by SR Jones
Copyright SR Jones © 2019
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or used without the written permission of the publisher.
All events depicted are fictional, and any resemblance to places and persons is coincidental.
Copyright Skye Jones writing as SR Jones 2019.
Thanks go to my amazing editors, Ansley Blackstock and Silla Webb, and to Silla for all she does!
Also thanks to the Addicted to Alpha’s girls! And big thanks in particular to:
Jessica Fraser, Kathi Soniat, Patricia-I Severson, Stephanie Ditmore, and Ana Rita Clemente. I know I will have forgotten someone, so huge apologies to anyone I missed out!
Thanks to Betti for the sprints!! You helped me get this done!
Thanks to Obeithion Design for the absolutely gorgeous cover!
This book is dedicated to Boo, my gorgeous Golden Retriever who has kept me sane during some hard months recently.
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
EPILOGUE: PART ONE
EPILOGUE : PART TWO
I’m cold and scared.
All around me there is nothing but ocean, and the damn sharks aren’t in the water but on the boat that I’m stuck on.
I shiver. It’s not nice weather, not like it was the weekend before, and I hardly wore the sort of clothes I’d need to have on to be out on a yacht in the middle of the ocean, because we weren’t meant to do more than hug the coastline. My silky dress flutters in the ocean breeze, and my skin bumps along my arms.
Why did I agree to this? A party on a yacht. An invite for a girl like me, a nobody, should have aroused my suspicions, but I was flattered into thinking I could use this as a way to get a story. Except there is no party, no guests—only me, two dangerous men, and miles of ocean.
I sigh and look out at the churning water. I can’t stand being stifled, trapped. I did all this as a way of being my own person, and now I am truly caught. Probably, about to die.
I love my family, but they want me to be someone, something, I’m not. The dutiful daughter, the girl who becomes a lawyer or a doctor, maybe a teacher, but even that would disappoint them. All I want is to make my own path. To travel, experience new cultures, to learn, and to have a dog. I love animals, but my parents don’t like the hair.
If I had my way, I’d study anthropology and be knee deep in the Amazon by now, or working at an animal shelter, helping poor lost pups. Instead caught between the choice of moving cities, and going to university to study law, or staying in Athens and taking up a paid internship at a local paper, I chose the latter. After all, journalism, I told myself, is a sort of anthropology. A studying of people. Except all they wanted me to do was write about the latest moisturizer, or how to keep your hair from frizzing in the humidity.
So I decided to find my own stories, and then, as if fate herself had a hand in things, one fell into my lap. A disgruntled group of women trying to get funds returned for various community projects, projects which never happened. Add in a corrupt politician, and I had a great story. No one would listen to them, however, and they were losing hope of ever seeing either the money back, or the projects completed.
I helped.
I listened, and I somehow wormed my way into the politician’s inner circle.
I thought I was so clever. He was the clever one, though, all along. He saw straight through me. And now I’m in terrible danger.
Why didn’t I listen to my friend, Maya, and her husband, Damen’s warnings? If anyone knows what’s safe and what’s not, it’s a man like that.
I shiver and try to stop even that show of … anything. No emotion is a good one right now. I don’t want attention, not from these men.
Yannis Pappas and the politician, Pachis. The two men who have me held against my will. Surely, this is it for me? I try to imagine my death. The end. I simply can’t.
The piece of shit politician most certainly is corrupt. He’s in bed with Yannis Pappas after all—a horrible and depraved individual. A man my friend Maya was at one point betrothed to. Until Damen. Scary, flawed, but ultimately heroic, Damen stepped in and took her as his wife. From a fake marriage to real feelings, they’re hopelessly in love.
Something I might never get to experience.
I try not to let the tears I feel pricking at my eyes fall. Crying is a sign of weakness. One I am sure Yannis Pappas would enjoy far too much.
“We’ll be at our destination in twenty minutes,” Pachis says, making me jump. “Calm down, Stella. You’re not going to be harmed. We need you.”
“Sorry if I don’t believe you, but the fact I’m a prisoner on this yacht tells me you will indeed hurt me.” I want him to realize he’s in league with the devil, and to find his honor and let me go. “This can’t end well for you. Far too many people know I was going on your yacht today. Things like this, they ruin careers.” I appeal to the one thing I think matters most to this vainglorious idiot—his career.
“Prisoner is such an emotive word. I prefer guest.” Yannis’ oily tones make me shiver with disgust rather than cold.
A finger trails down my bare arm as he joins us. “Don’t worry, precious. As he says, we will be there soon enough.”
“And then what? Huh?”
Yannis’ lips twitch. “Then you write an article. And … we let you go.”
“What?” It takes a while for my brain to comprehend his words.
“Yes,” Pachis says. “You write an article, all about the corruption you found in my colleague’s lives. I have more than enough dirt to give you. That’s what you’ll publish. The story you will tell. Once you’ve sent it to your editor, we will let you go.”
“And then, you go back to writing about face masks and lipstick.” Yannis leans in close and sniffs at my hair. “Trust me, it’s much safer.”
