In Too Deep, Book 3, Part 10

 [image: VitalikRadko]

Here it is, the climax of this wild story. Not only is this the longest chapter (or collection of chapters) that I've posted, but it turns out that "Book 3" is nearly as long as books 1 and 2 combined. I'll have more thoughts and reflections next week on the creative process and how this all came together, but I want to say here, at the top, that while this has been an exhausting experience for me, it's been fucking amazing. I don't think this story would have ever been finished without this community, and even if it was, it would have been a far different story—as I alluded to, it probably would have just ended after the Living Room chapter.

Okay, enough rambling. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

Chapter 35: Party to End All Parties

A month ago, I’d never been inside a strip club before. I’d entered the Gold Club wide-eyed and blushing, a country tourist walking through the streets of a glitzy, towering city. I was awkward. I was out of my element.

As I stepped into the main cabin of Dominion, the massive, two-level yacht in slip 69, I was no longer that awkward tourist. The lights were low. Hip hop infused the charged atmosphere. Smoke swirled in the glittering lights. Plush leather chairs clustered through the space, each occupied but a man getting a lap dance from a different stripper.

It felt like stepping into a den of sin. My senses were overloaded with it—the sounds, the smells, the visuals. “Champagne?” someone asked.

When I turned to her and lifted a flute of bubbly from the silver platter, I realized that she was wearing a leather, BDSM mask, only her mouth and eyes visible. Beyond that, she wore nothing but leather straps that left her breasts bare and just barely concealed her slit.

The old David would have been left with his mouth open and his heart racing. Now, I grinned at the server, raised the flute in a toast, and said, “Thank you,” with a wink and a lingering gaze over her chest.

“Find me if you want another,” she said, rubbing her hand along my chest before moving on.

All the servers were dressed in some version of that, men and women alike—the gimp masks, the bondage gear, the near nudity. It gave the makeshift strip club a fetishy vibe that Nikolai must have been going for.

Speaking of the man, though, I didn’t see him in my quick scan. I did recognize a few others. Sammy 9Pole was there with a few others from his gang, including his buddy Deion. The DJ spinning records worked at the Gold Club, and I recognized some of the dancers.

I spotted Irina through the crowd, grinding on some Slavic looking guy who was all neck and shoulders. The platinum blond stripper was dressed as a “mermaid”—aquamarine sequin bra top, a pair of skin-tight, sequined pants that flared into bell bottoms—her tail, presumably. The pants were so thin I could easily see her thong through them, and even as I watched, she laid back on her man, bridged her tight little body up, and shimmied out of those close-fitting pants.

I didn’t gawk. I didn’t stand frozen at the entrance. I entered smoothly, nodding at people I didn’t know, as if I belonged. They nodded back. I let the music flow through me, fueling the swagger in my shoulders and my step. I sipped the champagne. I pulled a bacon-wrapped date off of a passing platter—this one wielded by a man in a mask, a collar, and a leather thong.

Windows flanked either side of the luxury cabin, and for one disorienting moment, I wondered if I’d been drugged. The yachts on either side started to shift and move. The deck beneath me lurched. Then it dawned on me. We were moving. The Dominion was casting off.

That wasn’t part of the plan.

“Jasmine?” a familiar female voice asked. I turned. Despite the mask obscuring her pretty features, I knew that voice. Mia and her dark, alluring eyes were staring back at me, her lips painted red. Her mask only covered the top half of her face, like a cowl, leaving her long, dark hair flowing around her shoulders.

I started to say her name, but she spoke over me before I could. “It’s the latest synthetic variation,” she explained. “JazzX. Those here on the boat are the lucky ones who get to try it first.”

She picked one of the little pills off the platter. It was a deeper shade of purple than those I’d seen Brandon flash. “Stronger than the original. More addictive, too.” She handed it to me, leaning close to whisper, “Do not, under any circumstances, take it.”

Before I could respond, the music spun down into a low, bass-heavy drone. Everyone turned to the front of the cabin, where a spiral stairwell led down from the upper decks. There he was, Nikolai Kozlov holding court. He was no longer the smug criminal with the nice hair that I’d seen in the video just a few hours earlier. But he wasn’t the desperate, hunted fugitive from Del Ray’s Motor Lodge, either.

