by SR Jones
She shakes her head and looks at me with fake sorrow. “You killed my family for no reason. I know of no girl.”
I hit her across her stupid, lying face, and she looks at me in shock. “You would hit an old woman? You are the devil himself.”
“No, not the devil, but close enough. I work with Stamatis Kantos.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know of him.”
Maybe she really doesn’t. The low-level shit she does, she won’t be mixing with high up cartel types. She’s Ukrainian, though. I smile at her because I know how to scare the fuck out of her.
“I also work with the one some of you call the ghost. Andrius, Allyov’s man?”
Her face pales, and I know then she has heard of Andrius. Hell, most people only use his first name, that’s it. Andrius. They whisper it still in parts of Ukraine and Russia. Those who are connected to the mob, at any rate.
“I’m just as nasty as Andrius, and I don’t give a shit about you. I will get what I need out of you, so either you can tell me now, or I’ll be forced to use more … creative measures.”
Her gaze darts around the room, landing first on Cole, then on Tolya. She licks her lips.
“Don’t look to them for help because you won’t find it.” I sigh and gentle my voice. “Diana, I swear to you, on my fucking word, if you tell me where Stella, the girl, is, I’ll let you live.”
It goes against everything in me to let this bitch live, but my word is my honor, and in our world, honor means everything. I’ll do it to find Stella.
She watches me warily. “What if the news isn’t what you want to hear? Will I still live then?”
My heart sinks, but I don’t have time for the terrible ache in my stomach, the one that tells me Stella meant more to me than I’d realized. “Is she alive?” I manage to grind out.
Diana nods.
“Then yes, you’ll live.”
“She isn’t here. We sold her.”
What? How the fuck did that happen so quick?
“I don’t understand; you don’t have those kinds of connections.”
She smiles a grim little smile. “Oh, but I do. She’s not the first lost little girl I’ve found. I have a connection who trades in lost little girls.”
My fist is itching to smash her vicious little face in, but I keep myself in check.
“He must be a local for you to have done this so quickly.”
“He’s British, but he has a home here. About an hour away.”
Fuck.
I smash my fist on the table, making Diana jump. If she’s an hour away, and they left, what, an hour or so ago? I’m two hours behind. That means he might have already sold her on by the time I catch up to him.
“He won’t have got rid of her, not yet. He’ll train her up first, even if only for a few days. He enjoys that part of it.” Diana’s words have that rage building again, but they also give me hope. He’s not going to sell her on immediately, which gives me a chance.
“Where is he?”
She sighs and reels off an address. Cole is looking it up immediately.
“Middle of nowhere,” he says. “Defendable. Does he have guards? Men?” he asks Diana.
“He has one man, a butler of sorts, but he’s deadly too. Armed. And Simon himself is of course armed. The house has dogs patrolling the grounds and security cameras. You won’t get in easily. And if he sees you coming, he’ll kill the girl.”
Not if he thinks we’re going to buy her. “I need you to do one last thing for me,” I tell her. She frowns so I take hold of her chin, hard enough to put pressure on and scare her some, but not hard enough to do any harm. “You are going to call this Brit friend of yours, this Simon, and tell him you have someone who might be interested in his new toy, okay?”
I turn to Cole and gesture for him to follow me out of the room for a moment so we can talk without the old witch overhearing. “You up for pretending to be a perverted American tourist looking for a fuck toy? I can’t do it because he might have heard of me. Doubt he’s heard of you, and no one in our world knows who you are, not even Stamatis because Damen and I have kept it that way.”
Cole nods. “I’m a military man, and I haven’t gone undercover before or pretended to be something I’m not, but I’ll give it a go.”
We need to make this realistic enough Simon will fall for it, so I hope he does more than give it a go. I stroll back into the room and look at Diana.
