Sinful Promise: A Dark Mafia Romance, page 1
Sinful Promise
BB Hamel
Contents
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Trigger Warning
1. Adrienne
2. Adrienne
3. Peter
4. Adrienne
5. Peter
6. Adrienne
7. Peter
8. Adrienne
9. Adrienne
10. Adrienne
11. Peter
12. Adrienne
13. Adrienne
14. Peter
15. Adrienne
16. Adrienne
17. Peter
18. Peter
19. Adrienne
20. Adrienne
21. Peter
22. Adrienne
23. Kacia
24. Adrienne
25. Peter
26. Adrienne
27. Peter
28. Peter
29. Adrienne
Preview: Broken by Sin
Also by BB Hamel
Copyright © 2022 by B. B. Hamel
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Trigger Warning
This book contains graphic descriptions of sexual content, explicit violence, mild drug use, lots of cigarette smoking, and past trauma. These scenes were written to create a more vivid, in-depth experience, but may be triggering for some readers.
Read at your own risk.
Chapter 1
Adrienne
The ocean ruins the hem of my dress as I watch moonlight reflect off black waves while behind me, up the dunes and in the house, men in suits discuss business over expensive drinks. Somewhere out there, more men want to kill me. Three weeks ago, they nearly did. The smell of cigars and cigarette smoke hangs over the beach and I can’t seem to get it out of my hair, no matter how much the salty wind gusts over my skin.
I want to take a shower and sleep for ten hours, but Peter says this party will last most of the night and I’ve been forbidden from disappearing. He says it would look rude, and while I’m not part of his family, I’m still a guest in his house and bound by his rules.
I’ve been bound enough to last a lifetime, but right now it’s easier not to fight.
“You look lost.” A woman teeters over with a wine glass gripped in her hand. She doesn’t come close enough to step into the wet sand and I don’t move from where the water laps at my ankles. An expensive pair of heels dangles from her fingers and she’s wearing a chic but simple navy dress and jewelry worth enough money to feed a small family for a decade.
“Not so much lost as trying to escape.”
The woman smiles wryly. “What’s your name? I’ve seen you hanging around all night, but you haven’t spoken to anyone.”
“Adrienne Holloway. And you?”
There’s a hint of recognition in the woman’s eye. “Katarin Balaska.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“May I ask why you want to escape so badly, Adrienne?”
I tug my fingers through my hair and stare out at the water. “It’s hard to have a good time at a party where everyone’s speaking a language I don’t know.” I hesitate and glance back at her, frowning. “Why’d you decide to speak English with me, anyway?”
She waves that question off like the answer is the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re Peter’s charge. Is that the right word? Charge? Or are you more like a couple?”
“Charge is close enough. Definitely not a couple. He’s supposed to be keeping me safe.” I let my hands fall to my side. “He’s not doing a great job.”
Katarin laughs. “No, he’s most definitely not. How did you come to be in Peter’s possession, Adrienne?”
“It’s a long story. There was some trouble back in America and I was sent out here to recover.” My hands drift to my face. The ghosts of old bruises still linger under my eyes, yellowing now and nearly gone, but still tender. My nose is crooked and I’m not sure it’ll ever be straight again. There’s a scar under my lips, ugly and jagged. I’ve healed and gotten stronger over the past few weeks, but the pain hasn’t faded, and I’m terrified my face will never be the same. I look in the mirror and don’t see the girl I was before that nightmare happened—instead, a broken, haunted person stares back.
It’s vain to worry I won’t be attractive anymore, but the thought keeps coming back to me, over and over. Your face is ruined. You’ll never be the same. It should be enough that I’m alive. Somehow, it’s not.
“And how is that going? Do you feel recovered?” Katarin asks.
“No, I don’t think so, but I’m not sure I ever will. That’s not Peter’s fault.”
“Pity. You’re a pretty thing though, even with the bruises. My husband would be happy to have you for a mistress.” I give her a panicked look and she laughs lightly. “Not that I’d let him, mind you. I’d cut off his balls if he ever tried.”
“Right. Uh, thanks, I guess?”
She waves me off again and sighs as she closes her eyes. “These things, these parties, they are so boring. I have been to so many of them now and they are all the same. The men drink, they smoke, they laugh and joke, until they disappear into a room and talk business. That’s what they’re doing now. It’s how I got away.”
“Peter’s discussing business with your husband?” I frown slightly and look back toward the house. The Balaska mob is one of the more powerful criminal families in Greece. Aside from them, the Filos and the Galatas are also present, along with several other minor crime lords and their various soldiers and wives and girlfriends. Peter tried to explain it all to me, but I chose to tune him out. I’m here for a little while until it’s safe to go back home and then I’m never thinking about criminals or mafioso or Greek crime lords again.