He’d cleaned himself up. He still sported a graying scruff where his beard once was, but it looked more manicured than before. His shaved head glistened under the lights. In his his tailored gray suit, he looked a man forged anew.

And just behind him walked Amanda. 

My heart skipped a beat. She wore a short, skin tight vinyl dress, the kind of dress that was completely unforgiving of any flaws. As the lights caught in the glossy, black vinyl, I couldn’t see any. Not outward. It plunged so low that half of her breasts were exposed, full, juicy swells of tanned flesh, and was short enough that it didn’t conceal the dark bands at the tops of her black stockings, or the garter straps that held them in place.

But it was the collar that held most of my attention. Black leather, cinched around her neck, with a leash that drooped lazily between Amanda and Kozlov. She followed obediently now, but would have to follow even if she didn’t want to.

Kozlov paused at the bottom of the stairs. Amanda stopped just short of him, standing with her hands behind her back and her head lowered in subservience. It was a strange thing to see on her.

“Thank you all for coming,” Kozlov said, his accent thick and his confidence apparently fully back. “Rumors of my demise have been…” He couldn’t seem to remember the end of tha saying. “...whatever the fuck. I am still fucking here!” Okay, so that sounded a little unhinged. “This is my peace offering.” He gestured either side, as the marina gave way to the bay beyond. “Literally water underneath us, yes? After all, we have money to make.”

I looked over at Sammy and his crew. They didn’t look abashed or worried about the shifting of the winds. Sammy just leaned back in his chair, puffing at a cigarette as the guys around him grinned and nodded.

But it also wasn’t Sammy that Kozlov seemed to direct most of his attention to. That was reserved for a small cluster of well-dressed men sitting a bit apart, off to Kozlov’s left. 

These guys were a varied lot. Some with short hair, a couple of shaven heads, yet to a man olive skinned, deep-set eyes, everyone sporting a beard of some length.

And not a smiling face among them. 

The Chechens were in attendance. And the tension that ran between them and Kozlov was positively palpable.

“It is so rare to have everyone here in one place, no? A family reunion. Why do we gather?”

He glanced at one of the servers, who carried a platter of the purple pills. She hustled over to him, bare breasts bouncing. He plucked a pill off the platter and held it up. “We gather for this. A new dawn. The last few months were an experiment. This is the result. It is not just some party drug. It is not just something for stupid kids and clubs. This is the next big thing.”

Mia, still near me, whispered, “It’s also addictive as fuck.”

“With this, with Jazz… X… the fun does not stop,” he said. He tugged at the leash, and Amanda stepped up next to him. He lifted the pill before her, and she opened her mouth and stuck her tongue out, like a patient ready for an examination. He placed the pill on her tongue. “And why the fuck would we want the fun to stop?”

Their eyes were locked on one another, like for those two, nothing else mattered in that moment. It was a hard thing to watch. Amanda closed her mouth, and I wondered if she was swallowing the drug—had she already done some? Kozlov dragged her closer with the leash, pulling her in for a deep, passionate kiss. She welcomed it, kissing him back, pressing her curves against him.

We all watched the two. Some grinned and murmured appreciation. Others shifted. No one spoke. Kozlov, for all his faults, knew how to command a room.

When the kiss ended, Kozlov looked up. “What is everybody staring at? This is a party. Time to party!”

That broke the tension. The DJ cranked the volume. The sultry lyrics of Cardi B flooded the space as the dancers started to twist and dance in mens’ laps. Kozlov whispered something into Amanda’s ear. I followed their eyes over to the Chechens. The connection? The greater network?

Everyone was here. It was time to call in the cavalry. Only one problem: that cavalry couldn’t cross water, and when I looked out those windows, the marina was now just a glittered blur of lights on the far, dark shore. Fuck.

Irina appeared at the foot of the stairs. She hadn’t bothered putting her mermaid pants back on, but wore the scale-patterned thong and bra. Kozlov handed the leash to her and whispered something to her. Irina flicked her platinum locks away from her face and grinned before literally leading Amanda over to the knot of Chechens.

I turned to look at Mia, but she was already gone, circulating through the crowd. Apparently after the big reveal, everyone wanted to try the next big thing.

That’s when I started to lose my cool. I’d thought that I had it all under control. I’d expected this to be over by now, to be sitting in a police car as bad men were arrested and taken away all around us. Now, I didn’t know what to do… other than watch Amanda and hope that she had some plan.

