“Come on. Let’s get in the pool.” Darius extended a vodka shot to Gray and downed his third. “I wanna get a better sense of Lee and Oscar’s buyer.”

Gray grimaced at the taste of vodka and squinted toward the pool. “Ouch.” He stood up and touched the corner of his mouth. Vodka and open cuts were not a good mix. Wobbling over to the edge of the pool, he did his best to get his shit togeth—what the…? He swung his head toward the stairs, from where he suddenly heard shouting. The others noticed something was off too, and Darius appeared next to Gray in a millisecond.

“Get the little bastard!” someone yelled.

Gray’s heart went through the roof, and he stiffened automatically. A beat later, Linus tripped and hit the landing of the stairs, where he quickly scrambled to his feet. He was a bloody mess, panting and crying, and he’d been severely beaten.

“You’ll never fucking get me, you sick monster!” Linus shouted hoarsely. In an instant, everyone was alert; a couple guards drew weapons, one of the buyers demanded that the slave be captured, and Gray lurched forward without thinking. He had to help Linus. Someway, somehow. Gray’s instincts took over completely and screamed for him to protect, protect, protect.

Linus was making a run for it. He slipped on a puddle of his own blood but managed to stay upright and dart closer to the railing. Oh fuck, no. Gray’s eyes widened. Oh fuck, no!

“Linus, don’t!” Gray rushed toward him but didn’t get more than a few feet before a heavy hand landed across his neck and squeezed painfully. “Don’t do it—fuck, lemme go!”

“Stop him!” a buyer bellowed.

“You don’t take another goddamn step,” Darius hissed in Gray’s ear. It was followed by an equally painful grip on his jaw.

Unlike his restrained body, a world of fury was set free inside of Gray right as Linus reached the railing. Adrenaline overrode the panic and pumped in Gray’s veins. There were no roles to play, only good and evil.

“I will die free!” Linus wiped at his bloodied and tear-stained cheek and climbed the railing, then turned briefly to Gray. Who watched in horror. Don’t do it, don’t do it. Gray’s pleading expression met Linus’s anguished one, and then he jumped overboard.

Gray collapsed internally as the spot where Linus had jumped flooded with men.

Linus’s buyer reached them at that point and demanded a gun. “I don’t care about your damn policy—someone hand me a sodding weapon!”

The pain in Gray’s jaw became too much, and he sent an elbow straight into Darius’s gut, then spun around and shoved at him. “You can fucking save him!” he whispered angrily. “Buy him—or, or, or kill the motherfucking buyer! Do something!”

Darius gave him a swift glare, a dark and murderous one, before he backhanded Gray hard across the face. “Think about what you’re doing,” he growled. For the second time in less than twenty minutes, Gray’s head flew sideways, and his vision blackened.

“Control your properties!” another buyer shouted. The Texan. At the sound of more yelling, from the guys Gray had been kidnapped with, the rage festered and gained strength.

All Gray could do was riot. He clenched his fists and took a swing at Darius, blinded by the emotions that’d taken over. Gray was fucking done. He wasn’t a slave; he was a human fucking being, and he wasn’t gonna take any more shit.

If it ended his life, he was going to punch himself free.

As he fought against Darius, the upper deck filled with more people. The impressions swam in Gray’s head. Vanya ran out. Red was there too, and chaos had ensued. Benny appeared with a crossbow, one guard was restraining Linus’s buyer, and there was a bizarre argument about the slave organization’s policy of not allowing the buyers to be armed on board the boat.

Gray heaved a breath and blinked, registering the firm chest he was held against. Sweat burned in his eyes, and he tried to escape the blistering heat. He pushed at Darius fruitlessly and didn’t recognize his own voice. He’d lost his mind. He hadn’t been fighting worth a damn. He’d just been thrashing in Darius’s arms like a weak, pathetic fool.

“Let me go,” Gray rasped.

The defeat was crushing. His lungs squeezed. He was dizzy. Everything hurt. He couldn’t trust himself anymore. Even if only for a second, he’d felt the power surging. He’d been fighting back…or so he’d thought.

