by Renard, Loki
“How much of that have you had?”
“Enough,” she says. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
I ease myself very slowly into a wrought iron chair clearly designed to hurt anybody stupid enough to put their ass in it. My head feels heavy and fuzzy and my memory is jumbled. I remember being in bed, then in a jet boat, then a church - so many locations and so much violence.
I’m not even going to bother asking her to explain what’s going on. I’ve done that dozens of times and it never gets me anywhere. I have a fuzzy memory of what she told me and I can piece enough of it together now. She’s on the run, and she thinks that getting herself trafficked is the easiest way to disappear. She’s probably right. It’s a brilliant plan, one that speaks to her willingness to suffer for her freedom.
“There’s money in your account,” she says. “Three million dollars. A helicopter will be coming for me today, and for you tomorrow.”
“Why is there money in my account?”
She turns to me, the bright blue of her eyes reflecting the wild sky. “Because you sold me, silly. I think you’ve got some amnesia. You should really see a doctor.”
“Girls don’t sell themselves.” I can’t believe she’s still going ahead with this insane plan.
“This one does.” She reaches out for another cigarette from the crumpled packet. I reach out and put my hand over it before she can take another one of those disgusting sticks and pollute her body with it.
“Maybe I don’t want to sell you.”
“No refunds,” she says. “What’s done is done.”
I stay silent for a while. Then I pull the packet toward me, pull a cigarette out of it, and use the book of matches sitting nearby to light it.
“I’m not going to ask you what’s going on,” I say, exhaling a stream of smoke. “But I will tell you something.”
“What’s that?” She looks back at me over her shoulder, making eye contact through the tobacco haze.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“Just,” I make a gesture with the cigarette. “I guess, for everything. Everything that came before you. Everything that led to this moment, the one where you walk out of my life.”
She shakes her head. “You know this isn’t about you, Stavros.”
“I know. It’s about you. Whoever you are.”
A smile lights her face, and she is so fucking beautiful my heart hurts more than my ribs do. I’m not going to lose her, because I never had her, not really. I had the shell of what she was, the facade she showed to the world.
She played me perfectly, turned my strength into weakness. Before Siri, I thought I was better than women. Not in a sexist way, I mean, not an intentionally sexist way. I just thought it was a fact. I thought I was stronger, smarter, meaner, and that those things made me better.
But she’s far smarter and stronger than I am, and I suspect, she might even be meaner. I can see it in the way she holds herself now, her shoulders square and resolute. She’s a very young woman with a wild and likely dangerous future ahead of her, but I think she’ll survive it.
“I’m going to miss you too,” she says, her voice light.
“I didn’t say I was going to miss you.”
“Sure you did,” she winks. “I’d lay low for a while if I were you. Maybe try finding something else to sell. Something non-human. I hear there’s a growing market for leggings.”
I snort and pull her half-drunk drink to my lips.
The second it goes down, I realize that it’s not just alcohol. There’s something else in there. I know what it is because I’ve used it before. It’s what Siri would have tasted the night the delivery man took her.
“Siri…” my voice is heavy with disappointment.
“I know you don’t want me to go. And I know, even in your state, that you’re likely to try to stop me,” she says as the world goes hazy. “But I wanted to say a proper goodbye. Go lay down. When you wake up, I’ll be gone.”
“Siri…”
I say her name, but it’s a slow slur of syllables, and then it’s all over. I feel my muscles relaxing, my body sliding out of the chair and onto the ground in a sinuous motion, like I just became a very floppy snake.
The last thing I see is her standing over me, a sad expression on her stunning face. She’s so fucking beautiful. She’s everything. She’s mine. And she’s gone.
Chapter 8
Three months later…
Siri
For the first time in my life, I’m free.
Thanks to Stavros’ network of contacts, a series of men who are insulated from one another by code names, secrecy, and the threat of death, I was transported to Norway with no trace at all. Each and every one of them were paid off to ensure they wouldn’t pass my location on, and a death threat or two may not have gone astray either. I refuse to be found again. I have disappeared completely into a new world, become a new woman, and life is good.
I wake up each day in a small fishing village at the bottom of a glacier. I watch the fishermen head out to sea, and I smile to myself because this is as far away from the worlds I have known as it is possible to get, and I love every moment of it.
There’s one little piece of melancholy which stirs inside me whenever I let myself think for too long. I have come to the land of vikings. There are tall, striking, nordic men everywhere, any one of them more than handsome and nice enough to settle down and raise a little fisher family with, but every time I even consider anything remotely romantic, my mind and heart are filled with the eyes of the tall, dark, evil fuck of a man I left behind.
Just because I managed to fall for Stavros, it doesn’t mean he is a good person. I shouldn’t be pining for him. I used him, and I saved him, which is more than he deserved. I owe him nothing, so why do I crave him now?
At first, I told myself it was Stockholm syndrome, that I was just desperate at the time and I needed someone, so I fell for him. I told myself the feelings would pass, and that I deserved better. The second part is still true, but the first is not happening.
