Under His Heel: A Kidnapping

by Adara Wolf

  The dude in the corner shuddered. “Ugh, I don’t want to be here for that. Save it for the cameras.”

  Next to him, Johan started sniffling loudly.

  ==

  In the guest room of Anna’s manor, Tracht weighed his options. He ended up calling Espinosa just to get her opinion on the situation, even though he knew she didn’t particularly care for Alex either.

  “Sir? Is there an issue?”

  The only reasons Tracht ever contacted any of his staff when they were off-duty was due to ship emergencies, so it wasn’t surprising that Espinosa had leapt to that conclusion.

  He shook his head and settled into the desk chair. It would have been nicer to be at his own office on the ship, rather than in this uncomfortable, unfamiliar room.

  “Ms. Espinosa, what I’m about to tell you must be kept completely confidential, at least for the time being.”

  “Of course, Captain,” Espinosa said, and to her credit she didn’t even look annoyed that Tracht had insinuated she might be anything but.

  “Somebody has abducted both my nephew and Alex.”

  Her expression didn’t change as she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “My sister and her husband are looking into the traditional avenues of hostage extradition, but I’m worried about the amount of abuse the perpetrators are going to heap on Alex and my nephew.” If Espinosa noticed the slight hesitation before he added ‘nephew,’ she didn’t say anything.

  “I am, however, at a bit of a loss as to how to speed up the investigation.” Tracht tapped his fingers on the desk. “As I value your quick thinking, I was hoping you’d be able to help me come up with some ideas.”

  That got a small smile out of her. She was always pleased when he complimented her skills, even after all the years she’d been working on his ship as the Chief Officer.

  “I think the first question is why they bothered to grab Alex at all,” Espinosa said. “If they just wanted to ransom your nephew, they would have been safer leaving him behind, or killing him outright.”

  “Yes, I wondered about it too. But they did use Alex for a rather… colorful demonstration as to what they would do to Johan if Anna and Vasilis didn’t pay the ransom.” Tracht pulled up copies of all the information he had on what had happened and sent them to Espinosa.

  “Yeah, but—think about it. Wouldn’t it be more powerful to simply torture your nephew?” On the other end of the vid screen, Espinosa looked down at her own tablet and tapped on the edges, flipping through the files he had sent her. “Nobody simply assumes that a bondservant is highly valued.”

  No, they wouldn’t at that. Bondservants were long-term employees who could be made to do more demeaning tasks than the usual kind of help. Anna employed them because she liked to make sure they couldn’t leave before their contract was up; others because they wanted a long-term lover they didn’t have to care about. Others still, because they wanted to legally hurt somebody.

  The station encouraged the system because it meant they didn’t need to set up a debtors’ prison or another system to help people pay off loans.

  “The security footage is rather sparse. Apparently the kidnappers disabled the cameras inside the stairwell and on the fifth and sixth floors. And there were so many people going in and out of the school that day, it’s hard to tell who wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  Espinosa hmm’ed quietly and read quietly.

  The blood they’d found was, as Tracht had suspected, Alex’s. None of it belonged to Johan, which was probably a relief to Anna but didn’t soothe Tracht’s anger in the slightest.

  “Do they really want money?” Espinosa asked suddenly.

  Tracht looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just… it seems very elaborate. Theatrical. They can’t expect to get away with it if they get the cash, right? Nobody really uses cash here, and unless they’ve already got a ticket to leave the station… but even then. All the stations are connected to Pylos, and this isn’t a petty crime. This is the Lysander family. You can bet that security on every station would be looking for them. Even law enforcement on Pylos would cooperate.”

  She had a point. She had a very good point.

  “If they don’t want the ransom…” Tracht slammed his fist onto the table. “FUCK.”

  Espinosa nodded grimly. “I don’t think they plan to return your nephew.”

  [Chapter 4]

  “Smile for the camera!” the bitch said.

  God, she sounded like Anja Nilsen. Sadistic cunt. Alex glared at her and kept his mouth shut.