“Why have you taken me this way?” I ask them. “If all you wanted was this, you could have simply given me the info and told me I had to write the story.” Do they think I’m brave enough I’d have denied them? I’m not.
I’m not brave at all. I’m a liar.
A girl who has spent years pretending to be braver than she is. A girl who faked a cool persona so she wouldn’t have to interact with others. The girl who basked in the reflected glory of her wild and beautiful friend. A girl who always struggled at formal family events and group work at school.
I was fine amongst certain people, mostly those I didn’t know, who didn’t have any expectations of me. But put me in a roomful of my contemporaries for group study, or ask me to make a speech at graduation day, and I’d be a mess for days beforehand.
I never did get to the bottom of my many issues. Now, I’m a girl who might die.
A girl who has never lived a full life, not like her best friend. Never danced in the moonlight on a beach as ravenous eyes watched. I was the one in the corner, laughing as my friend tried to pull me up, and pretending I’d hurt my foot rather than dance in front of hungry eyes. I was the girl who didn’t sleep with her boyfriends, but told everyone she had so no one thought of me as weird. I have slept with one man in my life, and he was a boy really, and since then, nothing.
I don’t truly live, but I do pretend.
I pretend to join in and enjoy social activities, or I pretend I’m above it all if I can’t fake the e
njoyment, because people don’t tend to bother with cold, closed-off souls. In my head, though, all the time I worry, calculate, obsess. Except for when I’m walking in the hills or the valleys. Then I feel free. Or petting my neighbor’s dogs and walking them for her. The rest of the time? I’m the woman whose parents want her to be a lawyer, but is terrified of the idea of standing in front of people and speaking.
Things scare me. So many things. Random things. Pathetic things, really.
Expectations. They scare me most of all. The pressure to perform in front of a crowd and keep up the calm and collected act. The need to always get good grades. To say the right thing. Do the right thing. Not ever make a fool of myself. These things are my Achilles heel.
The fears, the anxiety, they only got worse after I was taken by a bunch of bikers and beaten simply for being friends with Maya. An easy way to get to her. What had been discomfort in social situations became much more extreme. The only time I felt safe was either at home with my parents, traveling in wilderness areas, or with Maya and ‘her men’, as I think of them.
I started to limit myself. Put a box around myself, and stopped socializing, except with Maya. I don’t feel scared at her house. My friend is a warm, loving person who has always made me feel secure. Her husband, Damen, is a force so terrifying I don’t think many would directly cross him. He has men there—armed men, hard men. Yet, oddly it only makes me feel secure during the time I spend on their property. Alesso… I know he’s one of those hard men, but something about the way he looks at me, treats me, makes me feel special, precious … and protected. It’s a silly fantasy, me and him, because he’s much older than me, and infinitely wiser, but one I indulge in often.
I had been avoiding dealing with my issues for years, but after seeing my grandmother end up spending her last twenty years never even leaving her front door, I knew I had to face them one day. Eventually, I agreed to see someone and stick with it. Anxiety disorder, one therapist said. Panic disorder said another. Social anxiety, argued the last, the one I stayed with, backing up the school counselor.
“Lacking a backbone,” Grandpa likes to say. He’s harsh. Nasty. A bitter, cruel, old man. He scares me too. No wonder Grandmother has such serious issues, being married to a man like him.
I didn’t want to let my parents down. So I pushed myself at school and tried to be normal. Told myself the only way through this fear was to confront it and never give in.
After all, I reasoned, hadn’t I been scared when I went trekking alone? I’d lied to myself, though. I had been nervous, but not scared. Places don’t scare me. People do. Certain kinds of people. Polished, moneyed, confident people. They terrify me because I should be one of them, and I am not.
I had a good upbringing. Kind. My parents are decent, hardworking people, and they cared for me. Other than Grandpa, there were no malign forces in my life, and he hardly ever visited these last few years. Yet, still, despite my start in life, I had my issues, and I hated myself for it. Why was I so weak when others went through so much and were stronger?
Then I got taken, beaten. And in the immediate aftermath, the nightmares started. The waking up screaming. The feeling my heart rate rise if someone pressed too close in a public space. It seemed my old anxiety issues had ramped up tenfold. The weird thing, though, was I found myself almost grateful to the men who took me. See, now I have a reason. I wasn’t the girl with the best start in life who somehow managed to turn it to shit by being a nervous wreck. Suddenly, I was a victim, and I had a reason for my fears.
My therapist and I finally had something real to work with, a concrete something for me to overcome. She told me the only way to deal with fear is through it; there is no around. So, I tried.
I didn’t run off to Thessaloniki with my parents. I took the job as an intern, despite it scaring me. I even managed to move into an apartment by myself. Albeit one given to me rent-free for as long as I needed by Maya’s men.
It helped that Alesso was there, carrying my bags, showing me how much security the place has. It’s like Fort Knox, the apartment those hardened men have given me.
God, I should have given into the fear and gone with my parents. Maybe if I hadn’t been so stubborn, I wouldn’t be here now.
Yannis takes up strands of my hair and runs it through his fingers. I flinch. He watches me closely, something strange on his face. “You’re a skittish one, aren’t you?”
