by SR Jones
“Has she slept with someone else?” Stamatis eyes me speculatively over his still steepled fingers as if trying to see into my soul.
“No, of course not. I have her checked. But we can say she has.”
“Firstly, they might check themselves,” he says. “Secondly, the only way for her to get out of this and them not make a claim, in blood, is for her to have married someone else, and the Pappas family to get half a million euros from the family she married. They put that particular caveat in there, as they knew your father could never give them the money if he reneged.”
Mother moans and steadies herself by putting her hands out in front of her.
“Oh, didn’t you know? That’s what your husband sold her for. He got half then, and he gets half when the marriage is completed and the first child is born. If no children are forthcoming within the first year, he doesn’t get the second half. If the marriage doesn’t happen due to Maya marrying elsewhere, her new family have to pay the Pappas family a dowry of sorts. Half a million euro. As well as Maya, the money also buys the Pappas family the right to keep any children in the event of a marriage breakdown. It also gives Yannis the chance to become an important part of my organization, but I made sure that element of the deal was left totally to my discretion, thank God, with what’s come out recently about the freak.”
I gasp and stumble, putting my arm out to steady myself, mirroring Mother’s actions of moments ago. “Daddy took money for me? He gave away all rights to his future grandchildren?”
Stamatis gives a harsh laugh. “Girl, your father takes money for everything, he needs to with his … habits.”
What habits?
“She’s your family, your flesh and blood.” Mother sounds angry now, and I don’t want her getting herself in trouble.
“I know, and because she’s my niece, I will think if there’s anything I can do, but honestly? The best advice is you go home, before Spiro finds you’re gone, and Maya here makes Yannis a good wife, and lets him find his … pleasures elsewhere. It won’t be so bad.”
“You bastard. You can’t do this to her, she’s your daughter.” Mother’s words echo in the room so loud I’m sure they can be heard on the other side of the world.
Then there’s nothing but a sickening, deafening silence.
Stamatis doesn’t move, not even a blink of his eyes. I don’t know if he’s breathing.
I turn to Mother, mouth open in shock.
What the hell did she say?
“Don’t play this game with me, Marina.” Stamatis’ voice is low, deadly. “Do not fucking play this game.”
Mother takes my arm and pushes me forward. “Look at her,” she’s still shouting. “Look at her, Stamatis, she is your daughter. Don’t punish me for refusing to leave my husband, when you know it was the right thing for both of us to do. We couldn’t tear two families apart.”
My mind is fracturing as I watch the scene in front of me play out as if on a TV screen. I’m not my father’s daughter, but my uncle’s?
“I know you’re angry at me because you thought we should leave our partners and be together, but life isn’t like that. We made vows, promises, and we’d have hurt so many people. I hate every minute of my life with Spiros, so you can rest assured, I’ve been served my punishment. But don’t take it out on Maya. She’s your daughter, and you cannot let her marry a sick, disgusting pervert like Yannis. If the only way to break it is for her to marry someone else and pay a dowry, then that’s what we must do, and you have to pay the half a million euros, Stamatis, or you’ll surely go to Hell.”
“Already there, Marina. Been there since the day you decided to stay with my loser brother.” He shakes his head, and then he looks at me again. I’m shaking so badly it’s hurting my legs to try to stay on my feet. “Is she really mine? You swear it?”
“Do a test, do whatever it takes. If it tears our families apart, so be it. I’ve tried everything I can to stop that from happening, but I can’t let her marry this man. I’ve already failed her in many ways, but I won’t let this happen to her. If you won’t help then she will leave, and I’ll go with her.”
“Fuck.” He stands suddenly and violently, and I automatically step back. He walks toward me like a slick, sleek panther, and I think how different, how so much more dangerous he is than my father.
When he reaches me, Stamatis tips my chin up with two fingers. He looks at me as if seeing into my soul.
“You and Spiros,” Mom begins, “you’re brothers, but you have different features, and I see you in her every day. Particularly as she got older, it’s why I distanced myself from her. It hurt sometimes to even look at her. She reminded me so much of what I couldn’t have. I’m amazed Spiros hasn’t figured it out, or maybe he has, and he simply doesn’t want to tear everything apart.” My mother sounds exhausted. Resigned.
“When she’s tired, she rubs her face, and the way she does it is the exact same way you do. Not up and down or across, but this perfect counter-clockwise circle. The exact same as you. And she rubs her neck when she lies, the same way you do. Plus, it’s in her tone of voice, other mannerisms, the dimple on the right side of her mouth when she smiles.” My mum starts to cry then, and it’s such a rare sight it shocks me to the core. “She’s yours, Stamatis, and I feel awful that I never told you, though to be honest, I thought you’d have seen it in her. I wanted to do the right thing by you and Spiros, and your children too.”
