Niko Teridis lifted his head as the bodyguards stepped away. At first, he wondered why they were moving, but soon realized it wouldn’t be to his benefit. His eyes were swollen and red, tears streaming from the corners. There were cuts on his cheeks, and blood oozed from a gash on his lip. His thick nose was bent at an awkward angle, also leaking dark-crimson liquid.
His eyes flared angrily at Gikas as he stepped into view. “You have no idea what a mistake you have made this day, Dimitris. Hell will rain down upon you. My supporters, my family, my friends will avenge this.”
Gikas smiled cynically and shook his head in a mocking fashion. “I seriously doubt that, old friend. Most of your supporters now support me and my efforts to establish a new monarchy. As for your family? They will be easy enough to pick apart one by one.”
Teridis snarled. “You will not touch them! Stay away from my family!”
“Well, that all depends on you, my dear Niko.” Gikas raised an eyebrow and reached back to the guard closest to him. The man produced a small roll of papers from his jacket and placed them in his boss’s open palm.
“What is that?” Teridis’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s the paperwork for all your land, all your businesses, basically everything you own in this world. You are going to sign it over to me.”
Teridis let out a short laugh that was accompanied by a reddish mist. Gikas’s men must have gone to work on the man’s lungs. “I will never sign over such a thing to you. You can rot in hell, Dimitris.” He spat on Gikas’s black Italian shoes.
Gikas took in a long deep breath. “Why did you do that? These are the finest shoes the Italians can make. Now I’m going to have to get them cleaned.”
One of the guards stepped forward to strike Teridis across the face, but Gikas held up a hand, signaling him to stop. “No, my friend. You’ve roughed him up enough, don’t you think?” The stout guard gave a quick nod and retreated to his former spot.
Teridis appeared momentarily confused, but remained unyielding. “You think I need your mercy, Dimitris? I need nothing from you.”
Gikas shrugged his head to the side. “You see, my old friend, that is where I believe you are wrong. I believe there are actually several people in your life that could benefit from my mercy.”
The comment caused Teridis to narrow his eyes a little tighter.
“Your young wife, for instance. She might be interested in a little mercy from me.”
Teridis had married a beautiful blonde woman who was nearly half his age. He didn’t care about the reasons she married him, nor that everyone in the region speculated about the oddly matched couple. He knew what he liked, and he always took what he wanted. Deep down, though, she was just a trophy to him. “Do as you please to her. She’s nothing but a whore. You honestly believe that I care about what you do to a common prostitute?”
“Very well, Niko.”
From behind the tall bushes, two more men in black suits appeared with a blonde woman. Her curly hair cascaded down to shoulders exposed by the white-and-black polka-dotted dress she wore. The woman was blindfolded and had a gag in her mouth. She tried to scream as the men ushered over to the edge of the cliff, but the handkerchief did its job keeping her voice silent.
The men stopped at the precipice and awaited their employer’s orders. Gikas looked over at the woman then back down at the fat man on his knees by the fire pit. “Are you sure you don’t want to save her, Niko? She’s quite breathtaking.”
Teridis’s eyes remained slits, unyielding to the test. His silence said enough.
Gikas gave a quick nod and one of his guards yanked down the gag, letting it dangle around the woman’s lithe neck. “Niko!” she screamed. “Please, just give them whatever they want.” Her begging did little to change the mind of the hardened man. “I’ll do anything. Please, just don’t kill me.”
“You think you can play games with me, Dimitris?” Teridis gazed up at his captor. “I know full well that you will kill us all anyway. So go ahead; do your worst. I will give you nothing.”
Gikas let out a sick laugh. “I thought you might say that. Very well, say goodbye to your wife…or whore, rather.” He gave another nod to one of the guards, who shoved the woman in the back, sending her over the ledge. Her screams faded as she fell the several hundred feet to the waves and rocks below. Gikas turned back to his prisoner. “Too late.” He put his hand to his chin. “Now, I wonder who else I have to kill to get you to sign that paper.” He waited for a moment to add dramatic effect. “Ah, yes. Your little boy. That might do the trick.”
Teridis was already horrified that he’d just witnessed the murder of his wife. Now, Gikas was threatening to take the life of his only son, the heir to everything he’d built. Teridis had been a ruthless businessman, a tyrant of industry. He’d had men killed before, and done far worse than that, but in his heart, he had a soft place for his son. Niki was to be the heir to the Teridis empire. Even though the boy was only seven years old, he’d shown his father’s tenacity early on.
Gikas knew all of this, and it was time to apply pressure on the place it would hurt Niko Teridis the most.
The prisoner looked up into Gikas’s eyes. For the first time, there was desperation on the fat man’s face. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not my son.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Niko. You can still save your son’s life.” Gikas displayed a small, yet insincere expression of compassion.
Another guard who had been hiding behind the bushes stepped out holding a young boy. The brown-haired child was dressed in a T-shirt and cargo shorts. He too wore a blindfold and had a handkerchief strapped across his mouth.
“Niki!” Teridis cried out and attempted to push himself off the ground. One of the guards quickly shoved him back down on his face. Tears began to stream from the prisoner’s eyes.
The guard holding the boy removed one hand from the child’s shoulder and pulled the gag down. “Papa!” he screamed as soon as the rag was removed. “Papa, what’s happening?”
“Nothing, Niki,” Teridis answered between sobs. “Everything is going to be fine. Papa just has to do some business with these men first.”
“I’m scared.”
Teridis shook his head. “You don’t have to be afraid, my son. Everything is going to be all right.”
Gikas glanced at his captive with a questioning look. “So we have a deal?”
The portly man was broken. The sight of his son being held hostage was more than he could bear. It was the only point of humanity he had left in a world of cruelty and desensitized emotion. Teridis could not let his son die. He knew that Gikas would kill him. It was too late to save himself. Now his concern was that Niki’s safety would be guaranteed.
“I will sign the papers,” Tiridus said, choking back the tears. “But only if you guarantee not to harm my son. If you swear to me that my son will be safe, I will give you everything.”
A gust of wind passed over the group as Gikas soaked in the moment of triumph. “That’s better, Niko.” He took the papers and set them down on a stone bench next to where Teridis knelt. One of his guards placed a pen on top of the small stack. “I swear, I will not harm your son. Now sign the documents before I change my mind.”
Teridis crawled over to the bench and picked up the pen. He didn’t even bother to read what he was signing. His thick fingers hurriedly scrawled his signature on the lines at the bottom of each page until he had signed them all. Then, he defiantly slammed the pen down on the top page. “Now let my son go.”