The man roughly shoves my mary janes onto my feet then easily lifts me off the boat. Held in his strong arms, I don’t even touch the sand. His scent seeps underneath the bag and into my nostrils. Musk mixed with sea salt. Cigarettes. A hint of aftershave. His touch and smell comfort me somehow, and I panic less. His presence lets me know I’m not alone in the dark, even if the man accompanying me is my kidnapper.
I’m still hyperventilating as he lowers me into what feels like the backseat of a car, presumably the Fiat I saw earlier. The door closes beside me, and another one opens.
That familiar musky scent tickles my nostrils as he steps inside. The front door opens, too, and I’m aware of another man entering. He smells like cigarettes as well, and a clashing cologne.
The Fiat starts up and I struggle against my binds for a moment, but the cable tie won’t break. I hyperventilate worse than ever as I feel the vehicle moving.
It’s taking me to my doom.
“It’s okay,miatesoro,” a voice from my past says. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I smile. A pleasant hallucination.
If only Massimo were really here. He’d save me.
My heart hardens as the words enter my head.
Massimo.
He abandoned me to this cold hard world. We were going to run away together. We should have. Could have. But he ran.
It’s his fault I’m doomed to marry a man I don’t love. If my kidnappers ever release me, that is. Yup, it’s just like me to be worrying about some arranged marriage when I have bigger problems at the moment.
Oddly, mentally taking out my frustrations on the man who ran away calms me down. Maybe I just needed something to distract me. Either way, soon I’m no longer hyperventilating, and merely existing. Sitting here with my wrists bound and a bag over my head in the backseat of a car, surrounded by kidnappers.
All I can do at the moment is exist.
And watch for my chance to escape.
3
Massimo
Istare out the backseat window while Luciano drives us along the main road that circles the entire island. The foliage lining the route is sparse here, so I often spot the villas beyond. Sometimes the estates are fenced in by hedges of prickly pairs. As for the crops themselves, I see vineyards, olives, almonds, and fruit trees. But of course what I’m seeing barely registers. My thoughts are elsewhere.
I turn my gaze on our captive, her pretty face sealed away by the black bag over her head. She leans to one side, resting her head against the windowsill so that the rest of her body is hidden behind the door frame. That’s good, because to any outside observers, she’ll look like a sack of potatoes.
I shouldn’t have called hermiatesoro, but the words seemed to have calmed her at least. Luciano had glanced in the rearview mirror when I said that, and I saw the confusion in his eyes. When we’re alone, I’ll clarify what I meant… she’s my “treasure” because she represents the ransom we’ll get for her, nothing more. She’s my revenge against her father. I told her everything was going to be okay, but nothing will be okay for her, not where we’re headed. Not until we get the cold hard cash for her in trade.
Her father’s men tried to kill me by dumping me in the ocean. I once thought I’d come back for Angela and steal her away from that bastard, killing him too while I was at it, but as the years passed, any feelings I had for her were replaced solely by vengeance. I’ve been with too many other women to care about some random girl I once had a crush on. Now, I only want to hurt the Amatos, and extort as much money as I can from them in the process.
I think about the undeniable attraction I felt when I held her in my arms in the cold sea. As soon as I remember the warm touch of her body against my own, my pants become uncomfortably tight. I shake my head, forcing the memory away. What I felt was mere lust—if she had been any other woman, the result would have been the same. A part of my mind objects, reminding me how cold and uncomfortable the water was, and how I was forced to swim at the same time. The situation was as far from arousing as one could possibly get, and still I was turned on. Maybe it was her struggles that did it. Yes, that’s probably what happened. Her fight aroused me.
I do plan to have my way with her at some point, of course, but it has to be of her own free will. I want her to come to me. I’ve never forced myself on a woman. I’ve never had to. Shit, women throw themselves at my feet, begging me to fuck them. And Angela will beg me to do the same, I swear she will, even though she never sees my face.
I’m starting to get hot. Luciano has the heat blasting at full from the vents to help dry off myself and our captive. That, combined with the already balmy fall day, is starting to really increase the Fiat’s internal temperature. But I decide not to tell him to shut it off. Angela needs the heat more than I do in that thin blouse she’s wearing.
Luciano and I have removed our balaclavas for the drive, since we don’t really want to be spotted wearing them while on the road. We keep them close at hand, though, ready to don again should our captive try anything. So far, she’s been as docile as a vole.
Luciano turns off the main road, and we head toward one of the vineyards I own with my brothers. I gaze upon the rows upon rows of neatly spaced grapevines, and the plump purple grapes hanging from their branches. They say money doesn’t grow on trees, but they’re wrong.
Wine is a great crop for laundering money. Because its price is never the same between batches, over- or under-invoicing can easily be explained away to the Italian Revenue Agency. What we do is sell the raw unprocessed wine to mirror vineyards we own in Switzerland, using false invoicing to misrepresent the price, quantity and quality of the goods. This allows us to launder the proceeds of our other illicit businesses to Switzerland, proceeds that we then deposit into our ever growing Swiss Bank Accounts.
By setting up Italian corporations owned by shell companies in tax havens, it’s virtually impossible to track down the true owners of these vineyards. We can trade money back and forth to ourselves all day and no one is the wiser. It’s pretty hilarious how easy it is.
If it had been harvest season, the aisles between the grapevines would have been full of migrant pickers. We never use mechanical harvesters, because you can’t trust the machines to properly handle the grapes. While the main intent of the vineyards is to launder money, we pride ourselves on the quality of the little wine we do produce, and bruised grapes won’t cut it.
Our land backs onto the ocean. We have our own private sandy beach, though it’s screened from here by the grapevines. The second floor of the chateau provides the best views.