Despite the danger, despite all the fear racing though my veins, it was still nauseatingly hot to watch her step with such confidence into the ring of men. I was too far away to hear anything that was said, but she greeted them all with a seductive openness that would have looked surprising on Old Amanda, but was part of who she was now.

One of the guys said something. The others laughed. Irina pulled on the leash, drawing Amanda close to her. “This what you want to see?” I’m pretty sure Amanda asked them.

There were nods. I almost nodded. And then, in slow motion, Amanda turned to Irina, rested her hands on the other woman’s hips, and turned her head in for a kiss. Before their lips even touched, their mouths were parted, tongues unfurling, ready to tangle.

I wondered if Irina was involved somehow. I didn’t remember seeing her name in any of the meta data, but that just meant that she wasn’t a person of interest. Kozlov’s criminal network spanned what was in those files.

The guy sitting in the center of the group stood up. He looked like a rugby player, his wavy dark hair and short beard nondescript, thick with muscle and a comfortable lifestyle. He was probably around our age, no older than early thirties. He had a ring on every finger except for his thumbs.

He moved up behind Amanda as she continued her girl-on-girl makeout session with Irina. His fingers glided over her vinyl dress, a jeweler appraising a fine diamond. He kissed her long neck, causing her to pull away from Irina long enough to turn and meet his mouth over her shoulder. Irina watched from inches away, her eyes glittering. She pulled the top of Amanda’s dress aside, exposing an erect nipple, and dipped low to capture it in her mouth.

For a moment, I thought they were going to have sex right there in the room. It wouldn’t have been too crazy. Looking around, it seemed like the JazzX was already permeating the scene. The strippers were mostly naked now. Some were on their knees between the men’s legs. Others were just outright fucking.

Amanda’s group didn’t join them in the public exhibition. Instead, Irina passed the leash to the guy with the rings. She gave Amanda one last kiss before disappearing back into the crowd. The men all rose, and as one, led Amanda towards the stairs that led into the cabins above.

“They are a bunch of motherfuckers.” Kozlov’s voice startled me, as did the arm that he immediately draped over my shoulder.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Dogs who think that they are the masters.” Clearly, Kozlov didn’t like the bunch much. “They should be the ones wearing the leash.”

I fought to get my breathing back down to something normal. “So why aren’t they?”

“Because the trap only works when they think that they are in charge.” His arm over my shoulder tightened. “You know something about this, don’t you… David?”

My heart caught when he used my full name—not that the alias was ever all that good.

“I… what?”

“Good. You did not scream like frightened child. I admire you, Dave the Muscle.” He chuckled. “Or is it Davey? What do you prefer?”

Fuck. Fuck! Everything tunneled around me. I wondered if I’d taken that drug after all. I wondered if I was going to pass out. My heart felt like it was trying to rip itself out of my chest. I heard him talking, but I couldn’t make sense of it.

“...really had me convinced, but I knew that I recognized you.” He gave me one last, tight squeeze, then let me go. “Come, this, down here, is not where the real party is. For you, David, I will give you the tour, yes? Let us go and check in on your wife, if that is really who she is.”

He gestured towards the stairs. I looked around, wondering in my panic if I could run. But where would I run? We were in the middle of the fucking ocean now. I looked for Mia, trying to identify her in the swath of black leather hoods and taut flesh. No luck.

So I did my best to square my shoulders and went, stumbling towards the circular stairwell like ascending the gallows. Was that what this was? Were these my final steps in this life?

“What’s going on?” I managed to ask, in an effort to buy myself some time.

“Your wife tells me that you like to watch. You and I are similar in that way.”

“We are nothing alike.” If this was to be my last act, I wasn’t going to go down being debased like this.

“Now, now, David, there is no sense in denying it. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It does not make you… less of a man.” He pounded his chest. “It is no different than showing off a new car, or wearing an expensive suit.”

“She’s not a possession.”

“All women are. All people can be. Your wife, in fact, wants to be.”

As I stepped up into the top deck of the yacht, I briefly considered turning around and kicking him hard, sending him rolling backwards. But the stairs led onto the bridge, where men in black piloted the yacht through the dark waters. They turned to look at me. All of them were armed with angry looking SMGs. My brief thought to resist died as quickly as it was born.