Gray was a fucking idiot. He was no match.

He blinked past the emotions and caught sight of Charlie. The boy was kneeling in front of his buyer, eyes screwed shut, body trembling, tears falling, and he had a knife to his throat.

“He’s not resisting!” Cole yelled at Charlie’s owner.

Cole had been trying to wrench free from his restraints, judging by the blood seeping down his wrists.

“Kill me,” Gray whispered raggedly. “I don’t wanna live anymore.”

Not in a universe where this sort of thing happened. The world was a horrible place.

Darius tightened his grip on Gray’s sagging form but said nothing.

Gray only watched. The mayhem was being replaced by a sinister plan for “fun.” Red allowed Linus’s buyer to use the crossbow, and whoever drove the yacht set a course after Linus. He hadn’t gotten far by any means, and the buyer was already aiming the weapon. There was a smile on his face as he took instructions for how to use the crossbow.

“We can still bring him back, dear,” Red soothed.

“Fuck it,” the buyer muttered. “I’ll get another one.”

Red and Vanya saw dollar signs and eased away.

“I can shoot him for you if you want, sir,” Benny offered and brought out his gun.

The buyer smirked a little and shook his head. “Where’s the fun in that? Let’s place some bets, gentlemen. A thousand dollars on the leg.”

Gray let out a choked breath. His chest hurt. Was he too young to have a heart attack? The pain fucking radiated.

Linus wasn’t going to die a free man. He was going to be objectified once more and turned into a desperate target for sick, twisted, vile monsters.

“I’ll take that bet,” the Texan drawled.

“I can’t watch.” Gray swallowed against the rising bile. It traveled thickly up his throat, causing his mouth to water in warning.

Darius wouldn’t have it. He ushered Gray closer to the railing and fisted Gray’s hair. “That’s exactly what you’re gonna do. Look at him. Look at him swimming for his life.”

Gray put a fist over his mouth, hurt and grief slashing through him. What kind of rotten, sadistic asshole was Darius?

Linus was some fifty feet away in the clear blue water that continuously washed away the blood seeping from his wounds. His arms looked heavy, and his feet were no longer visible along the surface. He was already exhausted.

Three slave owners were taking turns shooting at him with a goddamn crossbow, each shot upping the money bets.

“You see what they’re capable of?” Darius spoke quietly, and when Gray tried to turn away, Darius gripped his neck harder. “If you don’t get your act together, that could be you. Or any of the other boys.”

Gray closed his eyes as one of the arrows hit Linus, who cried out in agony. Blood gushed from his hip, and he couldn’t remove the arrow.

“Let me die,” Linus sobbed breathlessly.

The laughter around them, the humid salt in the air, the grip on his neck, and the pain pushed Gray past his limit. The nausea won, and he bowed over the railing and lost what was in his stomach. His eyes bulged and watered, his throat filling with the taste of acid. There wasn’t much to throw up, and what little there was landed in the ocean below.

Kill me, kill me, kill me.

He was giving up. He could feel it in every part of his body. The fatigue was swallowing him whole.

“Too much for your toy, Mr. B?” Red teased.

Fuck you.

Gray coughed and gagged.

Linus was hit with another arrow. His choked pleas reverberated in Gray’s skull like the worst migraine.

“I think I need to teach him a lesson,” Darius said grimly. “I’d like to request the keys to the padded cell.”

“Of course, handsome.” Red snapped her fingers at a guard. “I take it we can’t convince you to teach him that lesson in the dungeon? We’d love to witness your expertise.”

“Next time.” There was a smirk in Darius’s voice, even as his tone held no room for argument whatsoever.

Gray wiped his mouth and stared blearily at Linus in the water. The other arrow had hit him in the back, and he was struggling to keep his head above the surface. By now, the yacht had obviously caught up with him, and the buyers were grinning down at him.

“You know, if we strung him up…” one said, trailing off suggestively.

Gray gagged again but managed not to puke. Behind him, Darius cursed, and then he was stalking toward the men with his fists clenched. Gray found himself with a few seconds worth of numbness and could only watch stoically. Darius lifted the gun from Benny’s holster with practiced ease and aimed at Linus.