  She held the scalpel up to the camera. “He’s already roughed up a bit, so I’m not sure how noticeable a few extra scars will be.”

  He was kinda surprised to hear Anna saying, “Don’t!” on the other end. Huh. Did she actually care? Or maybe Tracht had convinced her to think about him.

  He flinched when the bitch brought the scalpel up to his face.

  “Does he need both eyes?”

  Oh fuck. No. Alex closed his eyes, then changed his mind and opened them. He stared directly at the bitch and hoped it would freak her out enough not to do it.

  She winked at him, then slashed from his eyebrow down to meet the scar on his cheek, narrowly missing his eye. He grunted at the sharp pain, but that was better than losing the eye. Blood started trickling down his face, some of it landing on his eyelids, dripping onto his cheek.

  “I think I missed!”

  The next cut went straight across his face, from just under one eye to right under the other. That stung a lot more, and it was harder not to cry out.

  He heard whimpering that wasn’t his own. They had removed the kid’s blindfold. Great. Bad enough that he had to deal with his own pathetic sounds, but now he had the kid in there too.

  “Just so you know that I’m serious…”

  The dude at the camera moved it to the side, and the bitch walked and settled behind Johan. She brought the scalpel up to his cheek, and Johan started crying.

  If Alex thought it would help, he’d have talked to the kid. Told him to shut the fuck up and deal with it, because a little cut wasn’t the worst that could happen to him.

  Maybe she was being funny, but she made a cut that followed the same path as Alex’s old scar, from temple down to chin. Johan screamed.

  On the other end of the vid-call, Anna cried Johan’s name. “It’ll be okay, Johan, it’ll be fine. Be strong!” She was crying too, Alex thought, and what the fuck did she have to cry about. It wasn’t her under the knife.

  “That’s an easy fix for you rich types, isn’t it?” the bitch taunted. “And that’s all for now! We’ll see you in a few hours!”

  She waited until the dude gave her a thumbs up, then she dropped the knife. “Stop crying, kid. Your bondservant barely even flinched.”

  Johan sniffled and kept wailing.

  Ugh. Kids.

  “I need to piss,” Alex said, which drew both of their attention to him. “Needed to for hours.”

  “Just wet yourself,” the bitch responded, which was not what Alex was hoping for.

  “That’s gonna stink,” the other guy said. “And we have to keep working in here.”

  Thank god for some common sense.

  “No way, I don’t trust him. Take the brat to the bathroom, clean him up a bit. I’ll get a bottle for this one.”

  The dude started undoing Johan’s bindings. “If you even think of causing trouble, I’m going to force you to watch while I pull out your bondservant’s entrails, got it? And after that I’ll make you eat them.”

  Naturally, that made Johan cry even harder, but he nodded and didn’t fight when he was led to the bathroom.

  The bitch came back with a bottle, which she set down at Alex’s feet, and then she started undoing Alex’s belt.

  Too late, Alex realized one problem with this scenario: he was wearing the cock cage. Pissing with it on wasn’t a problem, but having anybody other than Tracht see it—
/>
  “The fuck? You’re not just a bodyguard?”

  Maybe it was a good thing that she was wearing a full face mask, because Alex didn’t want to see her expression.

  “Wait, does Ms. Tracht make you wear this? Isn’t she married?”

  “So? You think that means they don’t like a piece on the side too? I fuck both of ‘em. They’re super kinky.” Alex sucked at lying, but all the injuries were working in his favor. Him not looking in her eyes could just be the blood dripping down his face, the unsteadiness in his voice was because of the pain he was in.

  “Why would they pick somebody as ugly as you as a fucktoy?”

  “How’m I supposed to know?” And the less he tried to lie about it, the better. “You gonna let me piss or what?”

  It might actually have been a bit satisfying to let go with her standing right there, but Tracht had been hammering be smarter into him, and pissing her off while she had all the power was probably completely stupid. So he waited until she held the bottle to the tip of his dick, and then he finally, finally got to relieve himself. He didn’t even care that she was watching, or that her gloved hands were touching his dick. Under other circumstances, it might even have been a nice novelty to have a chick touching him again.