“I always wanted a daughter,” he says softly, and then he looks at my mother, “and I always wanted you.”
He snaps out of his moment of melancholy and once more is the scary, commanding man I’ve always known. “Okay. Here’s what I’m willing to do. She cannot, of course, marry one of my sons, because they’re in fact her half-brother, and even if not, they are her cousins. So, she needs to marry someone high up in my organization, both to give us a good reason for cancelling the marriage, and also because it will offer her extra protection.”
I’m going to be married to one of his men? I’ve seemingly seamlessly swapped one prison sentence for another. “I’ll pay the money to Lefteris for breach of the contract. I’ll also make Spiros understand he needs to leave this to me to sort out. I’ll frame it that it would be shameful for our family, and therefore me as head of it, for my niece to marry a man the papers are accusing of being a sexual deviant and a wife beater.”
“Thank you, Uncle,” I say before I realize my mistake. “I mean, Father.”
His shout when it comes is so shocking, I jump. “Never call me that again. I would have been your father if your mother had let me know at the time, but now I am not, and you must never call me that again. Never. You understand?”
I nod, unable to speak. I’m trying so hard to hold in my tears.
“Don’t cry, Maya. I’ll always be here for you, as your Uncle. Always. But I can’t be more. None of us must speak of this conversation ever again, and any and all reasons for this decision will be based on nothing more than me being a loving Uncle and head of this family, who will not let it be dragged into the mud. Understood?”
I nod mutely.
“Good girl. Now, who the fuck are we going to marry you to?”
“It needs to be someone who can keep her safe. I’m worried Yannis might try to hurt her if we call this off,” my mother says. “Not because he cares for her, but he won’t like the humiliation.”
My uncle smiles then. It’s a grim smile, and I’m not sure it means good things for me. He strides to his office door and orders Damen, Markos, and Alesso in.
“I need one of you to marry my niece,” he says as they file into the room.
I stare in shock at him, then I pray for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
The three men are staring at Uncle in shock at his words.
“Excuse me?” Markos says.
“Yeah, not you,” Stamatis replies.
He contemplates the men for a few moments, then says, “Alesso, I need you to marry my nie
ce.”
“What?” Alesso doesn’t look happy. In fact, he looks horrified.
I’m mortified at his reaction. God, am I that bad?
Maybe my shows have made him think of me as nothing more than a whore?
Certainly, it’s how Damen made me feel when he cornered me in the kitchen and told me off. Like a cheap, good for nothing, whore. Instead of sexy and naughty, I’d felt … desperate as he said. Tarnished almost. Then he did a one-eighty on me and somehow set me on fire with his sexual words and the way he looked at me. He messed with my head and succeeded.
Fucking men, I don’t get it. They want to show you their dicks incessantly. You can’t be a young woman on social media without getting dick pics in your DM’s left, right, and center, but God forbid a woman do anything similar, and she’s a slut. Why do they think we want to spend all our time looking at their unsolicited dick pics, but if we post hot pictures of ourselves, we’re sluts?
In fact, Damen slut-shamed me, but look at him. He’s no right to talk. The man wears clothes that at times appear sprayed on. Tight, dark jeans, Henley tops with every muscle showing. Yeah, he knows he’s got a good body, and he likes to show it off. He’s a pussy tease, and he made me feel bad? Fucker.
“Sir, I don’t understand. I’m supposed to be on leave this weekend; I have to go back home. There’s a girl I’m dating. I mean, this isn’t … I can’t… I don’t understand.” Alesso’s words drag me from my contemplation of Damen and focus my attention back on him. He doesn’t even glance at me.
I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life. For an insane moment, I think marrying Yannis and taking his sick behavior might have been better than this level of degradation.
“I need someone to marry her, only for a year or so, and it will be fake. I don’t expect you to consummate it or anything,” Stamatis says.
Oh Lord, let the ground open up right now, please. Can things get any more humiliating for me?
“Someone needs to step up, because the shit is about to hit the fan. Maya is not going to be marrying Yannis, and that might cause complications between the families. I need someone I know she’s safe with to step up. I also have to pay half a million euros to those fuckers if she doesn’t marry into their backward clan.” Stamatis jabs a finger at me as if I’m nothing more than a pain and not his daughter.
“What the fuck kind of contract is she locked into? Sounds more like she’s cattle being bought and sold at market than a human being.” Damen’s words shock me, just one more shock in a day full of them. But they also warm me, because he’s pointing out how I feel about it all.
