An hour later Jax was pissed as hell.

Since they were only ninety nautical miles from their target, it was determined that an approach by sea would provide the best tactical advantage. Easy in, easy out. Not to mention their matte black cigarette boat blended into the waves at night like it wasn't even there, and it could get them hell and gone if things went sideways.

Boarding the seventy-foot superyacht should pose no problem. Neither should subduing the crew and taking out any guards stationed aboard if needed. Ashe, Hunter, Niles, Xavier, and Rico would board while Mace remained aboard their boat with his sniper rifle to provide cover. Jax and Reed both raised hell at being left out.

No amount of arguing could change Ashe's mind. He was convinced that both men would be a liability since Von Osterman and Vanderhorst could be aboard. "My wife could be on that fucking boat," Reed raged.

"Which is exactly why you're not going," Chaz confirmed. "I lost all focus when Jenna was threatened. I blew through the door and forgot every fucking bit of training I'd ever had. I'm not risking the same thing happening to you, or the lives of the team if you fuck up."

Neither of them was happy about it, but both Jax and Reed remained behind. They took up posts in the command center and watched the live action of the operation relayed from their teammate's body cams. The team boarded via the swim platform at the stern and traversed a set of spiral stairs up one level to the main deck.

According to the plans, their objective was located at the bow on the main level. They moved stealthily through the salon and formal dining room, down the main corridor to the master stateroom. A thorough scan revealed it was empty. "Room's clear," Ashe relayed quietly through his headset.

"Negative," the sniper responded. "Two tangos aft your position."

"How does he know that?" Kenzi queried.

"His infrared scope picks up body heat," Jax interjected absently, his complete focus locked on the monitors.

Via the live feed, they saw Hunter hold up a handheld device and begin scanning the wall they had just passed. A red glow depicted two human shapes on the opposite side. One stood upright, and the other appeared to be levitating. The team techie located a keypad mounted on the wall, popped the cover off and connected another device to it.

Less than fifteen seconds later, a hidden door slid open to reveal a scene straight out of a nightmare. The nightmare that Kira had survived. The snowy image revealed a sadist's dungeon with a battered woman suspended from the ceiling by chains. Von Osterman stood behind her viciously wielding a riding crop. Giggling like a madman.

Kenzi's horrified gasp filled the room.

Ashe had knocked the fucker out cold before Von realized they were there and Hunter moved in to check on the woman. "It's not Sheba," his voice announced over the radio and Reed collapsed heavily into a chair. The woman appeared to be unresponsive and in worse condition than Kira had been.

"She's barely alive," Niles 'Stitch' Taylor's voice whispered through the radio, but it crackled with fury. Hunter supported her weight as the combat medic removed the restraints holding her suspended from the ceiling. "Fuck me," he breathed in horror when they lowered her and saw exposed intestines from a gaping wound in her abdomen.

Kenzi bent double with dry heaves. Reed had to look away. Jax was equally repulsed but refused to let himself view the scene in anything except a clinical sense. Because he was learning what made Von Osterman tick. What he was seeing confirmed what he had already suspected. The bastard was a tyrannical sadist.

And Kira had been his helpless victim.

 

***

 

"Jesus," the medic breathed as he surveyed her mutilated body. "Ice, she needs immediate trauma care, or she's not gonna make it."

Their primary mandate was to protect their women at all costs. That meant no one outside of the team and their families were allowed on the island. Ever. So they could take the woman to a public hospital for treatment or leave her there to die. No one was surprised when Ashe gave the order to deviate from the plan.

The medic stayed with the woman and an unconscious Von Osterman while the rest of the team did a room by room sweep to round up the crew and security team. Once all aboard were secured in the main lounge, Rico hauled ass to the helipad located on the aft sun deck to fire up the ship's chopper.

When Niles carried the woman down the main corridor, the crew and security team didn't even flinch at the gruesome sight. Those fuckers had known what Von did to women in that room. They probably cleaned up the mess and discarded the bodies after he finished with them. That made them as guilty as he was and sealed their fates.

