killed, unless I can get Marko alone to tell him everything I’ve put together in my head. But I doubt that’s going to happen.
After the warm-up, I got the full Russian treatment. Waterboarding, to start. Then more waterboarding, this time with vodka. Then a round with a ball pein hammer.
I’m pretty sure the pinky and ring finger on my left hand are broken. At least three of my toes, too.
But now we’re at the real fun part where Marko and a few of his men turn me into fucking hamburger meat.
I groan as Marko sinks a fist into my stomach, doubling me over against the binds holding me to the chair. We’re in a sub-basement similar to the one at Greymoor where I had Milena.
Glad to see that cosmic irony is still alive and well.
Rurik, that motherfucker Levka, and four other Kalishnik men are clustered to one side of the basement, drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes and smirking every time their boss’s fist connects with my body with a wet, fleshy sound.
Marko is getting into it with me.
He’s in his fifties, his hair silvering at the temples. But the man is built like someone twenty years younger. He’s shirtless, and he has the body of a cage fighter, complete with the sort of tattoos that Russians don’t get outside of prison.
“Where.”
He punches me in the jaw again, momentarily blinding me with the pain.
“Is.”
I roar a scream into the gag as he stomps on the foot with the broken toes.
“My.”
Backhand across the mouth.
“DAUGHTER!”
The last hit is a motherfucker. It’s so hard that I fall sideways, taking the chair with me as the gag falls out of my lips along with a mouthful of blood.
My head smacks the ground, sending more stars shooting through my blurred vision. It clears just in time to see his foot slamming toward me before it catches me in the jaw, sending me and the chair spiraling on the concrete floor.
I’ve taken some beatings in my life. Bad ones. I even temporarily, for reasons that escape me just now, got into the underground ring shit that Roman gets hard for.
But this is…next level.
This is fury incarnate.
And I can’t say a goddamn thing to stop it.
Marko squats down next to me, his face red, sweating glistening on his brow and his thick biceps. He grabs my ear, twisting it sharply as I roar, spitting blood across the floor.
“Look at me,” he snarls.
I try to focus on him, but my vision swims in and out.
“LOOK AT ME!” he roars, punching me in the nose.
His eyes are like a demon’s as he leers at me, his face a mask of wrath and rage.
“Tell me,” he growls, “and we can be done here. Where the fuck is my Milena?”
Blood trickles freely from my mouth and pools on the floor beneath my face.
“She…safe,” I croak out.
Marko’s lips curl into a snarl. “Safe where, motherfucker?!”
“Safe…” I mumble.
He glares at me for another three seconds. Then he snarls, lunging to his feet and grabbing me by the hair. He yanks me and the chair up so hard I swear he’s going to tear off my fucking head.
“Rurik!” he barks, still glaring at me. “How’s the vodka?”
Rurik chuckles. “Delicious, boss.”
“I think our guest would like some more.”
Fuck.
I’d heard horrible things about waterboarding: how it mimics the sensation of drowning without giving you the mercy of death. I can say from personal experience now that, yes, it’s awful.
…But using vodka is ten times worse.
Water doesn’t sear your flesh. It doesn’t make your eyes want to melt away. It doesn’t fill your lungs with a chemical burn that keeps you nauseous for hours.
And it looks like I’m having seconds.
Rurik walks over a fresh bottle and a towel and hands them to his boss. Then he goes to the other side of the basement and drags a table across the floor, filling the room with an awful grating sound.
I know what’s coming next.
Rurik and another guy lift me and the chair up, flip me onto my back, slam me down on the table, then spin me so my head is hanging over the edge.
Marko looms over me, face lined and eyes menacing as he glares at me.
“Last chance, ublyudok,” he snarls. “Where is she.”
We’re still not alone.
I can’t tell him. Not without putting her in danger.
“She…she’s safe,” I blubber through bloody lips.
Marko sighs, making a tsking sound. “Too bad. This is good vodka.”
The towel goes over my face. I grunt, squirming against the ropes, but it’s useless. Rurik and the other guy tilt the chair so my head is angled slightly to the floor.
The vodka hits the towel, soaking through it, burning my face as it mimics drowning—cutting off my air, choking my throat, leaving me sputtering and retching, fighting for air that isn’t coming.
When Marko tugs the soaked towel off, I’m gasping like a fish on land.
“Bring him down,” he grunts to his men.
Rurik takes that literally, shoving the chair sideways off the table. I crash to the ground shoulder-first, and the red-hot pain that explodes through me tells me I just managed to dislocate it.
This is not going well.
“I think I’ll use the hammer again,” Marko sighs, sounding almost bored.
He yanks me up so that the chair is on all four legs. Then he smiles as he taps one of my yet-unbroken fingers with the ball pein hammer.
“I’ll tell you where she is,” I croak, “if we’re alone.”
“No, now,” he growls. “What have you done with my daughter?!”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, just slams the hammer down on my left middle finger. My eyes roll back, a choked cry of pain strangling in my throat.
“Tell me,” he murmurs, tracing the hammer lightly over the freshly-broken digit and sending new pain exploding through my cortex.
“She’s…safe—”
“She isn’t safe!” he roars. “Not unless she’s here, with me, in my fucking home!”
The door to the basement swings open, and another of Marko’s men hurries in.
“Sir…” he murmurs, bowing stiffly as Marko turns to him.
“Whatever it is,” Marko growls, “it can wait until I’ve had my fill of this motherf—”
“Sir, she’s home.”
Marko whirls back to the man.
“Excuse me?”
“Ms. Kalishnik, sir. She’s upstairs. She’s looking for you.”
Marko drops the hammer. It hits the floor with a sharp clang. He doesn’t even look at me as he bolts from the room.
On the one hand, this is good. She’ll tell him that she’s safe, and that I didn’t bury her in a shallow grave, and impress upon him that he really should come back down here and release me.
On the other hand, until that happens, I’m down here with the real threat.
…Who’s looking at me like he damn well knows what I know as he picks the hammer up off the ground.
Fuck.
That’s the other downside:
I might not live long enough for Marko to get back down here.