He might have told me off a while ago, but now he’s standing up for me, the only person in this room to do so.
“The sort of contract her father thought would be a good idea to enter into. I don’t know why he did so, but at the time it helped the overall goals of this family. I agreed to it because it suited my agenda too, and it meant that her father actually had something to offer as my brother which, frankly, was a shock. Now, due to these revelations about Yannis, it no longer suits our family for them to marry, so I am putting a stop to it. So, Alesso.” Stamatis turns his attentions back to my ex-crush.
Ex because he’s got a girlfriend, but more pertinently, ex because he hasn’t said a word to defend me, just dithered when asked to marry me. But Damen did.
Damen defended me.
He stands up to my uncle, and it makes me respect him, because not many men would. I risk a glance at him and see his face is as hard as ever, but I get why Stella thinks he’s hot. He is, in a moody, harsh way.
“You work for me,” Uncle Stamatis says to Alesso. “I get that this goes beyond that, but you also owe me—”
“I’ll do it.” Damen steps forward, and I give a little squeak of surprise at his words and slam my lips shut tight when he turns to look at me.
“Excuse me?” Stamatis raises his brows. “Why? You don’t owe me. Technically, Alesso does. Why would you do this?”
“Alesso is a lovesick fool, and he wants to marry some local village girl,” Damen says.
Marry? He wants to marry her?
Oh, God, I’ve been making a show of myself for a man who isn’t interested at all. Damen’s words are damning, shattering the last idiotic vestiges of hope I had when I walked into this room. I’m nothing but an idiot, and I’ve made a total fool of myself over a man who never had any interest in me. I let myself go along with the insane idea of being married off like some sort of prized breeding cow for years. Finally, to top it all off, I don’t have anything to recommend me to anyone or any way to support myself.
I’m so utterly pathetic.
I won’t cry, though. I won’t let the men in this room know how much this hurts. I square my shoulders and take a deep, steadying breath.
“I don’t have anyone,” Damen continues. “It’s not going to be a hardship for me to enter into a fake marriage for a few months, or a year. I’ll keep Maya safe, make sure Yannis doesn’t do anything, and then when the time is up, when he’s moved on to someone new, and she’s off the radar, we can quietly get divorced.”
He’s the wrong one.
Not because I want Alesso anymore. But because he’s Damen, with his brooding stare, his big body, and his ability to make me feel small. Like the way he made me feel in the kitchen. Small and ashamed, but then turned on and hot and bothered.
He’s scary, and somehow, he has a power over me that I now realize Alesso never had and never would have had, even if we’d ended up starting something.
Alesso is too much of a nice guy for me. Despite being a killer, and dangerous, he’s kind of ordinary if you scratch the surface. Damen isn’t. He’s not ordinary at all.
Now he’s stepping up when no one else is.
“I still don’t get why you’d do this.” My uncle rubs the back of his neck and glances between Damen and Alesso.
“It won’t be so bad, Stamatis,” Damen carries on. “It’s hardly cruel and unusual punishment. Your niece is a beautiful and cultured young woman. We can go out places and enjoy ourselves, and in the privacy of our own home, we live our separate lives.”
He thinks I’m beautiful and cultured?
In all of this crazy happening right now, it’s insane I focus on those words, but they give me a tiny bit of my dignity back.
“Plus, I can protect her.”
Stamatis nods. “Yes, yes you can.”
Then Damen looks at me, and there’s a strange light in his eyes, a sense of satisfaction almost. “So long as she does what I say, I can keep her safe.”
“Oh, she’ll do what you say, alright,” Uncle states firmly.
“Good.” Damen’s word terrifies me because there’s so much satisfaction in it. Something tells me he’s going to enjoy having me under his control.
Damen is too big, too scary, and far too domineering for me to contemplate this. He’s not Alesso with an easy smile and an easy personality.
He’s dark.
Dark hair, dark eyes, dark personality from what I’ve seen. But what choice do I have?
I risk a glance at him, and he’s staring at me with a peculiar fire in his eyes. He’s loving this. It hits me then. He hasn’t simply stepped up to save me, he’s done so because he wants something more. Something from me.
I’m not sure how, but this man is going to make me pay for rescuing me.
I’m stuck between the proverbial rock and the hard place. Or should I say the hard man?
Damen smirks, and I know it’s time to choose. It’s either the devil in front of me, or the psychopath I’m running from.
I take a deep breath and choose the devil in front of me.
Thanks so much for reading.
To read on and find out what happens to Maya, Damen, and Alesso, then check out The Debt [Mafia Vows One]
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