Xavier 'Cajun' Boudreau steered the yacht into deeper water. Ashe and Mace stood guard over the crew. At Jax's request, Hunter made a video of the torture chamber and its grisly contents. Then he collected the mobile phone, laptop computer, and files stored in the stateroom's office area.

By the time Rico and Niles returned from dropping the woman off at the hospital on Key West, Ashe had placed C-4 charges throughout the lower deck where Reed directed. Leaving the crew in restraints, they loaded Von Osterman onto their boat, and Xavier got them hell and gone. Once they were clear of the blast area, Ashe flipped the detonator.

The fireball lit up the night sky.

Chaz, Jax, Rhett, and Reed met them at the dock when they arrived at Sanctuary Island. "I'll take him from here," Jax said grimly as his teammates hauled an unconscious Von Osterman off the boat.

"After what I've seen him do to women I'd love nothing better than to turn you loose on this sick fuck," Ashe admitted as he stepped between them. "Hell, I'd love to rip his fucking balls off myself. But don't forget he's our only link to Vanderhorst and Char."

"I won't," Jax agreed in his cold, clinical, detached tone. "But before I'm through he'll wish I had killed him."

 

***

 

There was a walk-in cooler in the airplane hangar that had been used to store surplus perishables when the resort was in operation. The stainless steel interior and floor drain made cleaning easy, and the thick insulation was almost soundproof. Jax had converted it into the perfect interrogation room.

And he was the absolute best at waging psychological warfare.

Iron manacles were attached to the back wall. A steel chair was bolted to the floor. A metal wire shelving rack located next to the door held a variety of torture implements. Five-gallon buckets filled with sea water lined the opposite wall. The night vision camera mounted over the door monitored the prisoner around the clock.

Von Osterman had been unconscious when he had bound him in a contorted position and left him locked in total darkness the night before. The bastard had come to, disoriented and aching from the unnatural position. Then he'd become outraged when he realized that he was bound hand and foot and locked inside a silent tomb.

Just as Jax had known would happen, Von's anger turned into anxiety as the hours passed and no one responded to his demands to be released. This type of sensory deprivation was a very effective torture technique as human beings did not respond well to total darkness, silence, and isolation.

Over the course of twenty-four hours, he experienced extreme emotional distress, paranoia and had begun to hallucinate. The exact same reaction that Kira had suffered after being drugged with LSD. The time had come to confront his prisoner and move into the next phase of the process.

Jax punched in the key code, swung the door open, and Von screamed in fear. He flipped the overhead lights on, and the bastard buried his face against his arm to hide his eyes from the blinding light. "Who are you?" He demanded in a shaken tone that sounded nothing like his normal cultured voice. "What do you want from me?"

He didn't say a word as he slid a pair of leather gloves onto his hands and forced the other man to drink a few sips of water to keep him from dehydrating. As he lifted Von and chained him to the wall, his prisoner continued to ask questions, but Jax had no intention of answering them. His complete silence would only add to the other man's terror.

Instead, he kept a tight rein on his emotions and systematically beat the shit out of him.

Repeatedly.

Every four hours he replicated the process in silence while Von whimpered and begged for mercy. Jax had no mercy. Not with the image of Kira's broken, battered body seared into his brain. Not for the bastard who had dared to hurt the woman he loved. And not until the most volatile of his emotions had been appeased.

The routine varied to keep the mother fucker confused and disoriented, but the same procedures remained. Sensory deprivation, starvation, freezing cold followed by intense heat. Repeated beatings and binding in stress positions. And he added sleep deprivation into the mix with ear-splitting heavy metal music and blinding light.

After forty-eight hours had passed, Jax sliced the other man's brief's off of his body with a knife. There were two very good reasons for this action. One; being naked made a person feel even more vulnerable and Two; Von had shit his shorts, and the smell was as bad as the stench of fear.

Tossing the defecated drawers out the door, he lifted a bucket of salt water and flung it over the other man. His prisoner screamed at the unexpected dousing, and the blackout hood over his head prevented him from seeing what would happen next. Jax sat the bucket down and asked in his cold, detached tone, "Where is Vanderhorst?"

"Who are you?" He demanded fearfully instead of answering. "Why are you doing this?"

