by SR Jones
Andrius sighs, a heavy and world-weary sound, and cracks his neck. “As you well know, I am not a sociopath.” He turns to me and gives me a smug smile. “Unlike Markos, I have actually been tested.”
I don’t know what to do. Am I supposed to laugh? Is this banter? I can feel my heart rate increasing. God, if I thought being put on the spot by a load of upper crust lawyers and their perfect progeny at family dinners was stressful, I hadn’t thought about the terror of being put on the spot by a hitman for the mob, and a table full of what are in effect, mob enforcers and mercenaries.
“We need to hire some women.” Markos takes the attention off me.
“Hire women?” Andrius says.
“Yes, to act as our wives.”
At that moment Justina saunters into the room, looking for all the world like a sleep-mussed playboy bunny got spliced with a tough biker chick.
“Hire wives?” She sits next to me, takes my coffee cup from the table in front of me, takes a sip and winces. “God, I needed that. Why are you hiring wives?”
“For the thing, the thing we discussed last night,” Andrius says.
Her eyes widen, and she doesn’t give much away, but she swallows hard. “Take me,” she says.
Andrius laughs. “Are you forgetting the panic attack last night?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. But I want to help bring these fuckers down. They deserve it. Anyway, you can’t hire a pretend wife because Violet will cut your balls off, and you can’t take her because she’s pregnant, and it’s not safe.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and blows out a long breath through his perfectly formed, firm lips. “You have a point. We take you, and one of the maids.”
“Then you risk Violet figuring out the maids are more than they seem.” Justina lowers her voice to a whisper.
“Take me.” I don’t know why the words fly out of my mouth, and I want to stuff them back in as soon as they are out.
“No,” Alesso says as Markos says, yes, at the exact same time.
“It’s a good idea. She can be a help to us.”
“Makes no sense.” Alesso makes a chopping motion with his hand. “I don’t want her to go, and she can’t say anything that can help, as she never met Stuart, only Simon and his butler. Plus, if by any chance Diana or someone has anything to do with this, it puts Stella at massive risk.”
“Except, she looks pretty different. Short blonde hair, quite a few pounds lighter. Give her colored contacts, a fake nose piercing, some fake tats, and no one would recognize her,” Markos says.
“Listen, fucker, why do you want her to come?” Alesso stands and pushes his seat back.
Okay. This is getting heated. “Alesso,” I say as I try to get his attention. “It’s okay, I won’t go.”
“It does make sense.” Andrius steeples his fingers. “You two have the hots for one another, not easy to fake something like that. She’s young. Innocent looking. You two can be an older guy and his young plaything, and she’s all wrapped up in you, but bought and paid for. Fucked up, weird dynamic, would be catnip to someone like Stuart. Justina and me, we’ll be a married couple who can’t stand one another.”
“And me?” Markos says.
“You’re going to buy the girl.”
“Christ.” Markos gets up, goes to the sink, pours out his remaining coffee, and leaves the room. As he rounds the corner, I hear his beads clacking.
God, he’s strange, but he intrigues me, and I feel for him. I think he’s got major issues with people. In fact, when it comes down to it, Markos might have more issues than me.
“We need to get you some fake ink done, some contacts, a nose piercing, the works. So you look different enough if anyone is there who might have been involved in taking you, they won’t recognize you.” Justina smiles, and I know she’s excited about the shopping aspects of this, despite the sick reason for doing it.
I don’t say anything because whilst the idea of going makes me feel faint, the idea of staying behind and not knowing what is going on also makes me nervous and twitchy, but I’m pretty convinced Diana will recognize me no matter what if she is there.
As if he can read my mind, Andrius says, “There’s little chance of Diana being there, and we can get Damen to have a little look into her life, what she’s doing, and who she’s talking to.”
I take in a fortifying breath and try to calm my nerves.
“Don’t be scared.” Justina squeezes my hand. “These guys are the best, and we’re doing something amazing, being part of taking out some vile, people-trafficking scum.”