“That’s what it seems,” she says and tilts her wine glass from side to side. “The American Greeks are so different though, I don’t see how it could possibly work. But you never know.” She gestures at me. “Are you one of them? The American Greeks?”
I shake my head. “My father was English and my mother was French.”
“Was? Are they both gone now?”
“Both gone,” I confirm.
“Pity. Here’s to them then. And to my lovely Papa and Mama, may God rest their souls.” She toasts the stars and drinks.
“Adrienne!” My name sounds like a gunshot. A figure stands at the top of the dunes, tall and dark and masculine. He’s backlit, and his face is in shadow, but I know Peter’s silhouette well enough after spending three weeks with him in his house.
“There’s your minder now,” Katarin says and waves at Peter. “Tell me something. Are you afraid of him? Is that why you’re standing down in the water and dreaming about escape?”
I walk from the waves, holding my dress up with my hands. It’s a nice dress, pretty, silk, emerald green. It works with my tan skin and sun-lightened hair. But I hate it because it was a gift from him.
“I don’t think afraid is the right word,” I say as I drift past Katarin. “More like tired. Exhausted. Sick of him. Ready to go back home.”
“And when are you going back?”
“Hopefully soon. It was nice meeting you.”
“Lovely meeting you as well, dear.”
I trudge up the beach toward where Peter’s waiting with his hands on his hips.
That man knows how to look at me like I’m a piece of trash washed up on the shore. He acts as though I’m the source of all his problems in this world, like I’m a bad smell, like I’m a stretch of failing crops or a wide tract of rotten land. He tolerates me, but barely, and his disdain seeps into the house and colors everything we do. It fills the silences with disgust.
I dislike him just as intensely.
His dark eyes, his heavy brows, his handsome lips. That cocky smirk. That know-it-all smile. How he laughs at his own jokes in a way he never laughs at mine. The way he looks at me like I’m the only person in a given room, his attention so complete and utter that it makes me wonder if he’s really seeing me at all.
Three weeks in a house together and we’ve barely exchanged a dozen words, and yet he’s a constant lurking presence. I dream about him half the time. I wish I wouldn’t.
“What were you doing down there?” he asks as I get closer. Then, glaring, “You ruined your dress.”
“It’s wet. It’ll dry.”
“That’s Versace. You know how much I spent on it?”
“Send me the tab.”
“You’re a problem, Adrienne, and I don’t know how I got stuck with you.”
“So leave. I can feed myself. Do I really need you around?”
“And let my father eviscerate me? No, thank you.” He glances over my shoulder toward where Katarin stands alone in the sand with her back to us. “Is that Balaska’s wife?”
Not Katarin but instead Balaska’s wife. That’s how it is with these Greek men. “Yes, that’s her. She says you have business with her husband.”
&nbs
I let that sink in. I’m not sure what it means to leave Crete for Athens except that it wasn’t part of the plan. I came to Greece three weeks ago because I got pulled into a dangerous war between the Greeks, the Italians, and the Russians back in the States, and this is supposed to be a refuge from the fighting. My best friend, Kacia, set it all up while she remains behind with her new boyfriend, dealing with the fallout from the war. If the Russians hadn’t nearly killed me, I might be back there with her.
Instead, I’m here with this man who clearly despises me in a country I don’t know anything about, floating around bathed in a language I don’t speak, feeling so lost and unmoored and hopeless that the vast black ocean doesn’t seem so bad.
I touch my face and run a finger down my scar but stop when I catch Peter watching me. I quickly drop my hand and glare at him.
“You do realize you can’t simply drag me all over Greece with you.”
“Then stay behind.” He turns away back toward the party. The house is filled with powerful men, all of them criminals, all of them deeply connected and rich and dangerous, and I still can’t keep my eyes from Peter. He’s tall and handsome and looks good in his slim navy-blue suit with the edges of his tattoos poking out at the collar and at his cuffs. “But I can’t promise you’ll be safe.”
“I’m supposed to tag along with you then like a happy little lap dog?”
He smiles slightly. “If only you were so pliable, I wouldn’t mind having you in my lap.”
“That sounds dangerously like a compliment. Except coming from you, it only makes my skin crawl.”
“Good, then I know where we stand.” He hesitates for a moment, standing beside the pool. “The crime lords offered me a job.”
“Really? Does your father know about it?”
He shakes his head. “And I don’t want to tell him.”
“That’s dangerous. Your father’s the number two in the Calimeris family. I doubt they’d be happy if they heard you were taking jobs from crime lords without asking them about it first.”