I miss that deviant asshole. He knew how to touch me. How to look at me. He knew how to set me aflame. Now I am cold, inside and out.
“Ma’am?” A rough, accented voice brings me out of my maudlin thoughts.
“Yes, Nils?”
“Your new shipment is arriving.”
“Alright. Thank you.”
I have my work to keep me busy, even if I have nothing else. Being broke is no way to stay free, and I landed here with a plan, which I have to say, is going very well. My cash reserves grow by the day, and soon I’ll be as untouchable as it’s possible to be. But I suspect I’ll still be lonely.
Wrapping my scarf around my neck and then across my mouth, I tramp down to the dock. It is snowing lightly, obscuring my vision just a little, enough to make it a picturesque sight. I love this place. It is completely different from anywhere I have lived before. The people are different too. They tend to keep to themselves, mind their own business. I love that more than anything.
A ship has just come into port, a great big black thing casting a shadow in the pale northern sun. This is no fishing vessel. This is a cargo carrier, one of many thousands which travel back and forth around these waters and further afield. This one has brought me something special.
The rear of the ship opens up like a great maw, and the cargo starts rolling. The nice thing about Norway is the abundance of natural ports. There’s even more here than there were in Greece, and the coastline is much less populated. Moving things in and out of this icy realm is as easy as it gets. Greece was similar, but there was more competition down there. These cooler climes and open spaces represent an opportunity which is not yet being exploited.
The crates start to be unloaded. They’re marked as fish, but the contents are more fish-y than they are sea food. They’re drugs, in other word. Recreational, illegal, profitable drugs. I’m looking forward to getting this shipment move
d. This is my break even point. This is where I start to really make some profit. Maybe, in time, I’ll be able to move to a bigger city, somewhere there’s a night life. Somewhere I can forget what came before and look forward, into the future.
“We have a stowaway!”
The shout draws my attention back to the ship. Usually ‘stowaway’ refers to a rat or a spider or something like that.
What I see isn’t a rat, or a spider. It’s something worse.
Stavros.
He comes strolling out of the shadows, a smirk on his face, his gait so fucking casual. He looks so. fucking. pleased with himself.
I want to be sick.
I back away as my men close in around me protectively. I don’t have to tell them that something is wrong. They know. The appearance of a man from inside the ship, a man who wasn’t supposed to be there, is enough to put them on high alert.
Stavros
I thought I’d hunt Siri down to some far flung corner of the world, and we’d be reunited. I knew it wouldn’t be smooth sailing, metaphorically or literally. But I wasn’t expecting to find Siri surrounded by large nordic men, every single one of whom looks at me like he’d rip my face off with his bare hands.
Is she fucking one of them?
Is she fucking all of them?
“You,” she says. She stands between them, so small, so feminine, and still so powerful. She always had a presence, even when she was locked in my basement. When she was supposed to be nobody and nothing, she was someone, and something.
I want to say all of that, but I can tell I’m not going to get a chance.
I thought she’d look at least a little pleased to see me, but she doesn’t. She looks upset and unsettled and now I’m wondering if it was worth it, putting myself in that foul smelling underbelly just to make this grand entrance. I thought she’d see me and realize that she missed me. I thought this was all it would take.
I was a fucking idiot.
She takes one step back, and then another, moving further and further away from me before gesturing to her men.
“Get him out of here.”
They close in on me, a bunch of dock workers and henchmen besides. I’m unarmed and I don’t want to fight. I want to claim Siri for my own. This was supposed to show her that I would do anything for her, go to the ends of the earth in the stinking belly of hell for her. This was supposed to be the grand gesture which would make it all better, but it hasn’t made anything better. Just as I start to feel angry at her rejection, I catch sight of her face. It’s pale white with fear.
She’s frightened of me. Of course she is.
I’m not her hero.
I’m the hell she was trying to escape.
Siri
I thought it was over. I thought it was over and I thought I had control, but there’s no control in this world. There’s only men who think they know what’s best for me, and it’s always them. I’m so fucking scared, and so fucking angry I can hardly think.
A moment ago I was missing him, day dreaming about him, but seeing him changes all of that. Stavros is much, much more frightening in person than he is in my imagination. I had forgotten the force of his presence. The last time I saw him, he was unconscious. I guess I felt guilty about leaving him that way, but it is clear he survived, and that he’s come for me again.
So many things were left unsaid between us. He knows I used him to escape a forced marriage. He also knows that his home was attacked and he was personally harmed because I didn’t tell him any of that, so I don’t know if he’s exactly sympathetic to me. I put him in danger, and Stavros isn’t the kind of man who likes being put in danger by women who lie. Hardly any men are.
My first thought upon seeing him is that he’s here for revenge. He might be smiling, but that doesn’t mean anything. He’s at his most dangerous when he looks unassuming.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Siri.”
That’s exactly what someone who was going to hurt me would say.