I smile at her, but I’m in turmoil. As if she can sense my inner thoughts, she nudges me.
“What do you say we grab breakfast to go, and we do the fun stuff, set about transforming you into someone else?”
The girls have been gone for four hours, and they took Markos, leaving myself and Andrius to sort out the plans for how we’re going to do this on a conference call with Damen and Cole.
The consensus is that the place will be highly guarded, and this Stuart has a fuckton of money and an armored vehicle basically for a car. We need to be very careful about when and where we take him out. There’s no one else involved so far as Damen can tell. This was Stuart and Simon’s baby. A nasty little money maker they ran twice a year. Interestingly, the email address Stuart corresponds with about the girls isn’t linked to any account, or any IP address. The emails always seem to be sent from an Internet café, in the region of the place where these girls are rumored to come from. No one, however, actually knows exactly where they come from. All we know is they are Greek, and probably from some tiny village because there’s sure as shit no town on the map close to where they are said to originate.
Stuart will be most vulnerable straight after the auction as he’s leaving. Our plan is to buy the girl, and as he leaves for one of us to accost him in the corridor of the hotel back entrance he uses, ostensibly to ask him a question. At this point, Stella, Justina, and the girl will already be in a car on the way back here. A car with false plates, one which will be a burned-out wreck the following day.
We’re being spread thin, and it’s not ideal. The way we split it will be as follows. Two of Andrius’ men will stay here with one of the maids to make sure Violet and the house are safe. I think he could let us have one more body, but he’s not moveable on this.
So that leaves me, Markos, Andrius, one of the maids, Irina, and one of Andrius’ men, plus Justina who can handle a gun.
I look at Andrius. “I’m worried if we send the girls back with only Markos and Irina, they’ll be vulnerable. I’m willing to go after this fucker just you and me; what do you say? So the girls head back with Irina, Markos, and one of your men, leaving you and me to handle Stuart and his men.”
Damen told us that Stuart’s men were street gangsters from London that he’d hired years ago. They’re tough, loyal, but they aren’t highly trained. He shared a video with us of one of them, a skinny ginger-haired man shooting, and it made Andrius smile a cold, deadly smile.
“Side aim, gangster style. Stupid cunt. I think we can handle these fuckers.”
“What fuckers?” Markos comes into the room.
“All okay?” I ask.
“Yes, the ladies got their things, and… well, you ought to go see your girl. She looks a little different.”
I’m itching to go see her, but first we need to finalize things here.
“We’re going over the plans. Stuart has a small army, five or six tops, of security around him at these things, but they’re mostly gang members from London.” I pour some brandy for all three of us. Markos takes a sip, but he won’t probably do much more than that. He never drinks much these days.
“Right,” he says.
“We figured we all go. Then after the purchase of the girl is made by you,” Andrius says, “you take the girl, Justina, and Violet, and leave immediately. You’ll have one of my men and one of the maids with you too. Plus, Justina can handl
e a gun.”
Markos frowns. “That only leaves you and Alesso to handle Stuart, though? And if he has six guys, that’s two against seven.”
“I’m not worried about some gangster fucks who don’t even know that side aiming your gun is the worst way to hit a target.”
Markos sighs. “They don’t have to hit you accurately to do a lot of damage. Plus, if Andrius is going to walk up to Stuart to ask him a question before plugging him with a bullet, Andrius can’t have his gun out. He might be a quick draw, but it’s too risky.”
The phone goes again, and I see it’s Damen. I pick up, putting him on speaker.
“I’ve been looking at the exit hallway Stuart will be taking. There’s a broom cupboard about twenty feet before the door. Perfect place to hide weapons as you won’t be able to walk into the auction armed. You hide them in the broom cupboard, and when you go to the bathroom on the night of the auction, you slip in there and take your guns. I will make sure the security feed going to the room where Stuart’s men will be watching will be on a loop showing nothing but an empty corridor. At the end of the night, there’s going to be Stuart walking down past that room to leave, and it’s where he’s most vulnerable. Now, you two can’t go hiding in there. It’s going to look weird if you leave the auction too soon. You have to wait until the end and trail Stuart out the conference hall toward the back door, with the ruse of asking him a question as planned, while Markos gets the women out of there. But … you could have two men in there waiting.”
