Page 177 of Dance of Madness

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 gettinginto itwith 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’tgetoutside 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 amotherfucker. 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 clearsjustin 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 thefuckis my Milena?”

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