Page 31 of The Primary Pest (Iphicles Security #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ajax

Ajax let his head hang, chin to his chest, while he concentrated on the difficult, nearly impossible task of breathing in and out with a broken heart.

His was shattered. Obliterated.

It hurt to take each breath in. To let each breath out was agony. Inside him, screams were building up to replace the soft sobs he had to let out through his nose. His gorge rose, and he didn’t even care that if he threw up, his life would end in a rush of hot vomit behind his duct-taped lips.

Hot tears dropped on his legs. His knit boxers were still damp beneath his shorts where he’d creamed them.

He had to think part of the reason he was crying was because he didn’t want to go out like that.

Not that he was going to die, but that he’d had so much promise, so much everything, and now he was just another lump of unambiguously anonymous flesh, on his way out with all the others. He’d feed the fishes.

As long as he kept that thought in mind—his death—he didn’t have to think about the last hour of his life where he’d gotten dry-humped and then betrayed by someone he’d begun to think he was in love with.

No. Dmytro was a fuck. That’s all he’d been.

Ajax twisted his hands, testing his bonds. He worked his mouth against the tape. He put that hour of quiet happiness behind him.

He had to figure a way out of this mess.

Or maybe he just had to figure out what the mess was?

Peter was Iphicles, wasn’t he? Ajax had been told over and over, had taken it as gospel, that Iphicles’s men were the best of the best. Untouchable. Unbribable. Ultra-vetted and ultra-loyal.

But Ajax could see how even one of Iphicles’s own might be tempted by the millions his parents would be willing to pay to get him back. He saw, and he grieved.

His parents liked money a lot. But they didn’t do the work they did for money.

His mother enjoyed the prestige of being one of the few female CEOs at her level.

His father worked as a research physician because he wanted to help children.

When there was money in those things, they were thrilled, but he doubted that if someone turned the spigot off, they’d look elsewhere to make a living.

They loved their little family . They loved each other. Not money. Not prestige.

They loved him , and he’d resented how they’d shown it. He’d taken them for granted for years, taken advantage of their money. He’d used his privilege like a stupid fool, and now, when it mattered and he had his head on straight, it was all over for him.

He couldn’t bear the thought he’d never see his mom and dad again. His grandpa.

What should he do, what should he think, now that he knew he was living his final moments on earth?

Ajax closed his eyes and returned to something familiar and reassuring. Calculations… Math was his refuge. Math never failed him.

Seconds could drag out, though. His seconds certainly were. Fifteen minutes wasn’t very long. He pictured the distance the boat could travel in that time. Would it head toward the California coast, or circle around the Channel Islands, farther out to sea?

How long? How long did he have before Peter and Chet—Christ, he should have realized anyone who called himself Chet was a sack of shit—and Dmytro came back to record a final proof of life.

They would never hand him over to his family. Not ever.

He knew they wouldn’t, because as the son of prominent, wealthy Americans the idea of kidnap had haunted him all his life.

Outside the US, kidnap and ransom was strictly an opportunistic business enterprise.

In South America, in Africa, in Indonesia, even in Western Europe, there had always been the possibility he’d be taken, despite the security he traveled with.

Ransoms would be paid by his family’s K&R insurance, and he would be returned, shaken but alive.

But being taken by Iphicles —by men whose faces he knew, men who had successfully funneled him to a vessel at sea… There was no hope they would let him live, no matter what they said to his parents.

Dmytro couldn’t be fool enough to believe he stood a chance either.

When Dmytro switched sides, it had hurt. The betrayal had shocked him as brutally as Chet’s physical blow. It left his body drained and shaky, his spine turned to jelly.

He didn’t blame Dmytro. He didn’t hate Dmytro. In fact, seeing everything Dmytro was willing to do for his daughters, the chance he was taking, the long-odds gamble he’d made, Ajax could only admire him more.

Peter and Chet were the antithesis of men like Dmytro.

They had no code. They carried no honor.

In his desperate bid to save himself for his daughters, if Dmytro had to throw away the thing he’d been fighting hardest for—being a man his daughters could take pride in—he would. But he’d never forgive himself

Sorrow wounded Ajax’s heart like hammer blows.

No way was Dmytro walking away from this either.

Dmytro had to know that, right? He had to know that. Just as they couldn’t let Ajax live, they would be crazy to come back with Dmytro because he was already a mass of mixed emotions and old-fashioned guilt.

He was, as Chet pointed out, a do-gooder.

It would take exactly no time for Dmytro to make certain the threats Peter made against his daughters could never be fulfilled, and Peter probably knew that too.

If Dmytro lived, Peter’s days were numbered. Dmytro would kill him for speaking his daughters’ names aloud, much less uttering a threat against them.