Diana’s gaze keeps flicking to her dead son and nephew. I’m not remotely sorry for her loss. If they have done this before, taking those fuckers out means saving girls in the future from this sick family’s attention. She doesn’t seem all that upset, though, and I think she maybe has seen her son and nephew as nothing more than a means to an end. I’m curious, so I pull out a chair, take some of the wine she has on the table, and pour her a big glass.
“Untie her hands,” I order Tolya.
He does so, and I push the glass her way. “Take a drink; you must be in shock.”
She narrows her eyes at me, but does as I say. I pour some too, into a fresh glass I take from the draining board behind me, and sip at it. It’s slightly bitter compared to bought wine, but I know this village-brewed shit is strong. I tip her glass up as she takes another drink, forcing some more down her throat.
After another swallow from my own glass and a wipe of my mouth, I sit back and sigh. “You don’t seem too upset at the demise of your son,” I say conversationally.
“You don’t get my tears,” she spits out.
I laugh. “If you were heartbroken, you wouldn’t be able to keep them in. What gives?”
“He failed. He doesn’t deserve my sorrow. How am I supposed to support myself now?”
Yep, this woman is evil.
“You’re a regular Ma Barker, aren’t you,” Cole says in a slow drawl.
She gives him the finger, and I laugh. “You’re one bitch of an old woman, Diana, and you’re fucking lucky I want Stella back more than I want you dead.”
“Watch her,” I tell Tolya.
I indicate for Cole to follow me into the poky, dusty backroom. There’s a bed in here, and one of the men must have slept in this room. God knows what these people did with the money they made from their petty criminal empire because they sure as shit didn’t put it into home improvements.
“Okay, here’s the plan. She’ll put you on the phone with this Brit creep, and you have to act like some sick sex tourist. Say you’ve been planning a trip to Thailand, and you know Diana personally. Keep mostly to the truth. You’re Greek American, you know her via family connections; keep it vague. Don’t let him know you are ex-forces, but simply say you’re a wealthy American traveling for pleasure and you want to come see his find.” I watch Cole take it all in.
“Easy,” he says.
We go back into Diana, and she’s twitchy, nervous. If she fucks this up, alerts this man, Stella is dead.
“I know you’re nervous, maybe scared of what this Simon will do to you, right?”
She nods and swallows thickly.
I indicate her dead son and nephew. “You see them? If you betray Stella, you’ll see my anger. If you think that’s the worst I can do, you’re sadly mistaken.” I take my knife out of the holster in my cargo pants. “This is my friend, and she will carve you up into tiny pieces. You’ll feel so much pain, you’ll beg me for death. I won’t let it come, not for the longest time, and then I will go after your daughter and your grandchild.”
She gives me a look that would turn lesser men to stone.
“Or… You trust me, tell Simon what we need him to hear, put my friend Cole here on the line and let him do his bit, and I will kill Simon, so you don’t have to worry about him. I’ll also let you keep the money he paid you for Stella, which I am presuming is enough for you to start over. Take your daughter and your grandchild, and for the love of God, start over and stop all this shit. You’re an old woman, retire… for your own sake.”
She sig
hs, and I see some of the fight go out of her.
“He’s being very magnanimous,” Cole says. “I’d have gutted you by now and taken my chances with Simon and his butler.”
I see the moment she gives in. She is going to do this. Game on.
Two hours later, and we’re driving right up to the fucking front door of this creep Simon’s home out here in the countryside outside Athens. I let Diana live. Partly because I swore it on my honor, but also because it suits my goals. I want the world to tremble when they hear my name, or that of Damen and Markos. We aren’t building a nice worker’s cooperative around us, but a criminal enterprise. Fear is our best friend. I want people terrified of me the way they fear Andrius. This way, Diana lives to tell people what happens when you take something that belongs to me. You end up with half your family dead. I gave her a parting present before I left too. A nice scar on her cheek. Told her every time she looks in the mirror and sees it to remember me, and what I will do to her if she even breathes the wrong way in future.
Cole was scarily deceptive, and even had me convinced he was a freaky pervert interested in buying himself a woman the way some people buy a car. Still, it doesn’t mean Simon bought it; he might be waiting, guns drawn.
