Awful, but not without historical precedent.
Grunts under coercion has a rich history that's still ongoing, but these sort of guards are those that would have both weapons and the guarded in their direct vicinity. I can't think of any historic example where this wasn't the loyalest of the loyal types.
Grunts are regularly mistreated and coerced. You can kidnap people off the streets, throw them in a trench and make sure they don't run away by the presence of "motivational troops" in the rear (who kill their own side for fleeing) but you don't let those sort of troops anywhere remotely near the people responsible for their predicament for very obvious reasons, let alone when armed.
These billionaires who have always relied on the power of the state for their security and asserting their property are absolutely delusional if they think they can keep it without it.
When states collapse, the one who emerge victorious aren't the well-mannered business people, it's the warlords (a.k.a. the heads of organized crime).