“My father and uncle are back in America, but we’re here.”
“I’m having a hard time deciding how I feel about this. I’m supposed to be spending my days lying low, and now you’re telling me we’re going to Athens so you can do some job for a bunch of Greek mafia criminals. Doesn’t seem like a good deal for me.”
“It’s probably not, but you’ll still be lying low. Only you’ll do it in Athens. I have an apartment there where you’ll be safe.”
“Why should I go along? You’ve barely spoken to me for weeks. You look at me like I’m a burden. You lie around the house brooding, working out, and going for long runs along the beach. And now suddenly you’re doing a job and I’m supposed to go along with it?”
He’s quiet for a moment. His jaw works and I can’t tell if he’s seriously considering my position or if I only pissed him off by refusing to meekly do whatever he wants. But when he turns to me again, his face is neutral like he’s doing his best to keep himself composed.
“My father told me to keep you safe and I plan on following through with those orders. But I also can’t ignore this request from the other crime lords. You will come because you will be safer in Athens with me than you will out here alone. Arguing will only make things harder, and I don’t like it when my life is made difficult for no good reason.”
“Great, that’s some incentive.”
“I’m not incentivizing and I’m not playing games. We leave in the morning.”
“Are you at least going to tell me what the job is?”
“The less you know, the better.” He turns and walks to the door but pauses before going inside. “And, Adrienne? Be careful with Katarin. She can be as dangerous as her husband when she wants to be. I’d stay far away.”
I stare at his back and at the door once he disappears into the crowd inside. I see him through the windows, mingling, smiling, laughing. He almost looks human—almost looks normal.
Like he gives a damn about people.
But Peter Calimeris doesn’t care about anyone but himself. That’s the most obvious thing in the world.
When I first got here, I was a mess. I’d been beaten back in America and left for dead. I barely survived being kidnapped and tortured. But Kacia came back for me and gave me hope again, and we fought to escape together. I helped murder a man during that horrible day, but I survived and got away.
Now I’m a walking mess of scars, physical and emotional, and I’m barely keeping it together.
Peter never once asked about any of that. Only gave me long, angry glares.
“This is the problem with men like these,” Katarin says as she appears at my shoulder. She smiles and I look over at her. She’s slightly taller, red hair, lines around her eyes. I’d guess forties or fifties at most, but classically beautiful, like she was a model when she was younger. She could still walk the runway if she wanted.
“What problem is that?”
“They see us as incidental. As a necessary evil.” She laughs softly and tips wine between her lips. “But that makes them weak and we can use it against them if we’re smart.”
“I don’t know if I want a relationship like that.”
“All relationships are like that, little American girl. Stay out here and let that dress dry off before you come inside. You wouldn’t want to ruin Peter’s lovely carpet.” She wipes off her feet, steps back in to her heels, and turns to me. “How do I look?”
“Lovely. Really.”
“Thank you, darling. I like you, you know.” She reaches into her small clutch and takes out a card. “Here, give me a call if you’d like. I hope things with Peter work out, or at least you don’t end up killing him. See you inside.” She disappears through the door, leaving me alone.
I look down at the number embossed on a cream-colored business card beneath her name in a fancy script. I don’t know what I’ll do with a crime lord’s wife’s phone number, but it seems like a good thing to have. I slip it into my bra so Peter doesn’t find out about it and slump down onto a chair to wait for my dress to dry.
In the morning, we’re leaving for Athens. Whether I like it or not.
Chapter 2
Adrienne
In Athens, history is baked into every corner and side street and restaurant. The place is steeped in the ancient world from the ever-present Parthenon to the details on the streets.
Peter tosses me into an apartment on the far side of town, opposite the coast, tucked back into a quiet touristy neighborhood.
“Stay here,” he says the morning after we arrive. “Don’t go anywhere while I’m gone.” He stands in the main hallway and adjusts his cuffs as he looks at himself in the mirror. I want to tell him he looks terrible, but that wouldn’t be true. Peter’s got the tall, dark, and handsome thing down to a science, and the tattoos only intensify the attraction. If only he weren’t such a monstrous asshole.
“And where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You can’t drag me all over Greece without telling me what you’re doing.”
“You’re here to rest and stay alive. Beyond that, I don’t care how bored you get. Stay inside.” He looks at me with that ugly glare. “And please don’t make trouble.”
I smile at him in return and cross my legs. I like the way he glances down at my thighs and back up again, even if his expression doesn’t change. “Why ever would I do that?”
“You’re trouble, Adrienne. I don’t know why but it’s like trouble is baked into who you are.” He grunts and heads to the door. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” With that, he’s gone.