“We don’t have any spare men,” I tell him. “We’ve worked it out, and there’s no slack in numbers.”
“Stamatis is sending you two of his men. They’re on their way to you as we speak. I’m going to go over the schematics of the building with them, and they won’t be coming to stay with you, as we don’t want anyone to know they are there just in case anyone is watching you guys. They’ll stay at the hotel the auction is being held at and have no communication with you. They will communicate with me, and once I know they’re in place, I’ll text you to let you know. I’ll say can you buy some bread on your way home. That’s the go that they’re in place, so keep your phone on top of the table, okay?”
“Okay.” I say. This suddenly seems much more even.
“Wear fucking vests too.” Damen’s growl is serious. “These cunts might be gangbangers who don’t have any training, but a spray of bullets is not a place you want to be without protection.”
“Yes, sir.” I smile as I end the call.
“Four against six, or seven. Four trained men, against six, seven tops, idiots who don’t truly know what they’re doing.” Andrius takes a sip of his drink. “I’ll take those odds.”
“You don’t have to, you know?” I look at his leg pointedly. It’s healing now, but it was a mess for a long time. “This isn’t your battle. You can stay here with Violet.”
He shakes his head. “It is my battle. If this fucker is doing this not thirty minutes from where I live, that doesn’t make me feel particularly relaxed about Violet’s safety, or the safety of our child. I don’t want this shit around me. It’s fucking bad enough I have to still do this shit for Allyov where I’m now a pseudo hotel-manager, but this… It’s too much. I don’t want this on my doorstep.”
He sips at his drink and shrugs one shoulder. “Plus, this dude, this Stuart, there are loose ends that he might one day find to tie him to Stella, which ties him to you, which implicates me. No, I want this fucker gone, and then I want Yannis Pappas taken care of.”
“You want to take Yannis Pappas taken out?” I say.
He doesn’t know Damen and I want the exact same thing, and I’m about to tell him when he carries on speaking.
He smiles. “I didn’t say taken out, did I? I said taken care of, and there are ways and means. We know Yannis is fucked up, and he likes some kinky shit. Well, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, we could set him up with a Dom, male or female, doesn’t really matter. What matters is we get footage of him being seriously submissive. Walking around like a fucking dog, licking the toilet bowl, that sort of shit. Now me, I don’t care what he does in his personal life, but the Greek mob is hardly an equal opportunities, rainbow-colored employer, is it? He’ll be fucking crucified if what we get on him is bad enough.”
“You mean blackmail?” Markos asks.
Andrius shakes his head. “Nah, we simply put it out there. He loses all respect and any authority the minute it gets seen.”
“I don’t like it.”
I’m shocked by Markos’ words.
“Why not?” I ask him.
“It doesn’t sit right with me. Blackmailing someone because of their kinks. It’s wrong.”
Andrius snorts. “Wrong like taking Stella. Like abusing Maya. That kind of wrong?”
“You also don’t know how he’ll react.” Markos takes out his beads and starts clacking them, a sure sign he’s a bit stressed by this conversation. “The man is a sociopath, probably a narcissist. He’s not going to simply slink away with his tail between his legs. Trust me on this. You go after a narcissist and shame them? You’ve got a war on your hands the likes of which you’ll never see the end of. Better all-round to take him out.”
“But that ignites a war with Lefteris,” Andrius says.
“Not if you do it in a way that no one can trace it back to you,” Markos argues.
As usual, it’s Markos in his quiet way who leads us to a solution we’ve all been separately searching for.
Andrius cocks his head to one side, and I can see his strategic mind running through what Markos has said. He starts to grin, big. “I do know someone who’d take him out in a way that would not be traced back to us, and she could also trash his rep at the same time.”