Fair or not, seeing Stavros brings back all the memories I thought I had left behind. I have worked every day to forget the life I used to have. My father. The marriage I didn’t want. My desperation. My fear. I pretended that none of it ever happened, but he brings it all rushing back, and I can’t get away from him fast enough.
As I back away, my men get in front of me and usher him back toward the ship he came from. He’s going to have to get back on the ship and sail with the tide. He doesn’t want to do that, of course. I can hear them arguing as I walk away. He doesn’t have a hope in hell of winning. I chose my men carefully. I made sure they were capable of protecting me.
Voices are starting to be raised. If I’m not mistaken, weapons are being drawn. When I turn back, Stavros is standing in the middle of them, tall and dark and angry. Most men would be dwarfed by them, but he’s not. He’s taller than I remembered. Somehow, more handsome too. That Greek blood burns brighter in Norwegian cold.
Why did he have to come? Why couldn’t he remain a memory in the past? I could have missed him forever and eventually lived a normal life, but seeing him reminds me that I’m not normal, and that any attempt at normalcy is just me lying to myself. When he is near, I cannot tell those lies anymore and I hate him for that.
I can hear the conversation as it gets louder, carrying across the frosty docks.
“I just want to talk to her!” Stavros is saying. He’s trying to stay calm and collected, but my men are having none of it. They know a predator when they see one.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Hans growls. “Get back on the ship and take the next tide.”
“I’m not leaving until I talk to her.”
“Wrong. You’re leaving. You decide if you leave breathing or not.”
I feel a swelling of pride. I haven’t been here long but the men who were fishermen when I arrived have rallied around me and supported me incredibly. They’re not henchmen, they’re just good men, family men who aren’t going to let me be bullied by this monster.
Stavros refuses to move, even when they start to gather around him, and I know he’s not going to back off. He planned this whole dramatic arrival. He wanted this to be a moment, and he’s not going to be denied what he wants.
That’s when I realize there’s a real problem. The crew on the ship are his crew. We are facing off with two teams of men, both of who are in real danger if this escalates. There’s been enough death on my account for a lifetime. I don’t want any of them to get hurt. Not my men, not Stavros either. Even he has been hurt enough.
“Okay stop!” I call out. “Let him come talk to me.”
They part, staying watchful and wary as Stavros straightens his blazer and walks toward me, his gait stiff and stern. I hate the way my stomach starts to quiver at the merest flicker of his expression.
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to see you,” he says. I can see from the clenching of his jaw that he’s pissed, but he’s trying not to show it. He wants to pretend to be a good person. A small part of me remembers what he would do when he was unhappy with me, how he’d take the belt at his waist and use it on me. Is that what good people do? Do good people lock teenage girls in their basement and plan to sell them? Of course not. He’s not good. He’s never been good. He’s not capable of it. Men like Stavros don’t change.
I have to remind myself that I don’t play by his rules anymore. He doesn’t control me, and he sure isn’t going to wrap that thick leather belt around my bare ass…
“Well, you’ve seen me. So now what?”
“We’re not over, Siri.” Those words send a shiver down my spine, but I can’t give into them. He can’t just step out of a rusty tub and think I’m going to fall at his feet.
“We’re over for me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“That sounds like a you problem. Not a me problem.”
Stavros
She’s so cold. Like an ice queen. Standing there, wrapped in her wools
and furs, her pale blue gaze all the brighter for the light of the snow around her. What I wouldn’t do to have her on her knees again, my hand fisted in her hair, her mouth open, lips parted around my cock…
I pull myself out of the fantasy. Things have changed. She’s changed. Or maybe she hasn’t. Maybe this is who she was all along. Maybe I’m finally getting to see the real Siri.
As strong as she’s projecting herself to be, I can see her fear and her uncertainty too. I don’t believe that I’m the only one who wants this, but what kind of monster doesn’t listen to a woman when she says he’s not wanted? The kind of man I used to be. The kind of man I refuse to be anymore.
“You better not have bought anyone with you,” she says. “If you were followed…”
“I’ve been traveling every day since you left,” I reply. “Nobody is following me. I’ve rooted out every spy and contact along the way. My organization is clean.”
“No organization is ever clean.”
“Then maybe you should worry about yours.”
She doesn’t take the hint. Instead, she takes offense.
“I don’t need your advice, Stavros! I don’t need you! You should never have come here. You should have left me alone. You’re part of my past, just like the rest of it, a necessary evil, but one I won’t tolerate anymore. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you don’t leave.”
This is as firm a ‘no’ as I’ve ever gotten from a woman, under any circumstances. I have to take it, and her, seriously. I didn’t come here to repeat the past and take her whether she wanted it or not. I came here to see if the yearning I’ve been feeling for her, the incessant need, is mutual.
It doesn’t look that way.
Every instinct I have is being tested right now. Every bit of self-control is in use. We should be together, her and I. We’re not just compatible, we’re a perfect match. She’s made for me and she has to know it, just like I do.
She’s fighting it. She’s fighting me. She’s fighting herself.