  “Not one of those shy pissers, are you?” she remarked as the stream kept going.

  “Lady, if you’d been holding it as long as I have—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She laughed. “You’re being a very good sport about all of this.”

  “Not my first time getting tortured.” He still didn’t like it one bit, but after almost two years with Tracht, he’d found ways to get around the pain and the fear.

  “Hmm. It’ll be your first time getting killed though.”

  ==

  “Of course we’re going to pay the ransom!” Anna shouted. “You saw what they did to Johan!”

  Tracht was much more concerned with what they’d done to Alex. Eyes were hard to have repaired properly, but he was also going to hate if either of those cuts scarred over. They would need to be removed, but doing that without altering the existing scar might not be possible.

  He tried to ignore how attractive Alex was with fear in his eyes and the determination not to make a sound. Now was absolutely not the time to get turned on. He didn’t think he’d even be able to rewatch the videos later as masturbation material, because the anger of not being the one to have inflicted any of that would be too great.

  “What are you going to do the moment you get Johan back?” Tracht asked her.

  “We’ll find the perpetrators and make them pay for their crimes, of course,” Koteas said. “We’ve already informed port management, and we have security working to determine the location. All the bills will be marked with nanotrackers, and—”

  “And the kidnappers would know all of that!” Tracht yelled. He regretted it only because he hadn’t meant to raise his voice, hadn’t meant to show Anna how bothered he was.

  Anna narrowed her eyes at him. “Would you listen to yourself? Sofia is a professional, and you’re just a free-lance shipping captain.”

  They all startled when Vasilis cleared his throat. “I know all of our tempers are frayed, but I think we need to calm down.” He sounded barely calm himself. “Sofia, is there any merit to Johannes’s theory? Because I will gladly pay the ransom, but not if it won’t help get Johan back.”

  To her credit, Koteas didn’t simply reiterate her earlier points. “It’s true that the likelihood of escape in a situation like this is very slim. Abductors aren’t always very thorough in their plans, and they could have neglected to think of that possibility. However,” she paused briefly and looked at Tracht, “if they don’t actually care about the ransom, then paying the money might only expedite… “

  “It would expedite the murder of both Johan and Alex,” Tracht finished for her. “They gave you three days, Anna. Let Ms. Koteas and her team try to find the location before you rush off to pay this ransom.”

  Anna scowled and looked over at Vasilis. “What do you think?”

  “I think—” Vasilis paused. “It’s hard to think. I just want to see Johan safe and sound. So in that sense, I want to pay the ransom. But if we look at it from other angles—” He rubbed his brow. “What do they want instead? If it isn’t money?”

  Torture and terrorism could be their own goals, but Tracht suspected if that’s what they wanted, they could have taken an easier target. Truth be told, he didn’t care why they were doing what they did. “You work on that. I have another appointment.”

  He ignored their protests as he left.

  ==

  Tracht took a cab to the other side of the station, to a casino. The guards at the entrance checked his ID and then ushered him in.

  Like most casinos, the easy money-grabbers were out front. Slot machines and pachinko and roulette. At 1am on a weekend, it was packed, and Tracht had to hide his instinctual disdain for the class of people who hung around here.

  He eventually found his way to the information desk where a young woman with far too many piercings—more even than Dr. Singh’s Nadia—was sitting quietly.

  “How may I help you, sir?” she asked, lisping slightly.

  “Is Ms. Nilsen in?”

  Her eyes widened a fraction and she looked around. “Uh, um. I’m not sure?”

  “Call the office and check for me, please. Let them know Johannes Tracht wishes to speak to Ms. Nilsen about a mutual financial arrangement.”

  Her hand shook when she reached for the phone, and Tracht noticed that she was missing her pinky finger. Interesting. The woman wasn’t wearing a collar, but between the piercings and the missing finger, he suspected she had been a bondservant at one point.

