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Oh, how she had wanted to hear those words from him for so long. But now they meant nothing.

****

James gazed down at the 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?”

James tried to spit at him, but Kellion took a swift step back.

Andreus walked over and used the butt of his gun to tap the other side of James’ temple. Again, blood ran down the side of his head. “Do you understand what our President said? We’ll keep hitting you until you get it right, you know.”

“Yes,” he forced himself to say, knowing he wouldn’t survive if his captors kept hitting him on the head. Pain from his burned skin and dick made his head even woozier. He began to hallucinate, feeling like a hundred MJs were going around him in circles. And all of them were laughing at him.
 

Damn you, stupid cunt.

Every one of the one hundred MJs didn’t answer, they just kept on laughing as if he wasn’t worth wasting their voices for.

Another hard painful tap to his head had James’ attention swinging back to Helios and the other men. The walls of the boathouse seemed to be shrinking closer and closer towards him, but surely that couldn’t be? It was all his imagination, just like the hundred MJs still mocking him with their laughter.

“Where’s MJ right now, James?” He didn’t even think of asking if MJ was alive, and Helios could feel relief explode inside him when James didn’t answer with a negative, didn’t tell him that his beloved brat was dead.

“In Vegas.” His voice was slurred when he answered. Why was it slurred?
 

“Will they be staying there indefinitely?”

When James took too long to answer, Kellion hit him with the bat once more.
 

James came awake with a jolt, and the pain in his dick made sure he was alert once more.

Helios repeated his question.

“N-no.” He could feel himself drooling and wondered if it was because he had lost control of his mouth. It did feel a little wonky. “I showed…” he realized what he was about to reveal and shut up.

Helios flicked his lighter open. “Don’t even think of lying, Cartwright. Spill it.”

Panic bubbled inside James. Doing his best to sway away from the burning flame near his face, James said, “I showed MJ your photos in the newspaper.”

Helios cracked his fists, knowing it wasn’t time for him to kill James yet.
Goddamn bastard. Goddamn him, goddamn him for always wanting to hurt MJ.

“She was…affected by what she saw and Manolito saw it. He saw the whole thing.”

His entire body chilled at what those words could mean. From everything he had heard about the trafficker, Manolito Chavez was an extremely possessive and volatile being, one who would not appreciate if his favorite victim had any feelings to spare for another man.

In his mind, MJ appeared, standing so still it was as if she had become a statue. Light surrounded her, and Helios cursed silently at the sight, not liking what it portended.
No, dammit, stay here with me, brat. Stay with me. Wait for me.

It took incredible effort for Helios to focus on James, and he had to force himself to speak past the lump in his throat. “If Chavez found out about me, what would happen to MJ?”

James gulped. “I heard…he liked to have his men feast on women who displease him—
aaaaaaah
!” Suddenly, he was being reeled down, faster than a roller coaster, and before he knew it he had fallen to the ground.

Helios gazed at his friends. It was over. James Cartwright’s life was over. It had been forfeit the moment he had sold MJ to a monster like Manolito Chavez, and it was time for Cartwright to pay for his sins.

When James opened his eyes, he saw the men getting on their bikes. He struggled to free himself, but the ropes around his wrists and ankles didn’t even give an inch. Someone revved his bike, and when James looked up, he saw that the motorcycle was heading his way.
 

A silent scream of horror burst out of his throat as the motorcycle flew right over him, its wheels burning the skin of his nose. “Stop!” he finally managed to bellow. “Fuck you, stop—” But he quickly shut his mouth as another bike came blazing towards him.
 

He closed his eyes, thinking it would lessen the horror. But it was the biggest mistake he did, allowing the wheels to tear off the skin of his eyelids. He screamed and cried and begged, but he already knew none of them were willing to listen to him. In the deepest part of him, he realized they were making him pay for what he had done to MJ, making him relive every excruciating second of her agony.

The third bike came from the other side, leaving scalding skid marks on his chest before its rear wheel crushed his dick.
 

“Aaaaaaaaaah!”

But it wasn’t over
, he realized sickly as he heard one last motorbike revving, purring, growling, taunting James to look at his last tormentor.

Helios Andreadis.
 

He watched in growing terror as Helios slowly put on his helmet.

And then Helios was flying—

Before landing directly on James’ skull, pulverizing the bone with the front wheel of his bike into thousands of pieces.

****

It was an hour later when the officers of Afxisi flew out of Nassau in a private jet, leaving behind an old boathouse burnt to the ground. Records for that day would show that not one of them had visited the island. It was as if they had never been there, and it was as if James Cartwright had never existed either.

In the privacy and comfort of his jet, Helios leaned tiredly against his seat and closed his eyes. He tried to search inside himself for any feelings of regret for what he had done to MJ’s adoptive father, but there was none. If anything, he wished he could have done more, could have prolonged the torture for years because that was how long James Cartwright had played Russian roulette with her life.

MJ.
He called for her imaginary twin in his mind, but she didn’t appear. He called for her again and again in his mind, and his body tensed more and more when the silence in his mind only lengthened. A sly, sinister voice whispered to him that it could be proof that MJ was gone, truly gone, but Helios refused to believe that.

They had not come this far for MJ to be taken away from him just like that.

No. He couldn’t believe that. He would not fucking believe that.

Somewhere in this world, she was still waiting for him.
 

Chapter Eight

“You’re late, caro,” Gracie said with a pout, watching with heavy-lidded eyes as Helios Andreadis entered the room. He headed straight to the en-suite bar, not even sparing a glance at her naked form on the bed. This supreme disinterest from the Greek biker made him loathsome and insanely attractive in Gracie’s eyes. He was the only man she had ever met to treat her this way, so callously, like he didn’t give a fuck about her. But somehow, that was the very thing that made her want him so much.