“I knew you looked familiar that day you came to the motel. I thought to myself, ‘There is no way this man is bodyguard,’ but I was not of right mind then.” 

Like you are now? I thought to myself.

“But then, when I learned about your wife, of who she really was, it all clicked.” He snapped his fingers behind me. I flinched at the sound. It was unnerving, having him behind me. He prodded me towards the stern. A short passageway extended the length of the ship, all the doors closed.

“When I confronted her, she did not deny it, or who you were. This is how I know we are the same. You are smart. You are strong. And you like watching your woman being filthy.”

The passway was bathed in red light, and behind at least one of those doors, I could hear the sounds of sex.

“I know it was you in the Living Room. You watched your own wife do some very unfaithful things—things she continues to do. Things that she will always do. There is no going back from this, David.”

Despite everything, his words insinuated them into the dark recesses of my mind, where my fears and insecurities whispered. This was what kept me up at night. This was what I worried about when the dust of these past few months finally settled.

Kozlov paused at the last door on the hall—the main bedroom suite of the yacht. He slapped me on the back, but left his hand there, gripping my shoulder.  “Maybe you are right, David. You and are not alike. You are sheep. I am wolf. Isn’t that how you Americans say it?”

“I am not a sheep.”

“We shall see.”

I could hear a woman’s moan behind that door, and more than a few men, foreign voices, a rhythmic creaking. “Go on,” Kozlov said, eager to inflict more humiliation. “See for yourself.”

I pushed open the door, and the scene was already in full swing. A wall of sex and sound hit me—the moans, the grunts, the driving beat of angry death metal.

The captain’s cabin was all polished wood and gold fixtures, and like the hallway behind us, was filled with soft, ambient red light, like a brothel. The horizon slid by outside. It opened into an aft balcony, where the frothing wake was just visible in the dark waters beyond.

My wife was there, but her dress wasn’t. She was now completely naked save for a black leather garter belt, stockings, heels, and that collar. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, surrounded by naked men, servicing one of them as she jerked off another two. The raven tattoo danced. My breath caught.

Just behind her, on the bed, was a tangle of bouncing, was another mini-scene of bondage and domination. Bound to the bed, her wrists strapped to the posts, her legs splayed wide open, was Julia. The man with the rings was pounding her hard. Another was straddling her face, ramming his cock down her throat.

I was confused until Kozlov said, “Say hello to… Gillian? Or do you call your wife Julia at home?”

The guy with his cock buried down Julia’s throat pulled out, letting her gasp and breath and moan for air. “You made it, my husband,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Julia…” My shock didn’t need to be feigned. Kozlov thought that we were the couple, not my wife.

My eyes tracked over to Amanda. The man at the center had taken hold of her leash and was forcing her to move from cock to cock, taking a single thrust down the throat from each one. Her gags were both hot and jarring all at once.

“Told you she loved it,” Kozlov said. Before I knew it, I was being guided into a chair in the corner. Kozlov didn’t even bother restraining me. He just left me there, stunned, as he started to get undressed. “I have not had her yet,” he said to me. “I was saving that particular experience for when you got to watch. Fun, yes?”

The man fucking Julia bucked one last time and seemed to come, grunting loudly, uttering something I couldn’t understand. He pulled free and flopped onto the bed, facing the ceiling, his dick still sheathed in the now overloaded condom.

“Clean him,” Kozlov said.

Amanda pulled away from the blowbang, although her hands continued to stroke the two cocks as the third man tapped his dick against her cheek. “Nicky, you made it.” Her eyes didn’t look glazed or drugged. If anything, she seemed on fire. She glanced at me and smiled. “And you brought David.”

“I thought it would be a nice gesture, letting him say goodbye to his loving wife.”

Amanda snickered at that. “I’d like to say… goodbye to him,” she said. “Will you let me?”

Glancing at Kozlov, I watched his jaw set, his eyes flare, his chest swell just so. I knew that sensation. I’d been living it for weeks now. I’d probably live with it for the rest of my life. Jealous angst. Cuckold angst. Angst that I’d begun to crave. With an addict like Kozlov, he couldn’t resist. This was how Amanda had controlled him so well.

“I will, pet,” he said. “But first, clean him.”

