The Pledge: Mafia Vows

by SR Jones

  The boat nears, and a woman is the first person I see. She’s older, maybe in her early sixties, if I had to take a guess. When she speaks, I realize she isn’t Greek, but maybe Eastern European in origin.

  I ask her, in Greek, if she speaks the language. Her reply is yes, she does. It’s accented, but her use of the language is accomplished.

  Rattling and banging behind me has my heart speeding up to dangerous levels. “Please,” I tell her. “You have to help me. Two men took me, and I’ve locked them in, but they’ll be out in a moment. Please help me. I need to get away from them.”

  She eyes me. “Why? What do they want with you?”

  Oh, Lord, does it matter? I try not to scream at her, because the last thing I want her to do is drive off.

  “They took me, and they threatened me. I think they … they want to hurt me.” It’s a lie, maybe; although there’s nothing to say they won’t hurt me, but she’s an older woman and surely she’ll have empathy for me.

  “Do you have a daughter?” I ask her.

  She nods and smiles. Her gold cross glints at her neck, and I file away the information that she’s religious.

  “My parents will want me back, and they’ll be very grateful.”

  The boat looks like a medium-sized fishing boat, nothing fancy. I’m sure my parents will give these people some money for helping me.

  She nods again, and then looks to where Yannis is now smashing something into the glass of the locked doors. Shit. I’ve no choice but to fully commit to this now. If I stay here, Yannis will hurt me for what I’ve done.

  “Please,” I beg her. “I’m only young.” I pray in this moment I look younger than I am. I’ve been told before, I do. One of the things about being skinny and gangly. “I’m not even supposed to be with these two men. They have taken me, I’m … untouched. It’s part of my belief, to save myself for marriage.” The lie slips out before I can stop it. I thought of Maya being saved for marriage, and I blurted it out. Maybe if she’s traditional, it will make her want to help me more. “They say they will … hurt me. I am being saved … for my husband.” Dear Lord, don’t strike me down for lying.

  I’m hoping her seeing me as a young, virginal hostage will get her to hurry up already and help me. The cross around her neck tells me she’s religious to some degree, and I rely on it to make her help me.

  “Do your parents know where you are? What these men have done?” She jerks her head toward the doors.

  I shake mine, confused by her question. “No, no one knows where I am. But you can call them as soon as we get somewhere with a signal, or from your boat? You have a phone, yes? They will come for me, they will pay you, I am sure. A few thousand euros for a phone call and a boat ride? It’s easy work. Please.”

  I smile at her in what I hope is a beguiling manner, and she laughs. Her face crinkling into tiny lines around her mouth and eyes.

  “Ella, Ella,” she says the Greek for come, twice, holding her hand out to me, helping me make the leap from one boat to the other in the dark night.

  Grabbing her hand gratefully, I find myself pulled onto the other boat by surprisingly strong arms. Wow, she’s in shape for someone of her age and height.

  I land on the deck with a thud.

  She bends down at me and smiles again. Then she does something odd. She leans in, brushes my hair away from my face, and says with satisfaction. “Beautiful.”

  A man appears on deck, and she speaks to him in her language, which I am pretty convinced now is Ukrainian. He looks at me then back at her and grins. He’s big, muscled, with tattoos on his arms and up his neck.

  A sense of unease crawls over me. I tell myself not to be stupid, this is clearly a fishing vessel, and the man and woman might look rough, but they helped me, didn’t they?

  The glass on the yacht behind us shatters, and Yannis runs onto the desk, screaming my name.

  The man leaning over me turns and shouts something to the control deck above us. There’s a man in there too, with a shaven head and ugly features from what I can see. He nods, and we are moving, cutting through the water so fast, I roll on the deck.

  Strong arms are pulling me up, and I find myself righted, on my feet.

  “Thank you,” I say to the man.

  “No problemo,” he says. The same thing some of the Greek bar owners say to the tourists, but this guy says it with a sneer and a laugh that’s dark and oily.

  The woman talks to him again, and his eyes widen.