"Answer the question," his voice cracked like a whip.

"I… I do not know," Jaeger denied shakily.

"You do," he stated with unequivocal certainty.

The other man cowered against the wall and shook his head. "I cannot tell you."

"Death will be merciful compared to what I'll do if you don't," Jax vowed in a voice as cold as death itself.

"No matter what you do… I can never talk about him," he assured him anxiously.

Interesting. It seemed that Von was more afraid of his friend than his captor. That would change. "I don't give a fuck if you talk," Jax denied as he slid a finely edged knife from the sheath on his hip. "I only want you to hurt."

"No," his captive said as the blade touched his exposed flesh. "No…, please. NO!"

The bloodletting began.

Jax sliced a series of small and shallow strategically placed cuts all over the man's body. His version of death by a thousand cuts. They stung and burned like head to toe paper cuts. Then he doused him in seawater while his prisoner screamed in agony. The salt stopped the bleeding and burned like a mother fucker.

Four hours later it started all over again.

Jax's official title in the military had been Navy Tactical Counter-Intelligence and Human Intelligence Specialist, which basically meant that he was an interrogator. However, his enhanced interrogation training had been acquired at CIA black sites that had made Gitmo look like fucking summer camp.

He had never been as brutal with anyone as he was with this piece of shit. Jax was not a violent man, but he was a man capable of great violence. How much he'd never known until now. He'd enjoy torturing the mofo indefinitely. Or at least until Kira no longer looked like she might shatter at any moment.

But getting intel on Char was the priority, and the bastard wasn't talking.

It was time for shit to get real.

 

***

 

Jaeger's mind was trapped in a miasma of pain. His bones ached, his flesh stung. He trembled with frame quaking chills yet his body was on fire. He was weak from hunger and faint from thirst. His head was splitting from the blare of music, his vision blurred from extreme light and total darkness.

And people called him a sadist, he thought in a rare moment of clarity. His tormentor could give lessons in the art. The bastard was determined to break him. What the man did not realize was that he was already broken. He had not been born that way. Jean, the very man that his captor sought, had been the one to break him.

So very long ago…

His confused mind carried him back to the dorm room that they had shared since preschool. The other students had been jealous of Jaeger because he got to room with the prince. He had loved rubbing it in their faces that he was Jean-Claude's best friend. He had mocked the little brown nosers attempts to ingratiate themselves with him.

Jaeger had thought he was the luckiest boy in school until the day it all changed. The day that his best friend had held him down and sexually assaulted him. Thirteen-year-old Jaeger had been so shocked that he hadn't known what to do. He couldn't shove Jean off and punch him in the face. No one denied the prince anything.

No one.

Once the humiliating experience was over, he had collapsed onto the bed and curled himself into a fetal position. The prince had slid into bed behind him, wrapped his arms around Jaeger and held him while he cried. "I love you, Jaeger," Jean had told him. "I want to share everything with you. Including sex."

"You hurt me," he accused brokenly because his ass felt like it was on fire.

"It won't hurt as bad the next time," he had promised and placed a tender kiss on his shoulder.

That was when he realized that his friend meant to do that to him again. Jaeger didn't know what to do. He couldn't refuse the prince. He couldn't. Even their instructors didn't say no to him. But he never wanted to go through that again, so he hoped to change the other boy's mind with the truth.

"I like girls, Jean," he had confessed. "I want to have sex with girls."

The prince was so still and quiet that he thought the boy had fallen asleep. Then he finally said, "All right. You may fuck females, but you can't give them pleasure," he decreed and slid his hand down to grasp Jaeger's flaccid penis. "Your cock is for my pleasure only."

From that day forward, Jaeger had been forced to have anal sex with his best friend. There had been no one that he could turn to for help, and he certainly couldn't tell his father. Erich Von Osterman had not needed another reason to belittle him or tell him how lacking he was when compared to his precious older brother.

So he'd had no choice except to tolerate the sexual abuse. In time, he had even come to enjoy it. When he did begin to have intercourse with females, he even penetrated their anus as well as their vagina. This went on for a few years until Jean informed him that he wanted to watch him have sex with a female.

