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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. “Safewhere, 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’sawful.

…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 isnotgoing 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.