  “The men, they took you, Diana says.” He jerks his chin at the woman.

  “Yes,” I say. “Thank you so much for your help. I explained to her, to Diana, that my parents have money. Not tons of it, but they will definitely want to pay you a few thousand for this. To say thank you, I am sure.”

  “A few thousand?”

  “Yes, I mean, I think they will. If not, I’ll pay you myself, from my savings. I have five thousand.”

  He smiles again. “It is okay, we do not want your parents’ money.”

  “Oh, thank you. You are good people.”

  “Diana says these men were wanting to hurt you … in that way.” Oh God, what I said to Diana a few moments ago in panic seems like a bad idea now. It’s mortifying, and his interest in this seems prurient.

  “I don’t know. I think maybe they did. They took me, two men and only me. It’s not normal, right?”

  “And you are … clean. Untouched?”

  Oh, shit. Why did I go saying that too? More pertinently, why did Diana tell this hulking monster of a man? It’s so embarrassing and so untrue.

  I flush a deep red. He laughs.

  “It is okay, my fawn, you do not have to say. Your color, it says it all.” He takes my blush the wrong way completely.

  Thick knuckles brush the back of my cheek where I am sure my skin is flaming red. Then his words hit me, his fawn? What the hell?

  “You are very beautiful. This dress is also very beautiful. Are you from a rich family?”

  “No,” I say. “I told you, my parents have money, not a whole lot they can get easily. They have good jobs, and we have a nice home, so they can give you money for helping me, but we’re not millionaires.” Oh, no, am I about to step out of the frying pan and into the fire. Does this man think he can extort my parents for millions that they don’t have? How do I explain that we’re wealthy and comfortable, but only so long as my parents work at their highly paid jobs? We aren’t swimming in savings and riches. “They aren’t wealthy as such, but as I said, they will pay you for this. A few thousand euros for the minutes work of placing a phone call and dropping me safely at the next port you land in. Not bad, eh?” I laugh.

  Footsteps clang behind us, and I turn to see the man from the engine room above descending the metal stairs to the deck. He lands with a heavy thud next to Diana, and I stare at him. He’s one of the ugliest people I’ve ever seen. A huge, prominent forehead looks more Neanderthal than modern human. A twisted and flattened nose points to one too many breaks. Cauliflower ears also point to him having been in a lot of fights. What makes him ugly, though, are his eyes and the chillingly blank emptiness in them. They are a pale grey/blue, and they might as well be the dead eyes of a shark for all the human emotion they hold.

  He grabs my arms and yanks me toward him. I squeal, and pain slices through me as he slaps me across the face. Shocked, I fall utterly silent.

  He and the other man have a heated, rapid exchange, and then the other man says something to make this one let out a booming laugh.

  “Please, Diana, what is happening?” I turn to her, tears in my eyes as fear crawls all over me, making my scalp prickle.

  “He thinks it is funny that you offer a few thousand for helping you, when we could get millions for selling you,” she says, and then laughs too, as if she’s told the best joke in the world.

  “Selling me?”

  She nods and talks through her laughter. “Oh, yes. You are a beautiful girl, from a good family, and untouched. You w
ill fetch a lot of money. We were out here to catch fish tonight, but instead we caught something much better. You are a very good catch, little fawn.”

  The three of them continue laughing as a wave of utter horror washes over me.

  What have I gone and done?

  Two hours ago, my world changed. Utterly.

  Two hours ago, I was a man who believed he had few emotional connections beyond his immediate family.

  Two hours ago, I realized a girl I’d thought nothing more than an amusing distraction meant way more to me than I’d allowed myself to believe.

  Two hours ago, I found out Stella had been taken by that piece of shit Yannis Pappas.

  The fucker is unstable and perverted, and if he lays one finger on her, he’s dead. Well, he’s already dead, but if he touches her, I’ll drag his death out until he’s begging for the end.

  I’m pacing the study, nausea and acid eating away at my stomach.