The “him” in question was the man with the rings, and Amanda did so without further question. She crawled over to the Chechen, who was lounging with a tattooed arm behind his head and a smile stretched across his face. 

“You know who gave you up, right?” Kozlov said. “Have you figured it out?”

“No…” I was a man who didn’t want to believe the truth.

Except that I did know the truth. We’d discussed it. Kozlov had said it himself: the trap only works when they think that they are in charge. If he thought that Amanda had betrayed everyone, he would never suspect that he was the one being betrayed.

We watched the action—Amanda pulling off the condom and sucking one man’s flagging dick as another rolled a condom on and mounted Julia’s splayed legs.

Kozlov continued, slowly stroking his own semi-hard dick as he watched. “At first I was very upset. I trusted her. How could she be one of them. But then I realized something. It was the ultimate form of trust—of her in me, and me in her. She gave herself up to me. She chose me, this lifestyle, this world.”

“Mmm, yes, I did,” Amanda purred, lifting her head from the man’s cock. All the other men had condoms on now. Things were about to get even more spicy. To one, Amanda said, “Are you going to just stand there? Or are you go to fuck me?”

All the guys chuckled. My stomach churned and that cuckold angst flared. Two guys had to fight to move into place behind her. She gasped as the winner rammed home.

“You see, why get paid a government wage and toil away, day after day, when they could have this?” Kozlov finished by taking a snort at a vial of white powder that he’d picked up from the sideboard. The man fucking Julia came hard, and was quickly replaced by a third. “I’ll fuck her after everyone else has her at least once. More fun that way, yes? Then, maybe you can… reclaim her.” 

He chuckled at the word, picking up on at least one of the layers of irony here.

I could have left. No one was stopping me. There was no guard at the door. I wasn’t bound to the chair. Not by anything physical. But I couldn’t leave, and Nikolai knew that I couldn’t. He just didn’t realize who I was there to watch.

The man inside of Amanda yanked on her leash, pulling her head back. She gasped, lifting off and away from the man with the rings, who was once again hard. He sat up, attacking Amanda’s tits as the guy behind her choke-fucked her. I wanted to rush to her rescue, but her moans told me that she was into it.

Kozlov moved to her side, getting a closer look as she fucked these two men. I burned with envy as he leaned in and kissed her like he owned her.

“These two come as package deal,” Kozlov said to me. “But did you know that they hate each other?” He whispered something to Amanda, who giggled and nodded. Kozlov took her leash and guided her to Julia, who was in the throes of yet another orgasm. “Sometimes, hate is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Amanda leaned down, grabbed a handful of Julia’s blond hair, and dragged her in for a wild kiss. The man fucking Julia went hard at the sight of the two women going at it. He didn’t last long. When he finished and pulled free, Amanda climbed over and started to gyrate her pussy against Julia’s face.

I could see Julia’s tongue dance along Amanda’s smooth slit before Amanda leaned forward and started to return the favor.

Kozlov grinned at the lesbian show. He was moving up to the headboard, behind Amanda, stroking his cock, now at full length. “Yes, Ray, smother her. Make her work for it.” To me: “When this is all over, I am going to enjoy these two. There’s nothing like a little competition.”

In position, Kozlov thrust forward. Amanda gasped, lifting off of Julia’s pussy. Her chin was glistened. Her eyes fluttered shut. The fourth man of the group waddled in between Julia’s open legs, sheathed dick hard and ready. That’s when I realized that Kozlov wasn’t wearing one. He was fucking Amanda bare.

I hissed, clutching the armrests of the chair as the room around me sweltered and smeared. I suspected that he was using her like that, wanting the skin on skin, but here, at last, was proof, and it burned through me like phosphorus.

The man fucking Julia didn’t last long. Not with Amanda right there, tugging at his balls, or raising up and kissing him hard on the mouth.

“Fuck me in the ass,” she said to Kozlov as the fifth man swapped in. “I want to feel it again.”

I want to feel it one last time? Was that what she really was asking? The thought further inflamed me. I tugged at my pants, unleashing my dick. Kozlov grinned. “Now you’re getting into the spirit.”

The orgy continued. Men crowded around Amanda and Julia. “Oh, fuck!” Amanda gasped as Kozlov pressed into her asshole. “Fuck, that’s so… mmm…”

Even distracted by the anal sex, Amanda was aware of the men around her. She reached out, grabbing dicks, stroking them. They groped her tits, and played with Julia’s. The women were swallowed up in a pile of sweating, pumping, grunting men.