A shot went off, shattering the paralysis, and Gray heard himself scream, “No!”

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Gray saw Linus lose his fight. Darius had shot him in the head, and he began sinking slowly. Oh God, oh God, oh God. What had Darius done? Fuck, why?

“What’d you do that for?” the man who’d bought Linus was furious, though he stopped short when he noticed he had jackshit on Darius in height and muscle. Darius towered over the man with a lethal look.

It silenced the others for a quick beat.

“Do you goddamn amateurs wanna get caught?” Darius stared the man down, never breaking the gaze, and pointed the gun at the horizon.

There was a boat. A fishing boat, maybe. It was too far away for Gray to see clearly.

“You seem to think we’re alone out here.” Darius clenched his jaw and took apart the gun like he’d done it a million times before. He probably had. “I don’t know about you imbeciles, but I don’t plan on getting caught because you couldn’t keep your slave on a fucking leash.”

The guards relaxed marginally when Benny was given back the gun. Or the parts, rather.

Gray peered over the railing again and watched the water.

Linus was really dead. Darius had killed him.

Gray’s bottom lip trembled, so he bit down on it.

Darius shot him in the head.

Red didn’t want a fight between the buyers, especially not when her favorite Mr. B was part of it, and she was quick to get in the middle and smooth things over. After dinner, there would be some “fantastic entertainment,” she promised. And Linus’s buyer was reassured; he’d be moved up the list and invited to a new auction instantly.

Gray looked down when he felt a hand on his arm. It was Darius. His fingers wrapped around Gray’s wrist.

“Let’s go. Now.”

Gray was too fucked in the head to do anything but follow.

* * *

The padded cell Darius had requested the key for was on the same deck as their stateroom, and it was exactly what it sounded like. No windows, no furniture, no nothing. Well…one lone spotlight. The walls, floor, and ceiling covered in padding and black leather. Just like the dungeon.

“It’s safe to talk here,” Darius grunted. He scrubbed his hands over his face, tense and visibly exhausted. His skin had a faint shine to it from the sunscreen, and there were a few scratches along his left thigh and both arms. Probably from when Gray had stupidly thought he’d fought the man bravely.

There was nothing brave about Gray.

“Out with it, kid,” Darius said impatiently. “I killed your friend. You wanna yell at me, so lemme have it. No one will hear us here.”

Gray frowned and averted his gaze to an empty corner.

A shiver ran down his spine. The Caribbean sun took no prisoners, and regular room temperature felt chilly now.

“You shot an innocent guy in the head,” he heard himself mumble.

There was despair and anger buried somewhere, but he couldn’t grasp at anything.

“I ended his suffering.”

That was one way of putting it…maybe. Gray wasn’t sure. He was too tired. Too beaten.

Too broken.

“I have a kid brother… Lias. He’s kinda like you.” Darius slid down along a wall across the room and pulled up his knees, resting his forearms on them. “As a kid, he would try to save everything. Birds, rabbits, you name it.”

Gray flicked an uncertain glance at Darius.

“He didn’t understand that being softhearted is sometimes ten times worse.” Darius lifted his gaze to meet Gray’s. “Even when Pop made it clear to him that the animal wouldn’t survive, Lias insisted on wrapping the creature in cut-up blankets and taking care of it. Feed it, comfort it…prolong its suffering.”

Gray sat down silently in the opposite corner and pinched his bottom lip. In another life, he’d studied psychological dilemmas and theories like the one Darius was talking about. And surrounded by fellow students and a professor jotting things on the board, it was easy to make logical decisions. There, it was easy to end the life of a metaphor.

Linus wasn’t fictional or an example, though. He was a real guy. Had been…

Gray rubbed at the sharp twinge in his chest.

He could see the last seconds of life leaving Linus. His pale skin, his freckles, the hair slick and plastered to his face, angry bruises, the silent plea to be unshackled. He could hear the coughs, the wheezy breaths, the whimpers, and the calm waves sloshing against the yacht.