  Stella isn’t tough. She acts it. Calm, poised. She’s so serene on the surface, but I’ve been watching her. Inside she’s a stormy, churned up mess. Like a duck who glides through the water as if floating, but underneath its little legs are paddling away like crazy. I’ve come to believe that Stella’s emotions and her mind are like duck legs. Paddling away furiously as she tries to make sense of the world.

  She’s shy, and I think she has an innocence about her that Maya, despite her forced virginity, hasn’t possessed for years. The idea of her held on a yacht with fucking Yannis, a lamb to the slaughter, has me wanting to tear the room I’m in apart.

  Cole opens the door and enters, followed by Tolya, one of the Spetsnaz guys who has agreed to help me.

  Cole is carrying more weapons than The Terminator.

  “This should be enough to deal with those fuckers when we find them,” he says with a smirk.

  “From what Damen has managed to find out, and from recent satellite pictures of the place the Pappas family own, it doesn’t look as if Yannis or his family have any men on the island at the moment. Or any staff at all there, regularly or permanently.” Cole hefts the gun at his hip.

  “It seems very strange to me that these men would take this woman and transport her to an island where there is no backup.” The Russian voices my own thoughts.

  Why would Yannis take Stella and not have men at the island to guard her? Is he going to pass her on to someone else there? It doesn’t bode well for him keeping her if there is no one to provide security. He can’t do it on his own with only Pachis for company.

  It’s dark out now, and I think of Stella on that boat, or stuck on a tiny, barren lump of land. The thought makes me want to find her, hold her in my arms, and never let her go. I push those stupid, romantic ideas to one side. When it comes right down to it, I’m not the sort of man she needs. Not much better than Yannis. I’m not sure I care any longer, though. If she’s mine, she’s safe. If she’s mine, she won’t get to make such stupid, idiotic decisions again because I won’t let her.

  There’s a pounding at the front door, and my first, utterly ridiculous, thought is it’s Stella. I rush out of the room to the door, flinging it open after I enter the keycode. Damen is beside me in an instant, gun drawn and aimed, his face harsh. Shit, he’ll have my balls for opening the front door without checking who the hell it is.

  I stare when I see the biker who hurt Stella. For a moment, my brain doesn’t fully compute what it is seeing. The fucker is standing there, staring at me, and from frozen puzzlement my emotions tick over into white-hot fury. This piece of shit hit Stella.

  I’m grabbing his collar before I can think, dragging him through the hallway and throwing him into the library.

  He laughs and holds his hands up. “Jesus, take it easy, will you?”

  His accent is not that of a native Athenian. Doesn’t sound like an islander either.

  “I’m here to help you out, at great risk to myself, I might add,” he says with a wipe of his hand over his stubbled jaw.

  “Oh?” Damen taps his gun to the man’s cheek. “Go on.”

  The man glares at Damen but doesn’t make any moves to defend himself. “Yannis Pappas turned up at the Nyx compound twenty minutes ago, begging for their help. It seems he took the young woman they had me beat. Stella. Something to do with a scheme he’s got going with a politician.”

  “Yes?” I say, not wanting him to see we already know, testing how truthful he will be.

  “Him and this politician dude wanted Stella to write an article exposing some of the secrets of Pachis’ colleagues and taking the heat off them. Yannis is in deep shit with his father because of everything that’s gone down, and he’s been cut out of his trust. He’s been raking it in with Pachis with this little venture they’ve got going, and he needs for it to continue. Stella was going to ruin all that apparently by digging her nose into the guy. When Yannis found out the pretty young journalist was who Pachis was interested in, he realized Stella must be looking into Pachis’ activities, and he then dug into her activities.”

  He sighs as if this is all so tiring for him. “Then the stupid fuck decided to take her and make her write an article exposing Pachis’ enemies, send it to her editor, and they’d then simply let her go. Yannis’ theory is she’d be too terrified to say anything and would go back to writing about beauty products until the end of her time on the paper, and then she’d most likely go live with her parents. Apparently, the young woman suffers from anxiety. Yannis’ foolproof plan turned to shit, and she got away … onto another boat. She’s gone, and he ran the boat’s identification and now, he’s shitting himself.”