The thought of his lover watching him had been titillating, and he had eagerly agreed. He had barely begun when the prostitute moaned her enjoyment, and the prince went ballistic. Jean had demanded he stop giving the woman pleasure and slapped her hard for enjoying it. She screamed in pain and blood trickled from her busted lip.

The violent act had excited Jaeger, and his erection had swelled to epic proportions. He began to slap the woman again and again as he thrust into her, harder and harder until his penis was slamming into her as violently as his fists. The prince had become so aroused by watching that he had entered him from behind.

When he ejaculated, it had been glorious. So strong and forceful that he had momentarily blacked out. Jaeger had come to in his lover's arms, the battered woman unconscious beneath him. That was when he discovered what real pleasure was. The pain and fear in the whore's eyes, her pleas for mercy had given him what he craved most.

Power.

As he discovered quite by accident later on when he'd beaten one of his lovers to death, the ultimate rush was the power over death. Yes, he was sick and twisted. Perverted and deranged. But in his torture chamber, he was Deimos, the Greek God of Terror. So even though he was broken, he could never turn on his beloved prince.

Because Arcane would be king one day.

When that happened, Jaeger would be by his side as his most trusted advisor. His lifelong dream of being one of the most powerful men in the world would finally be realized. He fervently hoped his father lived long enough to see it. He would take great pleasure in rubbing his success in the old bastard's face.

After all, he was the flawed son.

As a child, Jaeger's lisp had repulsed his father, so he had learned to enunciate every word perfectly, in a multitude of languages. He had tried to become the son that Erich Von Osterman would be proud of, but he quickly realized that it was a wasted effort. He was merely the spare in case something happened to the precious heir. The one that was loved.

So yes, he had aspirations of grandeur, and nothing would stop him from attaining them.

Unless his tormentor killed him.

 

***

 

"Jesus fuck," Chaz breathed in horror and had to look away from the computer monitor. He'd seen Jax do some pretty intense shit before, but never anything like this. How the hell Von hadn't already broke he'd never understand. The sick fuck must enjoy receiving pain as much as he liked giving it.

"Brought you some dinner," Hunter said as he entered the hangar. They had set up a mobile command post to remain in close proximity to their prisoner. And to make damn sure the women didn't find out what was going on. The men took turns monitoring Von and keeping an eye on Jax to make sure he didn't snap.

"Dude, take that shit back," he refused. The thought of food nauseated him after what he'd just seen.

"You sure? Sin made grilled… Holy shit!" The other man said in shock as he saw what was happening inside the cooler. "Is that a cattle prod?"

"Stealth shut the fuck up," Chaz pleaded.

"Ho. Lee. Shit," the team geek said as he sat the tray of food down and leaned in for a better look at the monitor. "Never seen anything like that before."

"Sure as fuck don't wanna see it again," he assured him as he rose and moved away from the scent of food.

Seemingly fascinated by what was happening on the screen, Hunter grimaced and said, "You know that's gotta hurt like a mother fucker. How the hell is this dude holding out on us?"

"I don't know, bro," he denied as he turned to face him. "It's like he's been programmed not to talk or something."

Hunter's expression revealed he'd had a light bulb moment. "Dude, that's it!" He said in genuine excitement. "He's been programmed."

"Like a sleeper agent?" Chaz queried in confusion.

"No, like in brainwashed," he clarified. "When Kenz scoured the dark web for info on what they might have done to erase Char's memories, she discovered references to brainwashing techniques. Some were to convert new members, but there was a vague mention of a school of mysteries, private academies where they indoctrinate their kids."

"Van and Von went to school together," he recalled. "Maybe that's why we can't find any school records for them. Private academies don't always publish student names for security reasons."

"Exactly," the other man agreed. "They could have undergone some type of brainwashing or indoctrination procedure in order to protect the other student's identities."

"Awesome," Chaz confirmed and then scowled. "So how the fuck do we undo it?"

Hunter's expression became grim as he glanced back at the monitor again. "Brother, if a fucking cattle prod up the ass won't do it, I don't know what will."