He settles on the bench seat next to me, letting go of my hair, and looking out at the darkening ocean for a moment. “We had this dog, a long time ago now. Rough Collie. You know the kind, the Lassie dogs?”
I nod as my stomach churns at his proximity.
“She was beautiful, this dog. Stunning. Everywhere we went, people looked at her and wanted to stroke her. She was defective, though. Nuts. Scared of her own shadow. They can be that way, you see. That breed. Nothing to be done, we simply put up with her startling at the tiniest breeze of wind, or slam of a car door. You remind me of that dog, which makes me wonder, why would a girl who seems so afraid of life put herself in the position you have? Particularly after you have already experienced what this kind of world can dole out.”
Perceptive bastard. Yannis might be crazy, but he’s not without cunning and brains.
I decide to tell him the truth. What’s that thing they say about trying to humanize yourself to your captors?
“You’re right. I am defective. I’ve been nervous and anxious all my life. No one who doesn’t know me thinks I am. No one knows. Except my close family, and my therapist.”
“Not even your best friend, Maya?” he asks, sounding genuinely interested.
“No. Not even her … at least, not the degree of it. She knows I have issues, and get nervous, but I didn’t want her to know the depths of it. She always seemed so glamorous and confident to me when I was younger. When she noticed me at school all those years ago, plain old me, I was intensely grateful, but I knew if she found out I was nervous and boring and weird, with lots of rituals to try and keep me safe in social groups…well, she wouldn’t be my friend.”
“So, how did you get over your fears?” He asks as if he genuinely cares. I have to remind myself he doesn’t. I answer though.
“I didn’t. I haven’t. I simply … pretend. I either pretend to join in, or if that’s too much, I pretend to be … cool, aloof. It works. Pretending worked for a long time. Most of the time, I fitted in, acted confident, and often, with Maya, I felt it. She absorbed most of the attention, you know? Took it from me, and I was happy in her shadow. It’s certain situations I find the worst, the most demanding, so as long as I practiced avoidance, I could fool myself I was okay.”
God, this is weird, talking so openly to a man who is surely a sociopath. Can you even humanize yourself to a sociopath? Is it possible? I carry on, regardless. “So yeah, most of the time I was okay, the other times, though, I struggled. Family events. Big, sit down lunches with everyone being asked how things were going and dreading my turn. Formal gatherings. Maybe it goes back to being a kid and big formal meals at my grandparents’ house. Lots of stuffy wealthy people, and Grandpa would always find a way to put me down, make me the center of attention in the worst way. I never felt I fit in, but I got on with things, and it wasn’t so bad. I suppose I was stable. Then after the… When I got taken, it all got worse, so I simply pretended more. And when I panic, I tend to go quiet anyway, which just feeds into the poised and controlled thing folks see.”
Oh my God. Talk about verbal diarrhea. I meant to give him some of the truth, and told him more than I’ve told my therapist.
Does it make me human to him? Or pathetic? Can he even feel empathy?
I hope he feels like shit for being involved in taking me, making me worse, but I doubt it. If I’ve got issues, Yannis has serious issues.
“Why do this?” He gestures to the yacht, and I know what he means. Why try to get inside dirt on a politician if I’m such a wuss? There has to be easier ways for me to make
my mark in the world, and he’s right, it’s a crazy thing I did, but I had no idea Pachis was mixed up with Yannis. None. All the information I found out pointed to a boring little ring of corrupt officials helping one another rob the public purse.
“Two kind of conflicting reasons.” I give a bitter laugh. “Firstly, I’m having therapy and I’m on anxiety meds, so recently I’ve been trying to push myself, and this was a way of getting out of my comfort zone and doing something different. I’m supposed to be going through the fear, not tiptoeing around it.”
I give a bitter laugh. “And truthfully, it scared me a lot less than the idea of training to be a lawyer. Secondly… I honestly didn’t think it was that dangerous. I have spent a lot of time looking into your friend, and he didn’t seem more than your average, corrupt politico, with a lot of minor officials in his pockets. I simply wanted to see who he kept in his inner circle, and if I could find out who was involved. I thought it would be other officials and politicians. I was surprised when I seemed to turn his head, and I suppose I took advantage, thinking I’d be safe on a yacht full of people, but I could dig a little deeper into his life.”
“Oh, but you so easily turn heads. You must know this much?” Yannis lets his muddy-brown eyes drag down my body and back up.
Oh, shit. Please, don’t let things go that way. Please, God.
I think back to when I first boarded the yacht. I should have known something was wrong because the atmosphere was subdued, strange. Aggatha, Maya’s neighbor and Yannis’s ex, had been there, dressed all glam, strolling about on deck. There were quite a few other guests, people I didn’t recognize. Once I got on board, it turned out those other guests were Yannis’ employees, and Aggatha was part of the trap.
As they’d all climbed off the yacht onto a waiting motorboat to zoom back to shore, she’d shot me a distressed glance. I’d given her nothing back. The bitch betrayed me in the worst way, and I don’t understand why. I’ve done nothing to her.
“Maya turns a lot more heads than me,” I mutter. It’s true, she’s the glamorous one. The larger than life one. I’m so boring compared to her.