  “Gone?” Cold tendrils of dread wrap around my spine. “What do you mean, gone? What other boat? Why is he scared? How the fuck did he let her get away?”

  “Okay there, Twenty-Questions. Cool it,” the biker says. “The engine on Pachis’ yacht shut down. She locked them in as they were trying to fix it, attracted the attention of another boat, and they took her.”

  “So … she’s going to be fine? She was rescued?” Maya asks.

  “Go to our room,” Damen growls at her, but she scowls at him and shakes her head. “She’s my friend,” she says.

  “Afraid not. The boat she got onto…” Biker dude scrubs a hand over his face, and glances at Maya.

  I’m about to tell him to go on when Damen takes the convo in a whole new direction.

  “Don’t even fucking look at her, or I’ll shoot you now. Who the fuck are you exactly? You’re standing in my house, spouting all this shit, but who the hell are you, and why shouldn’t I put a bullet in you right now?”

  The man smirks. “I can’t tell you who I am, or I’d have to kill you.”

  Damen raises an eyebrow, unamused by the attempt at humor, and his finger twitches on the trigger. If he shoots this fucker, I won’t get to find out where Stella is. I reach out and put my hand on his arm.

  The stranger sighs, and he relents a little, his face losing the arrogance. “I’m not who any of the Nyx think I am, and me even being here could be signing my death warrant. I came here out of respect for fellow military brothers and because I know who has Stella, and if she were my daughter, I wouldn’t want her in their hands. You guys can get her back.”

  “Who has her?” I demand before Damen can ask this guy his inside leg measurement, because seriously, who gives a fuck who he is right now?

  “The boat she got onto is registered to a local fishing family, but they’re anything but. They’re petty crooks. Drug running, sometimes worse, are their normal activities, and the fishing is a cover. They’re small fry, but connected to some nasty larger fry. They’re from Ukraine originally, but have been living here since the late nineties. The clan are run by an old dear who looks like someone’s sweet old grandma, but she’s one evil bitch.”

  Shit. This is bad. Stella seems to have an unending ability to make terrible decisions and get herself into all sorts of trouble. Girl wants locking up. She’s a danger to herself. I’m livid with her bec
ause I’m scared for her.

  The man stares at me like he’s reading my mind. “Hey, it could be worse. These guys aren’t seriously connected. They aren’t linked to any of the bigger Russian or Ukrainian crime mobs. And they aren’t on good terms with the Albanian mafia, thank God, because those guys are scary motherfuckers. They do their own thing, and mostly they run petty amounts of drugs and alcohol into France and sometimes Germany, where they have connections with some Polish groups.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Damen’s teeth are grinding.

  “Can’t tell you, seriously, but I’m so deep under with the Nyx that their gang is my life. Been with them for six years now, prospected before that. You fuck this up for me, I will end you and yours, and I have the wider connections to do that. I came here as a favor, so you keep this to yourself, tamp down that curiosity. You can’t control everything, Damen. You fucking owe me, not the other way around, and all I ask is for you to forget I ever came here and never mention it to anyone else, most of all your Ukrainian friend or your boss. Okay?”

  “Yes, of course, done.” I speak before Damen can because no way am I going to let Stella be put in graver danger because Damen is getting all pissy about not knowing who this guy is or what his game is. My guess? Deep undercover. Maybe British, or possibly American intelligence, and he’s investigating the Nyx and their links to Russian gangs and organized crime. Who cares? He’s not after us, and him coming here, with who and what we are, probably goes against the grain for him, but he’s done it for Stella.

  Another thought hits me, and I stare at him. “Did you offer to beat Stella so you could control it? Make sure no real damage was done.”

  I get nothing but a tiny incline of his head, but it gives me his answer.

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “On both counts.” I pull Damen back from him so the guy can step away from the wall and be on his way.

  He reaches into his pocket. “This is everything I have on the bastards who took your girl.”

  He hands me a piece of paper.

  Your girl. The words ring in my head.