As we approach, I sit forward in the car and my neck prickles. There are no dogs on the lawn as warned, but I can see the house, and the front door is wide open. Light is streaming out into the dark night. This isn’t good!
We park the car and get out, keeping low behind the vehicle, our weapons drawn. There’s no sign of life. No noise. No movement. What is going on?
Cole makes the hand signal to say he’s going to approach, and I nod and cover him. He reaches the door and no shots are fired, so Tolya and I run to join him, keeping low. When we reach him, once more we cover him as he steps inside.
“Holy shit,” his words are ice in my veins.
I rush inside to see him staring down at one dead man, and another severely wounded. The wounded man is wearing a uniform, so I presume he’s the so-called butler.
“What the fuck happened here?” I ask.
“Where’s the girl?” Cole says.
The butler doesn’t say anything at first. I look at him, and he’s not speaking because he’s unable to, but keeping silent out of some screwed loyalty.
Sighing, I bend down and press on his wound. He screams, and I let go. “Your master is dead. Might as well talk. Where the fuck is the girl, and what happened?”
“She shot us, and she’s gone.”
Total inability to comprehend his words.
“Who shot you? Stella?” Cole asks in place of my seeming incapability to speak.
He coughs, and pink froth blooms at his lips. I turn to Toyla. “Call an ambulance.”
“If Stella is a dark-haired girl, tall and slim?” He coughs again. “Then yes.”
“What happened?” Cole demands.
“Simon arrived with the young lady and told me she’d be staying for a few weeks. He does that, brings women here.”
“With your help,” I say. “You disgusting fuck.”
He nods weakly and laughs. “Why are you helping me then? Why call an ambulance if I am so disgusting.”
I laugh back. “Because death is too good for you, and the men you’ll meet in the Greek prison you’re headed to won’t take too kindly to a couple Brits coming over here and preying on their daughters.”
His eyes widen as he understands what is in store for him.
“I only work for him,” he protests.
“Save it,” Cole sneers. “You sound like the guards at Auschwitz. Working here is bad enough.”
“Tell me what happened,” I say. At first, he doesn’t speak, but it only takes me plugging my fingers into that gaping, bloody wound once more to get him singing.
“It all happened so fast. She got here with Simon, after he’d phoned ahead to tell me to prepare things for our guest. I thought she was a lovely looking young woman, and I felt sorry for her. I work for Simon … worked, and he paid me well to look the other way, but I didn’t approve of many of his foibles.”
He coughs some more before composing himself.
“He had her held by her upper arm, and he said to me to get a bath ready for her and something to eat. He told Stella that there had been a slight change in plan and a man was coming to see her tonight, and that if she behaved herself, she might find herself sold this evening, and she wouldn’t need to go through training. He told her this was good for her. The man was an American, vanilla in his tastes, and simply wanted a young, virginal woman to make his own.”
He turns narrowed eyes to Cole. “I presume that man was yourself, and you’re clearly not actually here to buy the young lady but to help her.”
“Yep, you presumed correctly,” he says.
“Go on,” I push. The dude might croak at any moment, and I need the full story before he dies.
“She looked at Simon, nodded and then … stumbled. Her legs buckled, and I thought she was fainting. He did too, because he put his arm out to catch her. She elbowed him in the side and grabbed his gun. She must have been trained… She held it out, took four steps back, and Simon laughed. Told her she’d more likely harm herself than us, and he stepped toward her and … she fired. Hit him twice in the chest, and then got me with this gut shot.”
He shakes his head. “I had an instinct she’d do it. The way she held that gun, girl had fired one before. Simon was overconfident … didn’t read the situation properly. Her hands didn’t even shake. Not until after. After, she shook. She stared at us both for two full minutes, then she turned and fled.”