  He listened while the woman explained what he wanted and was marginally surprised when he was invited to wait at the bar. “Ms. Nilsen will be out to see you.”

  The bartender gave him a whisky, “on the house,” and then he waited. Normally waiting wasn’t an issue for him—he enjoyed delayed gratification—but in this one instance, he was very aware of how little time he had. Every minute that passed was another one in which Alex was being tortured by some stranger.

  “To what do I owe the honor?” a husky female voice asked.

  Tracht glanced up from his drink, still mostly full. “Ms. Nilsen.”

  Anja Nilsen was not, in the strictest sense, beautiful. She hadn’t done anything to fix the uneven nature of her eyes, and her nose was slightly too large for her face. But she kept her hair perfectly styled, and the dress she wore rivaled any of Anna’s.

  Nilsen raised her eyebrows. “Well? What mutual business do we have?”

  “Could we go somewhere a bit more private? I’m afraid it’s of a delicate nature.”

  That made Nilsen laugh. “Are you sure you’ll be safe with me, in private?”

  “I am fairly certain that you wouldn’t murder Vasilis Lysander’s brother-in-law, yes.”

  There was a tenuous relationship between the upstanding, legal side of Cadmus, and the less scrupulous underbelly. It probably wouldn’t have been too difficult to remove the Nilsens from the station entirely, but given that human nature meant corruption was inevitable, the station tolerated the Nilsens running their business, provided the Nilsens kept things in line. Murdering Tracht would be a sure way to end the arrangement.

  Nilsen inclined her head at him. “Fair point. All right, I have a private dining room. This way.”

  Tracht followed her, and he had to admit he was a bit impressed with the grandeur. It was ostentatious in a modern way, not like the sleek lines that Vasilis and Anna preferred in their home. They ignored the dining table and chairs and went to sit on the couches.

  After Nilsen called for coffee to be brought, she settled in and gave Tracht a look. “Now, stop wasting my time.”

  “Very well. I am unsure how personally you deal with the many debt accounts, but two years ago, you held a pair of twins. Alexander and Nicholas Stone.�
��

  She barked a laugh. “No, I remember them. Scarface and Wannabe Slick. Scarface screamed and screamed when we pulled his tooth out.”

  Ah, that explained that. Despite the fact that the tooth had long-since been replaced, Tracht found himself hating Nilsen for having touched Alex. All in the past, he reminded himself. Really, he should be grateful that the Nilsens had done what they had to Alex, because it had helped land Alex in his debt.

  “And then you decided to take Scarface as your bondservant. How’s that working out for you?” Her eyes narrowed. “If you want to renegotiate the debt, forget it.”

  “Not as such,” Tracht said.

  The door slid open, and the receptionist came over with a tray of coffee and small cakes. She knelt very prettily as she served them, no hint of a tremor in her body now.

  They waited until she was gone to continue.

  “Somebody has absconded with Alex, and, I believe, intends to kill him after a significant amount of torture.”

  “So?”

  “I would like to request your assistance in retrieving him.”

  Nilsen stared for a moment, and then she burst out laughing. “Why in the world would I do that?”

  “I believe you are very familiar with how debt contracts work. In the event that Alex dies, provably not through my machinations, I am absolved of paying the remainder of the debt.” He sipped his coffee. “There are still three years remaining on the payments. If Alex dies, it would deny you a substantial sum of money.”

  Unfazed, she repeated, “So? I’m not that hard up for cash, and to be honest, I’d pretty much written off the debt. I was shocked when somebody actually picked up Scarface’s contract.”

  Nilsen slowly smiled. “I think Scarface must be a lot more valuable to you than money, if you’re coming to me.” She stood and moved from her armchair to sit on the couch next to Tracht. “I think that, if it were just about the money, you might as well have gotten yourself a new bondservant. Isn’t that what you used to do? Pick ‘em up, use ‘em up, dump ‘em, start all over again?”