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The guns—these ones real and dangerous—waving about in our direction didn’t help matters.

Squinting through my tears, I tried to make out their faces. One stood with his back to me, arguing with a stockier man whose thick beard hid most of his features. The third man, tall and lanky, kept his weapon trained on us while glancing nervously between his companions and the window.

None wore masks. A bad sign.

I inched away from Iris’s unconscious form, my hand sliding to my pocket where the syringe rested. The needle felt like my only insurance policy, though what good it would do against three armed men was questionable at best.

The argument intensified, and though I couldn’t understand the language, the tone was unmistakable. Something was wrong.

“Please,” I said, my voice steadier than I’d expected. “I don’t know what you want, but my husband will pay—”

The bearded man pointed a gun in my face. “Silence, bitch.”

I gulped, swallowing my words.

But it was the darker feeling, the one coiling in my gut. The plea had been natural, without conscious thought. Now I had to ask myself: Would Markos pay a ransom?

He was wealthy, sure. The condo we lived in was easily seven-figures. He bought the most expensive piano on the market just to hear me play. But spend his money to save me? To solve whatever criminal politics were unfolding?

I couldn’t help but think I wasn’t that valuable.

Finally, some conclusion seemed to be reached between the men. The bearded one stomped forward, gripped my arm, and drug me to a back room. There was no furniture in this place, which was lucky, because he shoved me hard. I sprawled on the ground.

The zipper of his pants was deafening in the room.

Fear the likes of which were unimaginable seeped into every fiber of my being.

Please, merciful heavens, no.

I scrambled across the room until my back was against the wall. He didn’t advance, merely played with himself. I didn’t look, not wanting to see the horror.

After a minute of sloppy hand strokes, he waved his gun. “Suck.”

I shook my head.

He pointed it at me. “Suck,” he repeated in broken English.

My fingers curled into fists at my side. I would die before—

There was something hard in my pocket.

The syringe.

This fucker wanted a blowjob? I could get close enough. One shot—it was all I would have.

Body numb and unresponsive, it seemed forever as I crept across the ground. I didn’t reach for my pocket until I was right in front of him. That floppy, disgusting looking piece of meatdrooped in front of me. It wasn’t circumcised, and it wasn’t clean.

Now was the hard part. Did I put my mouth on it, only for a moment, to distract from what my hands were doing? I gagged, brain scrambling for an alternative.

The squeal of wheels, the loud crash of a collision sounded from the next room over.

The bearded man spun around. “What that?” he garbled, accent so thick that the words were barely understandable.

A terrible roar thundered through the air. It was the call of a monster. The voice of death. The final reckoning from a sea god.

“My husband, you bastard,” I snarled and jabbed the needle into his ass cheek. A flick of my thumb and the syringe depressed completely.

The man yelped.