I automatically turn to look at the gaping open door and the dark night. Pride fills my chest because yes, she does know how to fire a gun because I taught her in case a day like this ever came. I didn’t think it would, though, did I? Not truly. “How long has she been gone?”
“Forty minutes or more, I think, but it could be a lot more or a lot less. Time isn’t my greatest concern right now.”
I ignore his self-pitying words. He’s lucky we called an ambulance.
I put my thoughts into words. “You’re lucky we have called help for you. We could have simply killed you.”
“I told you, I am merely an employee. I don’t condone of Simon’s actions; it is him and his partner who enjoy what they do.”
Partner? Shit, if this guy lives, I don’t doubt for a moment he’ll blab to the partner. I glance at Cole.
He is thinking the same. We have an ambulance on the way, and I don’t have the time to make this right. I want this fucker dead now.
“Go,” Cole says quietly as he puts one hand over the butler’s mouth, and with the other presses deep into his wound. “I’ll sort this fucker out and then get rid of evidence of us being here. I’ll make it look like a gang hit.”
Grateful, so fucking grateful, and so impressed with this man we hired, I leave Cole to do the dirty work I don’t have the time for.
Without looking back, I step out into the dark night.
“Two bottles of Stella, love.”
I open the fridge door and take out two bottles of condensation-covered beer, glad this tourist doesn’t know my name. The ones who do find it hilarious to ask for Stella from a Stella. It got old for me about three days ago.
I didn’t change my first name when I changed everything else. Maybe that was stupid, but who is going to know I’m here? Even my parents don’t know where I am.
Malia, a tourist hedonistic hotspot, or hellhole, depending on your perspective. No one would expect a good Greek girl, from a good family home to be working the bars here, serving the tourists. The season is barely begun, and already there are drunken Brits straggling into the bar where I’ve fixed myself with a job for the summer.
Almost two months since I left Athens on the run. Almost two months since I shot a man dead and mortally wounded another.
Luckily for me, the shooting was on the news, and the police thought it was linked
to a mob war. The man was a British aristocrat who had fallen in with gangsters and very bad people, and the local police thought his death linked to rival gangs. Sadly, they said, his butler was killed in the attack too.
Two men. I have killed two men. It burns in me every minute of the day, and I have to lock it deep down to even remotely function.
So as far as my crimes go, I am free. But those people who took me in the first place, those awful brutish men and their cold bitch of a mother, are still alive. As are Yannis Pappas and the corrupt politico, Pachis. They are all people who terrify me. And so, I ran. For almost two months now, I’ve been on the move.
I realized that I would never be safe if I stayed in Athens. Maya is safe because she is under Damen’s protection, but I’m not under their protection. I might think Alesso is the hottest thing since sliced bread, but I don’t want to fake marry him and go through what Maya did in order to be safe. That’s if he’d even have me, which I doubt. Then there’s the fact he’s into rough sex and shot a woman in the face. Not things I have on my list as ideal husband material.
Plus, I’m not like her. If I gave myself to Alesso, I think I’d lose who I am. Maya has always had a fire in her belly, but I’m placid as hell compared to her. She fought Damen every step of the way, and in the end, he loved her for who she is, not who society says she should be.
I don’t even know why I am thinking about it because Alesso most definitely doesn’t want me as his wife. The whole scenario is a moot point.
He does, however, want to find me. I know because the last we talked, Maya told me. I shouldn’t call her because it’s unfair to ask her to keep it from Damen, but I do it anyway. Only three times in total, but I needed to let her know I was safe, and frankly, I needed to hear a friendly voice. I don’t know if she’s aware of what I’ve done … the terrible thing I did to those men? She hasn’t said, but maybe she thinks it isn’t safe to talk over the phone about it? I won’t bring it up because if she doesn’t know, I don’t want her finding out. It burns me with shame each time I remember the moment I pulled the trigger.
I tell myself I wasn’t thinking, it was flight or fight, and I chose fight, but it doesn’t make the aftermath any easier. Ever since, I’ve been running, both literally and figuratively.