Page 150 of Tempt Me (Dark Odyssey 4)

Ava is tied to a pole. I can’t quite figure out what it is they’re doing with her. She sees me. Her gaze lands on me, and even from here I notice the sadness in her eyes.

I ball my fists, seething at the sight.

“See what I got for you?” booms a voice. It’s Ilya.

I turn my head to the left and see him on the stone platform the guards would have used back in the day to watch over the prisoners.

He walks down the wide steps with a bright smile on his face. This is the first time we’ve met in person.

The last glimpse of him was just that.

The fucker looks just as twisted as he did in the back of that car.

“I want them back!” I shout, and he laughs.

“You Italians are all the same. So strong-willed and of the belief that you’re above everything and everyone else. Not so. You’re part of my game now. I’m calling the shots. Not you.” He chuckles and tilts his head to the side.

“You son of a bitch. How can you do that to a child?” I don’t know why I bother to ask. It’s a very foolish question.

Out the corner of my eye I keep an eye out on the tank. It’s filling up. It’s big and could take a little time, but it doesn’t take much for a child to drown.

To get him out of danger, I’d have to get him out of the tank.

“Do I actually look like I care? This is a game to me. You are the joke of it. The toy. This is what we do to fuckers who think they can screw with us,” he declares and presses the button of some device I’m just noticing in his hands.

As he does, a little wall of fire shoots up from the ground about six feet away from Ava then starts spreading over the grass like dominoes falling, setting alight the ground as it moves. It looks like they’ve poured something flammable on the ground for the way it moves. It’s too uniform for it not to be.

Ava screams, and my heart stops beating. They want to burn her and drown Timothy.

“I thought I’d make it interesting since you want to save her so badly. I wonder if you’ll try to save them both. Or will you save the girl and leave your son to drown?” Ilya taunts. “First, though, you got to fight. We’re Russians. We love a good fight.” He laughs.

The crackle of glass turns me around as a guy with a tub full of broken glass approaches us. He sets the tub on the bench table nearby. Another guy follows with another tub. This one has some white sticky solution in it.

Dmitri smiles wider, devilish, and starts wrapping his wrists with a white hemp cloth and knotting it in a manner I’ve seen common to Muay Thai fighters.

He walks over to the bench and dips his hands in the solution, which I’m sure now is glue, and then he dips his hands in the glass and laughs.

I remember my first thoughts when I met him. I thought he looked like a cage fighter.

I know what sort of fighting we’ll be doing.

The dirty kind. And it seems that I’ll be using my bare hands.

Chapter Forty-Four

Vincent

“Can’t talk big now, can you, Boss?” Dmitri laughs and throws a punch my way.

I dodge it and back away.

We’re down in the clearing at the bottom of the steps. The men have formed a ring around us, and Ilya is still at the top of the steps, watching.

Dmitri comes for me again with a one-two punch that I dodge one more time.

I don’t fight back yet because I’m analyzing his moves and seeing how good he is. My guess so far is that he’s done this a lot before.

“Come on, you pussy, fight me!” he roars.

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