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He wasn’t just angry, MJ thought numbly. He was livid, murderously so.
He spit at her again, and she didn’t even blink.
“You thought to string me along for the ride while you wait for your young Greek lover to rescue you?”
She started to shake her head, but this only seemed to inflame him more. The last thing she saw was Manolito’s boot-covered foot heading towards her face.
As everything went dark, imaginary Helios fell to his knees.Let me see you, brat.
Oh, how she had wanted to hear those words from him for so long. But now they meant nothing.
****
James gazed down atthe check he held in his hands.One million dollars.It was his. And it was all thanks to Vlahos and Madeline’s brat. Shoving it back into his shirt’s breast pocket, he shrugged into his leather jacket and grabbed his overnight bag from the bed. It was time to go. He knew how things worked in Manolito’s world. Regular deposits into his bank account meant Manolito would keep MJ around until she broke. But a one-time payment like this? He doubted she would last more than a week.
When he got to the airport, James decided to take a flight to Nassau on a whim. He used to go there for vacation between races, and back in the day, the parties there had been wild. It had been years since he had been there. Surely someone would recognize him still?Anyone who did, James thought magnanimously,would be treated like a king by him.
As he paid for his ticket over the counter, James was completely unaware of eyes that followed his every move. He was just as oblivious when a stewardess took his photo from behind the liquor cart, too lost in his fantasies of reclaiming his glory days as a celebrated race car driver.
Unfortunately for him, his dreams were doomed to stay unrealized.
The moment he stepped out of the airport, a pair of casually dressed men cornered him, trapping James in between their hulking bodies. He opened his mouth to protest but fell silent when he felt the butt of a gun pressed to his side. They didn’t tell him to come with them quietly after that. They knew they didn’t have to. Someone like James was sure to know the rules.
They pushed him inside the backseat of a nondescript-looking car, and again James was kept between his two captors. In front of him were two other men, both of them sporting Hawaiian shirts, and they would have looked no different from ordinary tourists if not for the guns tucked under their shirts.
The reality of his situation became a lot clearer when the man on his left began to tie his wrists. “Where are you taking me? What do you want?” His blood chilled as a thought occurred to him. “Are you working for Chavez? It’s not my fault he’s—”
“You talk too much,” the man on his right said quietly. When he took off his dark glasses, his face appeared vaguely familiar to James. A second later, he realized it was one of the friends of the Greek biker MJ had hooked up with in college.
Before he could even think of protesting his innocence, the younger man had knocked him out cold.
Yuri gazed reflectively on the bruise of his fist. “If I had hit him any harder,” he murmured, “I might have killed him.”
“Good thing you didn’t then,” Andreus grunted from the other side of James. “We can take turns after Helios has questioned him.”
Helios was waiting for them at the boathouse, his face stoic as he watched the other officers of Afxisi unload James from the backseat. The older man remained unconscious even as they tied him by the ankles and hung him upside down from a hook. At his nod, Andreus began reeling him up and stopped when James was at eye level with Helios.
Helios cracked his fists. Only common sense and sheer worry over MJ had kept him in the boathouse, waiting for the others to bring to him the man who had tortured his woman almost every year of her life. With them so close to finding clues about Manolito Chavez’s whereabouts, Helios knew he had to take greater care and not let Gracie suspect him. Right now, Gracie and the whole world was not even aware that MJ existed, much less the havoc her abduction had created in his life. But that could change any moment. All it took, Helios knew, was one stupid mistake, and it could cost him MJ’s life.
He took the lighter from the desk and clicking it open, he calmly held it close to James Cartwright’s arms. In seconds, James screamed himself awake at the smell and feel of his burning skin. He found himself staring straight into Helios’ eyes, the world around him upside down. It took another second of blazing agony for James to understand he was the one hanging upside down.
“Do you know who I am?” Helios asked.
James only glared at him, knowing there was no point in asking for mercy.
“I can see in your eyes that you do.” Helios bared his teeth in a smile. “Then you will understand if I do this to you, won’t you?”
James’ eyes shot up, following the movement of the man’s hand. His eyes widened in alarm when he saw where it was heading. “Fuck you,” he bellowed. But his words ended in a moan of excruciating pain as Helios Andreadis roughly cut his pants open and set his dick on fire.
Helios only tossed the lighter away when the flesh of James’ manhood had turned a different color. The man was likely in the most hellish throes of pain right now, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted James Cartwright to suffer the kind of life-threatening fear he had subjected MJ to every damn day of her life. He wanted to watch as rapists violated James the way James had sold MJ to be violated, wanted to watch the light go out of the man’s eyes as Helios slowly crushed his windpipe—
Kellion clasped Helios’ shoulder in warning. “Whatever you’re thinking, President, it’s not worth it. We need answers, and we’re running out of time.”
The words washed over him like a bucket of cold water, and Helios fought hard to rein his emotions in. In front of him, James was still screaming in between hurling invectives at him and MJ. But the man’s protests died when Helios crouched down to pick up the lighter.
“If you don’t want me to keep burning your dick until it falls off, you’re going to answer my questions clearly and completely.”
Kellion grabbed a steel bat lying in wait and used it to lightly “tap” the side of James’ head, just enough to have blood run down the side of his temple. “Understand that, asshole?”
