He certainly fucking isn’t.
I bit back on the frown that threatened to appear at the news that the worm who’d hardly been able to run Gamma camp had been assigned responsibility for the whole site.
What was Ian thinking?
“You don’t approve?”Ian laughed, the noise louder again.
“It is not for me to say, Mr.President.”
“No.”His expression was serious in an instant.“It isn’t.Not after you fled everything we achieved to save one sorry whore.”
“I am genuinely sorry for betraying you.”I held his gaze, conscious of the click of cameras coming from what sounded like multiple angles.It seemed Ian’s minions were everywhere, but then, I was back on his turf again.I’d anticipated as much.“I should have known better, should have done better, but I—”
“Was only thinking with your cock.”Ian cut me off and finished the sentence for me.
“Right.”That wasn’t quite how I would have put it, but I wasn’t about to counter his analysis.Arguing with him wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
“Which is understandable.”He threw his arms out at either side of him.“You know how much I love pussy, except that you had access to more of it than nearly any man I know.”
He chuckled as though the idea of thousands of women being subject to my sexual whims was nothing more than amusing, after-dinner jocularity.In the new order we’d created, that was what a woman’s worth had become; cheap and disposable.
“So, why would you need to risk it all for her?”He stepped even closer until the toe of his shoe grazed my knee.“What was so fucking special about her?”
Kaspar’s head appeared over the side of the ship at that moment, her hair bedraggled and stuck to the side of her face where it looked as if the raging waves had smothered her.Her exhausted yelp drew Ian’s attention, saving me from needing to provide him with an immediate answer, but she also attracted three of his guards, who rushed to form a line between their president and the disheveled newcomer.
“And who is this?”Ian barked, his focus flitting between Kaspar and me.“You brought a woman with you!”
“This is Ms.Kaspar, Mr.President,” I replied, watching as she panted in a heap to my left.“She is the Swiss envoy assigned to present me to you.”
“Present you to me?”Ian snorted.“In the state that she’s in?And why on Earth would I take any notice of a woman?”
I had made that precise point to Kasper, Akari, and the others, but my warnings had gone unheeded.I supposed they just couldn’t imagine the misogyny that was currently in control of Great Britain.It was one thing to hear accounts and conceptualize, but quite another to have to live the reality.None of them had ever known anything like it.It wasn’t their fault, but their privileged worldviews had sent Kaspar into tangible danger.
Clearly disgruntled at Ian’s language, Kaspar rose to her full height, smoothing down her drenched clothes as best she could.One glance assured me that she’d borne the brunt of the waves far worse than I had, an experience that was etched into the glare she cast my way.
“Mr.President.”Kaspar took a step toward Ian, intending to offer him her palm, but the wall of muscle between them moved, pinning her against the side of the ship in one fell swoop.
“If you would just let me speak.I am here on behalf of my country!”she squeaked as one of them wrestled her arms behind her back while another began an overly intimate search of her damp clothing.“You have no right to do this!”
“You’re on my ship now, Ms.Kaspar,” Ian sneered.“So, it’s my rules that apply, darling.Here...”Reaching into his jacket pocket, he produced the standard type of ball gag I’d liked to use on Caroline and thrust it toward the nearest guard.“Get this in her gob and shut her up.I can’t think with a woman’s constant wailing.”
I watched as the man allocated the task went to work, forcing the plastic between Kaspar’s lips despite her vocal protests.Had she not been my one advocate on board the ship, I might have found the sight of her plight stimulating.Certainly, past versions of Adam Harper would have.Kneeling in the cold, though, all I could muster for her was sympathy.I’d tried to tell her what a monster Ian was, yet with her egalitarian mentality, she’d assumed she knew better, that I was hyperbolic, and as a cop, she could handle herself.
She was wrong.
But Ian was right.
Envoy or cop, Kaspar had no jurisdiction on board the Traditional Values.In Ian’s realm, there was only one master.
“Is she secure?”Ian asked, when one look at the writhing, gagged woman, who was being held back by two men twice her body weight would have conveyed the answer within seconds.
My logic, of course, missed the point entirely.Ian hadn’t asked because he hadn’t known the answer, he’d asked for effect.Because there were numerous cameras still rolling both on board the ship, and from the air above, and because to do so was all the more degrading for his newest prisoner.
I cringed at the scene, wishing Kaspar had seen sense and taken my advice.Staying behind would have seen her safe, warm, and dry, but kneeling on the deck at the behest of Ian’s whims, there was little I could do to protect her.
“Let’s see what we’re working with here.”Ian shrugged out of his green jacket, leaving it pooling at my feet as he rolled up his sleeves and stalked in the direction of the captured Kaspar.
Her eyes widened at his approach, fear flickering in them as she understood, too late, just how much trouble she was in.
