Page 32 of Kill Shot

In the Hands of the Enemy

Seb

Seb woke up with a pounding headache, intense nausea, and the taste of bile in the back of his throat. He was completely disoriented, and it took a moment for him to realize that he was sitting upright, never mind where he was.

But then the memories flooded back to him, and he remembered exactly how he had ended up in this position. When the darkness didn’t clear up, he realized that he was blindfolded.

“Rise and shine,” a terribly familiar voice—the one that had spoken to him before knocking him out—said, full of sadistic amusement. “Looks like you had a very short rest, Sleeping Beauty.”

Seb still hadn’t quite grasped where he was. He was moving; he could tell that much. But he didn’t know if he was in a shipping container or the back of a big truck. It was certainly not in the small car he’d noticed was following him.

He could also sense another presence. There was at least one other man in the space with him, judging by the thick, masculine scent that hit his nose.

“Who are you?” Seb asked, halfway surprised that he wasn’t gagged as well as blindfolded. “What do you want?”

He was clinging to the faint hope that this was completely unrelated to Nico, that this was just one of the threats that his father had already warned him about. However, he was becoming less and less convinced with every passing moment.

“You can call me Lucas.”

There was a rustling as the man moved, and Seb braced himself for anything, but in the end, absolutely nothing happened.

“My, someone’s a little tense.” Lucas laughed, an unpleasant sound that made the hairs rise on the back of Seb’s neck. “But don’t worry, I’m gonna take good care of you until we arrive at our destination.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Seb asked, then realized that he didn’t really want to know the answer to that question. “Where are we going?”

“Let’s just say that we’re heading somewhere with a lot of sun. A pale, blond thing like you will probably burn up pretty nicely out there.”

There was nothing overtly threatening about his words, but the way he said them made Seb terrified in a way that he’d never experienced before. It felt like what he imagined men must feel when Nico was trying to intimidate them.

If there was one benefit to the blindfold, it was that Seb didn’t have to blink away the tears. Instead, he would just end up with a salty, soggy blindfold soon enough if he kept thinking about Nico.

“Good lord, you’re fucking pathetic,” Lucas sneered. “I guess that makes me feel a little better about everything. If Nico is into whiny little fucks like you, then I never had a chance.”

“Y-you mean you and Nico…” Seb trailed off. As much as he wanted to avoid thinking about Nico, the shock of such a revelation was enough to make him speak.

What the hell was going on? If Nico had just been trying to get close to his father, and this Lucas had some sort of connection to Nico that went beyond the professional…

Lucas laughed as Seb struggled to piece everything together.

“Come on, kid, aren’t you supposed to be smart? You just graduated from college, right?”

He was enjoying this, and Seb barely managed to refrain from snapping at him. His father had drilled into him exactly what could happen in situations like this. If he was kidnapped, he was supposed to go along with whatever they said.

But Seb had never been the most obedient son.

“How do you know Nico?” he asked quietly, but steadily. He didn’t want to give this man any sign of weakness to latch onto.

There was a squeaking noise that sounded an awful lot like Lucas tightly gripping the seat of a chair.

“We are in the same organization,” Lucas said, his voice as cold as ice. “And he was sent in to abduct you. He failed to do that in a timely manner, so I had to step in.”

It was like the world had just opened up beneath Seb’s feet, dragging him into its cold, hollow deep.

There really was no ignoring the facts now.

Nico was part of a plot to hurt him and his father.

He didn’t think for a second that Lucas might be lying, not about this.

Not when the truth alone was devastating enough.

“Why you?” Lucas taunted. “Is that what you’re wondering right now? The truth is that you don’t matter at all except for the fact that you’re Pablo Altamirano’s son. That means that hurting you will hurt him, probably more than just about anything else.”

He was certainly right about that. Seb couldn’t even begin to imagine how his father was feeling at this exact moment. Either he was searching for his son and fearing the worst or he’d already gotten word that Seb had been kidnapped.

“How long has it been since you caught me?” Seb asked cautiously, doubting that he would get any sort of answer, but trying nonetheless.

But to that, Lucas only chuckled.

“You don’t need to worry about that, boy. What you need to really worry about is what Bolero will do when he gets his hands on you. You see, he’s been waiting a long, long time to have you in his grasp. Decades, if you can imagine it.”

Who the fuck was Bolero, and why did he want him in his grasp?

“Wh-what does he want to do with me?”

The silence stretched out, and Seb held his breath out of fear that he might miss the answer. He could tell that Lucas was enjoying this immensely, but it wasn’t like he could do anything to turn the tables. Not yet anyway.

“A great many things, I imagine.”

There was another creak, louder this time, then footsteps. Lucas had gotten up and was closing the distance. Seb felt hot breath on his cheek, a twisted perversion of everything that he’d shared with Nico.

“And we have so many hours until we get there,” Lucas said slowly, clearly delighting in how Seb shivered at every syllable. “But you’re a rather rude boy, ignoring me and thinking about what Bolero has in store for you. I prefer it when my boys think about me and me alone.”

The danger was so close that Seb could taste it, and it had an offensive flavor on every level. His senses screamed at him to escape, but he’d long since realized that his wrists and ankles were bound to the chair he was sitting in.

He had nothing but his mind, his tongue, and a gambit.

“Is that why you’re jealous of me? Because Nico was with me instead of you?” he asked, then braced himself for the worst.

The first blow was enough to completely shatter his sense of self. It hit him in the side of the head, and he saw white specks even through the blindfold. The nausea grew twice as strong, and he couldn’t help but wretch.

He expected a second blow, unsure if he would even be able to stay conscious through it, but it never came. Instead, Lucas just loomed over him, breathing heavily, as if struggling to decide what to do next.

Seb could feel the weight of indecision bearing down on him. The possibilities were obvious, and his only hope was that he could convince Lucas away from the worst of the worst. A punch, he could take, but there were attacks that left scars forever.

Tears welled up in his eyes once more. Why was he thinking of Nico at a time like this? Why was he wondering if Nico could ever look at him the same way if another man defiled him?

The footsteps stormed away, and a door opened, then slammed. Seb was left alone with his tangled thoughts, hating Nico just as much as he missed him. In moments like these, he needed that comforting embrace, but it was now gone forever.

And maybe it had never been there in the first place. For the first time, he let himself wonder if maybe every single exchange he’d ever had with Nico had been part of a carefully planned strategy to manipulate him.