I’d been on boats and yachts before, but had never had the pleasure of piloting a motorboat. My summer camp canoeing experience wouldn’t help me here but how hard could it be? Once I discovered how to start the engine, I’d be able to figure out the rest, I was certain.
That was all well and good, but it was all for naught if I couldn’t get the boat into the water. No crane mechanism hung over the boat or anywhere I could see. I stepped closer to my grounded method of escape, eyes darting everywhere in search of how it was deployed.
Underneath, two padded stands held the boat in place against the slats of the deck. The water churned underneath, near black in the moonlight and shadows. The lines holding the boat would be easy enough to untie, but I still hadn’t found a way to lower the boat.
A click sounded behind me, muffled by the water and hum of the engine. Oleg, Alexei’s pet thug, stepped out of the doorway. His shoulders were so wide, he had to slip sideways to get through it. Even then, his body brushed the edge of the door.
“The boat lift doesn’t work when the engine is running unless you disengage the safety,” he said, his first words in my presence. Unlike Alexei, he spoke with a thick Russian accent in a baritone, “and we don’t have time to stop for a midnight cruise.”
Thugs menaced. My father employed several for just that purpose. I wouldn’t want to have been left alone with almost any of them. They never turned it off, most couldn’t, the others liked the reaction. Being feared gave a man power, some reveled in it.
Oleg’s flat expression with his dark, deep set eyes and chubby cheeks gave nothing away, but didn’t kindle any fear in me. It seemed Alexei had a refined thug, a more nuanced enforcer watching his back.
“Why don’t we have the time, is Alexei late for some important date?” I asked. The bad rhyme earned a giggle from myself but no reaction from the refined thug.
“I don’t keep Mr. Lebedev’s schedule, he does that himself,” the man replied.
His eyes twitched at the question, realizing he’d shared too much. His non-answer showed just how refined a thug he was. Smooth, but not perfect.
“Where is our next port of call?” I asked as if I’d been on a cruise and was talking with the porter instead of having been kidnapped, then discovered trying to escape and was now asking the question of my kidnapper’s pet thug.
“You’d have to ask the captain that, I don’t steer the ship or plot the course,” he replied.
He wouldn’t repeat his single slip-up. His answers proved that he had realized my game. I’d get no new admissions from him but maybe I could provoke him?
It was a dangerous idea. You didn’t poke a thug and with very good reason. They dispensed violence out of hand. If the man wanted, he could snap my bones like cracking a cheap popsicle in half.
Alexei wanted to seduce me. His whole plan had avoided violence so far. Sure, he’d threatened the possibility if I didn’t leave with him peacefully at the restaurant, but smart as he was, he knew roughing me up only made his goal that much harder. He also didn’t seem to be the type to hurt innocent women, at least without a reason.
If I could goad his thug into throwing a punch or getting grabby as he dragged me back into my cell, Alexei wouldn’t be happy with the man. At the very least, that could drive a wedge between my kidnapper and his thug. Depending on how far I wanted to take it, Oleg might end up sustaining the local fish population by the time the dust cleared. Were there sharks in the Mediterranean? Alexei the wannabe marine biologist probably knew.
“You don’t know where we are going, you can’t drive the ship; what is it you do around here, Mr. Oleg?” I teased.
Too bad Katie hadn’t been here. She knew how to piss a person off and spoke her mind while I hid my thoughts behind mental walls. Looking at Oleg, she’d make a quip about his weight. He had a powerful physique half hidden beneath a beer gut. A prominent double chin softened his jaw line. He’d shown himself to be more than a standard issue thug, but she’d still obliquely call him stupid.
“I’m a good soldier, Ms. Marciano,” he replied flatly with not even a hint of change in his expression. “I follow Mr. Lebedev’s orders.”
I wasn’t Katie. Sure, I could envision how she’d piss Oleg off, even conjure the words she’d speak, but I wasn’t her. When it came time to say them out loud, my mouth just wouldn’t comply. Whether it was out of fear of getting hurt or because I wasn’t as much of cold and calculating bitch as Katie thought I was, it forced me to find a new tack.
“Do you enjoy working under Mr. Lebedev?” I asked, fake innocence filling my voice.
“He pays well,” Oleg answered but a frown came to his face.
Did he see my game?
It didn’t matter. His short answers told me he wouldn’t spill any more info on his boss to me. That left plan F. I hated plan F. It tasted like bargain barrel vinegar to just think the words, let alone say them out loud.
“Do you, by chance, know who my father is?” I said without hissing or scowling.
“Michael Marciano,” Oleg replied. His expression didn’t change, except for his eyes. They narrowed even further under his thick brow. His lips pressed together. Yeah, he knew my game but I had to try.
“My father’s a very wealthy man.” The foul taste grew stronger in my mouth. “He’d offer a generous reward for the person who returned me to him.”
Oleg laughed, a sudden bark that he soon stifled but his shoulders rose and fell all the same. When he recovered, he shook his head.
“If I betrayed the Bratva, they’d kill me but only after they killed my mother, my sisters and brothers,” he said, head continuing to shake. “I don’t know how they do things in America, but from what I know of Michael Marciano, the only reward he’d give me would be a bullet in the head. I’d die quicker, but I prefer to remain living.”
He wasn’t wrong. You couldn’t put any trust in a man who’d betray his family, or Bratva in Oleg’s case, for financial gain. If a rat would rat for you, turn on their brothers for a pile of cash, they would rat against you when someone offered them a better deal.
At least he’d let one nugget slip. Alexei was Bratva, the Russian mob. I’d expected that, given the people around him and his Russian last name, but his British accent served as a powerful red herring.
The Bratvas were not as powerful in the States. Places like Brighton Beach with their large Russian expat communities had their mobsters, but my father preferred to work with other Mafia families, not outsiders. They had global reach though and had infiltrated business and governments, especially in Europe.
Still, the confirmation he was a mobster offered a little insight into the potential reasons Alexei might hate my father. It could have been a deal gone bad, though it would have to have been a huge deal to explain Alexei’s anger. My father was a ruthless man when he needed to b