Despite that, Gray knew he’d be too weak to pull the trigger. Despite knowing Linus was facing a more horrendous death than the one Darius had given him.

It reminded Gray of another thing he’d studied in college. The famous trolley problem. A train heading straight toward five people tied to the tracks… If you pulled a lever, the train would be redirected to another track, where only one person was stuck. You could choose to do nothing, resulting in the death of five people. Or you could pull the lever, the trigger, and kill one person.

Gray wanted to believe he’d have the guts to save the five people, but he couldn’t be sure for shit. What he did know was that Darius wouldn’t hesitate to pull the lever.

“Maybe I’m not worth saving.” Gray’s eyes welled up as the quiet words left him, and he kept his eyes trained on his lap.

What a fucking loser he was. And he hadn’t even known. Hell, he’d always thought of himself as pretty strong. He’d stood up to bullies and defended those who couldn’t defend themselves all throughout his school years. But what was a bully compared to those they were facing on this boat?

“I’m not cut out for this,” he finished in a sad attempt to cover his shame with a joke.

“No one is,” Darius murmured. “Not at first.”

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Either way… “I’m not gonna yell at you,” Gray said tiredly. “I’m fucking clueless. I’m weak—”

“You’ve been through roughly three months of torture and degradation. Look at me, Gray.”

Gray set his jaw and glanced up when he really wanted to cower away and hide.

Darius was dead serious. “If you wanna get off this boat with as many of the others as possible, I need your help. I gotta be able to count on you to see the bigger picture.” He paused and scrubbed a hand over his mouth and jaw. “Shit might go sideways, and that’s when you have to stay focused the most.”

Gray nodded with a dip of his chin and cringed at the memory of his Star Trek-loving, closeted, married, hockey coach not-boyfriend back home. “I get it. The needs of the many and all that.”

The reference flew by Darius’s head, so he obviously didn’t like Star Trek.

“Never mind,” Gray muttered. The memory wasn’t welcome anyway. It was pointless these days, much like his old problems. Back then, he’d been so distraught, downright depressed, because Craig had refused to divorce his wife. He’d wanted Gray to be his side piece. To think…Gray had spent months crying over that insignificant bullshit.

He blew out a breath and refocused, and there was no room for pride or dignity. He spoke with plain honesty. “I’m not strong enough, Darius. My mind jumps to random shit. I get distracted, I freak out, and I can’t trust myself.” But… With another breath, he let out the rest. “I think I can obey. I think I can direct all my attention to you and follow you like a dog.”

Darius’s features tightened with a slight frown, and he studied Gray for the longest time.

Gray wasn’t kidding. He was a goddamn dog and not good for any leadership.

“You shit. You’re actually giving up.” Darius shook his head.

The accusation was a blow to the gut, and Gray looked down and wrung his hands in his lap. “I’m not…”

“No, you are.” Darius was getting heated. “I was gonna bring you here to give you a verbal lashing for flipping out when the kid jumped. Then it ended the way it did, and I figured you’d wanna throw a tantrum. Now I see I gotta beat sense into you anyway. When was the last time you thought about your mother? Huh?”

Gray’s eyes flashed with anger at that. “I think about her all the fucking time.”

“Oh yeah?” Darius jumped to his feet and moved closer. “Well, I’ll tell you what happens if you give up. I’m gonna have to fly home to your family and tell them you died. Your little brothers will grow up without you. Your sister’s kid will never know you. Your mother will escape work whenever she thinks of you and start crying. Survival guilt will probably hit your older brother, and he’ll beat himself up for no reason at all. Because he’ll miss you so fucking much.”

“Shut up,” Gray growled, tears spilling over.

Darius wasn’t done, though. “Your friends will have a memorial for you. Think of Abel… That little shit will be a mess.” He squatted down and hooked a finger under Gray’s chin, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Do you wanna see your family and friends again?”

Gray glared but jerked a small nod and wiped at his cheeks.

“Then you can’t give up,” Darius told him. “Not for a second.” He stood up once more and nodded at the door. “Come on. Since you’re not gonna yell at me, I can think of better things to do.”