I sat and watched, slowly jerking off and hating myself for loving this scene.

Through the haze, through the sea of men, I’d catch a flash of Amanda staring back at me like some kind of majestic, woodland creature glimpsed through the trees. She may have been fucking these other men, Kozlov may have thought that she was his, but we both knew that she was there with me.

Things shifted a final time. Julia’s wrists were finally unbound. She was flipped onto her hands and knees as Kozlov moved behind her. He looked over at me, triumphant. He still didn’t get it. He never would.

“Watch me. Know what you are losing.” He rammed into Julia, who moaned.

I caught sight of Amanda again, pushing a damp strand of hair over her ear. She disengaged from the group and approached me, swinging her hips and smiling. She was drenched in sweat. Red marks covered her body where she’d been pinched and slapped. Beneath the collar, her skin was pink. But she owned it all. She was here, in control.

“Hope you’re enjoying yourself, David,” she said. “Hope you’re not too upset to see your woman get gangbanged.”

I looked behind her. Someone had a fist of Julia’s hair in his hand, yanking her towards his dick.

“Not upset at all.”

Amanda dropped to her knees before me. “Yeah, kind of satisfying, isn’t it?”

With her blue eyes never leaving mine, she started to blow me. I’d held out too long. I wouldn’t last much longer. Amanda knew. She produced a condom and rolled it on with her mouth. Even watching that made me pop.

“You need to fuck her,” she said, rising over me again. “You need to make that bitch scream.”

But Julia was already screaming—as much as she could with two dicks stuffed in her mouth. Kozlov spanked her as she climaxed, emptying his balls into her used pussy.

He pulled out with a flourish, finger in the air, dick swinging between his thighs. “Cuck’s turn!”

“Go,” Amanda mouthed.

Julia waited for me, face down, ass up, panting hard. The men parted around me. I could feel their pity. I didn’t share it. Amanda also watched, riveted, her breathing shallow. If she could do this for me, I could do it for her.

“Uh!” Julia gasped.

“Try and reclaim her,” Kozlov taunted. “She will never be yours again.”

I tried to block him out, but he was there, stoking my fears all over again. I looked for Amanda, watching her move in the periphery of the room. She crouched down beside Kozlov’s discarded clothing, retrieved his pistol, and released the clip. She was so slick about it, popping the one in the chamber without a sound.

“She is my toy now, David. Let this be your final thought.”

I could feel my climax building in my balls, lights flashing in a blaze all around me. I shut my eyes, seeing not Julia, but Amanda—dancing at the club, seducing other men, going to their beds and not leaving until morning. I realized that maybe I didn’t want it to end here. That was my final thought.

Reality rushed up around me. I pulled out of Julia, ripped off the condom, and exploded all over her back. Amanda was there, finished with whatever she’d been doing. No one was the wiser.

“Hope you enjoyed that,” Kozlov said.

“Really?”

“No, not really.” He threw my clothes at me. “Get dressed. We continue your tour.”

I glanced back at the room, the orgy. It wasn’t over now that we were leaving. No, Amanda was now being cuffed to the bed by Julia, and fear sizzled through me. If she was restrained, it meant that I was truly on my own.

“Tick tick, David,” Kozlov said. “We have much less time than you realize.”

I got dressed.

Chapter 36: Finale

“I’d like to show you something fun,” Kozlov said. He led me down a service ladder, the tight quarters descending two decks below, into the bowels of the yacht. I could hear the thrum of the engines down here, loud and unmuffled.

“Where are we going?” The hairs were beginning to stand up on the back of my neck. This was it. This was the end.

Kozlov prodded me downward, and now I could feel the muzzle of his gun pressed between my shoulders. Games were over. “You know what I think is bullshit?”

“Integrity in US law enforcement organizations?”

“Second chances.” He didn’t even bother laughing at my own nervous joke.

“But I thought… what about your speech about water under the bridge and all that?”

“This is a yacht, David. This is not a fucking bridge.” When I glanced back at him, it was like glancing into madness. “Also, I fucking lied. All these fuckers are dead to me.”