And maybe Dmytro would make them pay for him too. Maybe he’d seek revenge on Ajax’s behalf, or for his parents, or because Anton had once been his mirage in a thirsty adolescence.

Dmytro would wipe Peter and Chet off the earth without prejudice because they were evil, and deep down, way inside him where he hardly ever looked, Dmytro was good.

Somehow none of that helped. None of it made spending the last hour of his life on a fucking boat with his hands and mouth taped any better.

So he fidgeted to loosen his bonds. He tried to chew through the duct tape covering his mouth.

And he wept, which was not only degrading, but it was making his nose stuffy.

At this rate, he was going to die from asphyxia.

Outside his door somewhere, the three men argued. Dmytro warned that if Ajax’s parents demanded another proof of life, they should get one. Chet and Peter said they’d had all the proof they were going to get.

Chet appeared in the doorway with a bottle of water. What were they trying to prove? It seemed absurd that they should offer him comfort when they were only going to throw him from the deck or shoot him or—

“Your boyfriend insists we give you water.”

Something must have shown on his face—some spark of happiness—because Chet laughed cruelly. “He don’t care or nothing. He just don’t want you to look like shit if your parents ask for a last-minute proof of life.”

Ajax nodded that he understood.

“I’m gonna take this tape off. You can yell all you want. There’s no one to hear you within fifty miles.”

He yanked the tape off, and it took some of Ajax’s skin with it. Ajax closed his eyes tightly against the pain, and when he opened them again, Chet stood so close he could smell his unwashed skin.

Chet stared down at Ajax, tilting his head this way and that. His gaze was blank, his face blank. His eyes were coal black, burning with a hatred that had been banked until now when it was fueled with the oxygen of desire.

Real fear swept over Ajax. He gave a shudder of revulsion.

Chet got a hard grip on his hair.

“Whatchu looking at, faggot.”

Ajax averted his gaze in the absolute wrong direction and found himself face-to-face with Chet’s crotch.

“Ah. You want what I got, huh?” Chet took a step closer and shoved Ajax’s head into his groin. He smelled stale and old, as if he didn’t wash his clothes. His body stank of fear and arousal. “You want this, boy?”

Shoved into Chet’s body that way, Ajax shook his head. He realized his mistake a second too late. Chet’s spindly little cock got hard, his pulse pumping against Ajax’s nose.

“Do that again, faggot. That feels good.” Another evil laugh.

Maybe he should offer to blow him. He would do it too. And he’d fight back. He’d bite the sick turd’s dick off when it was good and swollen so he’d bleed out on the floor at Ajax’s feet.

Come and get it you sick fuck.

“What the hell are you doing, Chet?” Peter had come into the cabin with Dmytro following on his heels. Like he had the night before, he leaned against the wall, hands stuffed into his pockets. The muscles in his jaw clenched. Whether from anger or dismay, Ajax couldn’t tell.

“I didn’t take you for one of us,” Ajax taunted Chet.

“I ain’t a fag.” His grin was meant to rile Dmytro. “No reason not to use one, though.”

Peter gestured with his gun. “You were meant to get him water. God, I’ll do it myself.”

Peter came over and held the bottle. Ajax took several gulping swallows. He turned his head to wipe his mouth on his shoulder and said, “Don’t tape my mouth again, please.”

Chet said, “You don’t tell us what to do.”

“He gets motion sick.” Dmytro said, almost conversationally. “Might be safer.”

Peter’s gaze moved between the two of them before he shrugged. “He can shout the house down. No reason he needs a gag.”

Chet huffed and stormed up the stairs while Ajax stayed silent and watched as Dmytro and Peter let him go.

“You were right about that one, brother,” Peter muttered darkly.

“We don’t need him.” Dmytro smiled. “First chance I get in Ukraine, I’ll take him to a place I know where they’ll drug him and roll him, and he’ll never be seen or heard from again.”

“You could do that?”

“I have many friends in Kiev of the not-so-lawful variety.”

“Will they be glad to see you?”

Dmytro shrugged as though he couldn’t care less.

He wore the exact look he’d shown up wearing the first night when Ajax was just a job and the important thing was finishing his text exchange with his girls.

But Dmytro hid who he was all the damn time.

He hid his goodness, his generosity. He hid his heartbreak.

He hid his pride. He hid what he wanted because he didn’t believe he deserved it, and he hid his desire because he was afraid of it.

Ajax blinked in surprise.

Dmytro acted as though switching sides was easy because only his daughters meant anything to him.

He acted as though he could move on after this like nothing happened.

But after days of concealed laughter, suppressed smiles, shy warmth, and mysterious kindnesses, what Ajax saw on Dmytro’s face couldn’t come close to hiding what was in Dmytro’s heart.

Ajax wasn’t going to be fooled by a look. Never again.