“How?” I ask.
“I know a female operative. She’s fucked in the head and utterly brilliant at what she does. She’d go in, disguise herself well enough no one would ever recognize her. I once heard her talking in such a pitch perfect American accent. She fooled all the Americans in the room with us—for hours!” He chuckles darkly.
“She could fuck him, rough him up, tape it all. Then she helps him overdose. The tape of him and her having sex is there for the police to find. They’ll never find who she is. They’ll eventually record death by misadventure, but if I know anything about the police that tape will eventually be leaked because it’s worth too much not to be.”
I find myself grinning too because this is a good plan. Damen will like it, and it means we can get Yannis out of the picture without causing utter mayhem between his father, Lefteris, and Stamatis.
“What would it take to get her on board?” I ask.
“A fuck ton of money,” Andrius replies. “Something as big as this. A good few million. You and Damen ought to talk with Stamatis. Yannis represents an ongoing threat to his daughter. If he’s willing to front some of the money, I will too, and you and Damen can put in, and we should have enough.”
“Me too,” Markos says. “I want to contribute. I like Maya, and Yannis was not a gentleman toward her.”
“So …we’re going to go to the auction. Kill the human-trafficker. Buy the girl, save the girl, find out where the girl came from, then go and sort them out. Oh, and as a side note, kill Yannis Pappas and make it look like death by drug overdose?” I look at the two men in the room with me.
“Yep, about sums it up.” Andrius sips at his drink as if our itinerary in the next few days is nothing special.
“I’m going to see the newly transformed Stella,” I tell them, shaking my head. I leave them discussing the best way to overdose Yannis and make it look accidental.
I find Stella in her room looking at herself in the mirror, turning her head, first one way, then the other.
Her hair is different. It’s completely ash blonde now, no roots, and so short it hugs her head. Big metal earrings hang from her lobes. I can see a tattoo down the back of her arm, wrapping around her bicep.
“Hey,
” I say softly.
She jumps but turns to me, and I can only stare.
Instead of her beautiful, deep brown eyes, I’m faced with a cool grey-blue. I don’t like it. I want to scrub the fake ink from her skin, wipe all the harsh makeup from her face, and take those contacts out until she’s herself again.
“Meet Lacy,” she says.
“Lacy?” I shake my head. “Did Justina come up with that name? Because it fucking sucks. It’s like something from a bad 80’s movie.”
“I’m starting to think my life is something from a bad 80’s movie,” she says with a small smile.
“Take those out.” I gesture to her eyes.
“Give me a few minutes.”
She heads into the bathroom, and I sit on the bed and think about things. I don’t want Stella there at the auction. I also don’t want her left behind. I know Andrius will have this place on absolute lockdown because of Violet, but I feel the need to have Stella with me. Makes me less on edge for some reason. That’s the selfish part of me. The more rational side realizes it isn’t fair to her. She says she wants to be there, but it will be traumatizing for her. A million miles away from the world she’s used to.
Fuck, it’ll be traumatizing for me, and I’m used to grubbing around knee-deep in shit, but not this kind. Sold girls. Christ. Who buys a human being? What kind of soulless, dead inside, fucked-up freak do you have to be to buy a person?
I can’t contemplate it, and I thought I was pretty damn dead inside myself. It’s not only the sex trade either; there are whole cities being built off the back of modern slavery. It’s sick. Humans are sick. It’s why I don’t know if I can ever make something normal work.
How does Andrius do it? He mixes with low-life scum, he kills low-life scum, he knows how fucking awful many people are, and then he comes back here and plays house with Violet. He’s bringing a new life into this world, knowing how awful it is. I can’t get my head around it.
Half of me wants the same, something like what he and Damen both have. Part of me thinks I can have it, but then the thoughts come back. The fact I think most people are scum, and the world would be better off without us around, and I think, what sort of person am I to have a relationship with?