We’d arrived at the lower deck. The space was small. Sounds of the ship creaked around us.

“Dead? What?”

“Open the hatch.”

The hatch was designed to be watertight, needing a large wheel to open. I turned it. It swung open smoothly. The engine noises roared louder.

“Go on in.”

I entered. Kozlov followed, but only to the entrance of the engine room, where he remained, framed in the hatchway, gun casually pointed at me from his hip.

At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at. There was machinery everywhere, humming and chugging as the yacht pushed out into the water. It smelled of diesel and oil. Something else I couldn’t place. There were large oil drums everywhere, and on each, a box with flashing lights and wires running to the drum below.

It dawned on me what I was seeing. Bombs. So many bombs.

“This isn’t a party to celebrate the new drug, or your return to this world…” I said. “This is revenge.”

“Can’t it be both, David?” Kozlov said, leaning on the steel edge of the hatchway. “There certainly is a new drug—”

“But how? Oleg is in prison.”

Kozlov only looked mildly put out at the interruption. He was taking more delight in the explanation. “You didn’t hear? Oleg Kuznetsov has been released on a technicality. Something to do with inept paperwork.”

That didn’t sound likely. Not under Hirsch.

“But Oleg has been working on this new strain for some time now. More addicting than the original, yet less out of control.” He smiled. “Like the new me.”

“If you kill everyone on board, you kill your network.”

Kozlov sighed. “A ‘network’ that tried to eliminate me? A ‘network’ that will turn on me as soon as they have the chance? A ‘network’ of fools who seems to think that I am the problem just because of a little cocaine habit?!”

He was screaming by the end, spittle on his lips, his anger ricocheting off the metal walls around us.

“You know what’s great about this? Once I kill all of these people…” He opened his hands, palms up like the statement was a simple offering. “...I can build a new group, peopled with more compliant types, who will think twice when it comes to crossing me.”

His logic didn’t quite line up, but this man was also coked out of his skull. In his world, he was the mastermind.

I took a deep breath. The bombs around me were unnerving. Their lights blinked in unison, a slow, threatening reminder of how close I was to fiery death. Glancing beyond Kozlov, I said, “You get all that?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Hirsch’s voice emerged from the darkness of the passageway behind Kozlov.

Startled, the Russian half-turned in the direction of the new voice, only to be met by the butt of a pistol crashing down on his head. He fell to the deck like a ragdoll, his gun clattering away from him as he fell. 

The sudden violence took me by surprise. I began to back away as Bradley Hirsch stepped over Kozlov’s unconscious body.

“What the fuck?” I said, staring at Mr. FBI, Mr. By-the-Books, who’d just brained an unaware man.

Hirsch looked as pristine and unruffled as he always did on television. He even wore a dark suit and a tie like he was about to step in front of some cameras, even here in the bowels of this ship. Not a single stray strand of graying hair escaped the prison of his well-combed demeanor.

“You did well, David. I couldn’t have asked for better with any of my other agents. You got the perfect confession for this crime. Something I can use when I leak it to the news agencies later this week. Something that will explain the tragic explosion aboard the Dominion. Unfortunately, there were no survivors, and Nikolai Kozlov himself got caught in the blast.”

“How… what? But… your agents?”

“All served their country with honor and integrity. They died to make the world a safer place. We were just too late with the tactical teams. The explosion happened prematurely.”

“You did this?”

“You really think that Nikolai Kozlov,” he said the man’s name with such derision, “had the wherewithal to scare up all of this?” He gestured to the drums. “The man was out-of-control, and had outlived his usefulness. All of you have. He did do one really excellent thing, though.” Hirsch placed a hand on the wheel lock and began to pull on the hatch. “He managed to get all the relevant players together in one place. Well, with some help from me.”

“You ordered the agents to go undercover as wait staff.”

“The bondage hoods were a nice touch, don’t you think?” He chuckled. “Kozlov wanted revenge. I just want a clean slate.”

“What about your career? This many agents getting snuffed on one of your exercises, and you take the fall.”

“Yeah,” Hirsch shook his head in mock sorrow. “I’ll fall on my sword, take early retirement. Promise to spend the rest of my days mourning all of you and celebrating your sacrifice.” He could look awfully sincere, even when I knew he was being false.

“Just kidding!” He brightened. “About the ‘mourning’ thing, not the ‘retirement’. Besides, I’ll be too busy for fieldwork. Me and good old Oleg are going to make a metric fuckton of  cash.” He glanced at Kozlov, prostrate on the deck, and now bleeding from his ear. “And as for this useful idiot, he was right about one thing. Networks are so easy to rebuild. All it takes is money.”

He started to close the hatch when I held up my hand. “One problem,” I said. “I’m sorry, but maybe you didn’t hear yet.”

Hirsch cocked his head at me, looking, for the first time, confused. “Hear what?”

“Oh, that your money is gone?”

“What are you talking about?”

I glanced at my watch. “Yup, all gone. So are the videos, actually. Obliterated.”

Watching the realization of what he had just suffered—and at the hands of a lowly civilian such as “The Husband,” no less—wash over Hirsch’s face was delightful. Almost made me forget about the gun he held at his side. “What are you—”

“You get that?” I asked for the second time, directing my attention over his shoulder.

“Got it,” Amanda said.

“Crystal clear,” Julia added as she pressed the muzzle of her Glock purposefully against the spot on Hirsch where his spinal column met the base of his brain. Hirsch slowly raised his hands, letting his own pistol dangle by its trigger guard from his forefinger. After disarming him Julia made quick work of slamming her erstwhile boss and rolling him up against the bulkhead. “God, I want to choke him out so badly.”

“Yeah, probably better not,” Amanda said.

I only half-registered what they were saying. All of the adrenaline pumping through my veins finally gave out. I nearly fell like a marionette whose strings had been suddenly cut. 

“We need him—oh, watch it there, my husband.” Amanda was there, catching me before I fell, holding me in a tight, strong embrace. “I’m here, I’m here,” she was saying, holding me close, smoothing her hands through my hair. “And you did so well, baby. So fucking well.”

“I don’t know how you do this,” I said. “I feel like puking.”

Amanda giggled. “You don’t think that’s how I feel, like, 90 percent of the time?”

“You do?”

“Nah. I mostly try not to think too much about it.”

Somewhere above decks, there came a loud WHOOMP. I cringed, thinking that the bombs were going off. The sound was followed by shouting, a commotion. Julia had a walkie out. “Down below. Engine room. Situation is contained, but requesting backup and medical staff.”

I glanced at the bombs. “What about those?”

“They’re not real.” Amanda paced over to one of them, reached out, and yanked on the wires. It happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to flinch. The lights all blinked one last time, then went dark. “We weren’t going to bring a literal ton of explosives aboard a ship filled with civilians.”

“I thought we said no more secrets?” I asked, but I was smiling in relief.

“That was my idea,” Julia said. “Thought it would be more authentic if you believed they were real.”

Ty arrived on the scene, dressed in SWAT gear, his weapon out. “Jesus H. Christ!” he barked, taking in the scene. Behind him were a couple coast guard agents in the stairwell, although the space was too small for them to enter.

Julia passed Hirsch to Ty. Amanda retrieved both Hirsch’s and Kozlov’s dropped weapons. “Things secured above?”

“Just as planned,” Ty said with a nod. “You know there’s a room full of naked, unconscious bearded dudes in the master cabin?”

“The pretty boys just couldn’t keep up,” Julia said with a wink.

“Never trust this one,” I said to Ty.

“And yet you trusted me enough to call me.” Julia winked. She moved over to Kozlov, feeling for a pulse. “He’s alive, but with all this blood, likely concussed.” To Hirsch: “You should have hit him harder, boss. Murder would go quite nicely with… well, the long list of charges that you’re about to face.”

“You fucking bitch!” Hirsch surprised everyone when he spun, twisted Ty’s Glock from his hand, and pointed it towards… me.

I waited for the end. Three thunderous cracks rang in my ears, coming in quick succession. I swear I felt the bullets tear through my chest. I swooned, touching my breastbone, my heart, expecting to find blood. Instead, it was Hirsch who found the blood, staring down in disbelief as his crisp, white shirt blossomed with red, right square center mass. Beside me, gun poised over my shoulder, was Amanda. The barrel was smoking. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly.

My wife looked at me, her eyes wide, just as stunned as I was.

Then, I passed out.

There will be one last part, epilogues and fun scenes and all that. Stay tuned. Ask questions. Give comments. And thanks again!