Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Something’s completely wrong. It’s nagging at me but I can’t figure out what it is. Adrienne looks at me like she’s feeling the same thing and I try to give her a reassuring squeeze but that doesn’t seem to help. Simion moves past me, heading deeper into the house. Adrienne follows him and pauses when she notices that I’m not going with her.
This place is too quiet, and from what I understand, Demetrios has a wife and three children. This doesn’t make any sense, and Adrienne’s about to say something when Simion turns the corner up ahead, and another figure appears in his place at the end of the hall.
I feel like my world explodes into blood.
I go stiff, utterly rigid. My heart pounds in my ears.
I stand there, mouth open, trying to find words.
Adrienne must see the look on my face, because she turns and sucks in a sharp breath.
My father lingers in the entryway to the kitchen with a gun in his hand, aimed at the floor. “Hello, Peter. Hello, Adrienne. Please, come join us. Demetrios was gracious enough to let us use his home.”
“Who is us?” I ask softly, but Father’s already turning away.
I walk after him slowly, woodenly. Adrienne comes to me and puts her hands on my arms. “Peter,” he whispers. “What do we do? Should we run?”
I shake my head. “It’s too late.” I want to rage and punch and kill but I feel powerless. I’ve never been caught so off-guard before. I should’ve seen this coming from a thousand yards away. Demetrios’s sudden reversal this morning, the way he insisted on meeting at his house, it all screamed of a trap but I’ve been so distracted by sleeping with Adrienne and training with her and falling for her that I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
And because I made a mistake, now we’re both going to die.
“You said he’d kill us,” she whispers urgently. “If he catches us—”
I feel a thick lump in my throat. “You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure they pin this on me and leave you out of it.”
Her face goes white. “Peter—”
I brush past her and walk on. I can’t have this discussion with her, not right now. Not when I’m on the edge of doing something stupid. But I need to play this the right way if I want her to walk away alive. My life is over—it’s forfeit already. But Adrienne doesn’t get to take a bullet.
That’s my only goal: convince my father to spare the girl.
There’s no other option. If I try to escape now, Father’s guys will tighten the noose and Adrienne might get hurt in the crossfire. I can’t risk it. If I’m lucky and careful, I’ll be able to make sure they don’t blame her for anything.
After all, Greeks are a bunch of misogynists—they won’t be able to believe that Adrienne was playing a serious role in our scheme.
The kitchen’s well lit. Rastus Filo sits at the table drinking wine. My father stands beside him, looking hard. Two Filo family thugs hang around and stroke their guns lovingly. It’s obscene and absurd. I spot Simion and Demetrios sitting on the back porch through the sliding glass door, both of them staring out at the yard like we’re invisible, both of them chain smoking cigarettes. More guards stand around smoking with them. I can’t imagine what Rastus and my father have over Demetrios to make him agree to something like this, but it must be something bad. Nobody wants their house to be used as a gallows.
It’s a shame Demetrios will have to spend the next month cleaning my blood from his floor.
“Sit down, Peter.” Father’s face is flat and emotionless. I know that stare: it’s the look he’d give me after a particularly bad lesson, when I was young and still dumb enough to defy him or to complain about his methods, the look he’d give me before a nasty and violent punishment.
The face of a man resigned to doing something terrible.
I sink into a chair at the far end of the table. Adrienne sits to my left, fidgeting in her seat, looking from me to Father to Rastus, her fingers brushing against her thigh.
I wish I could do something for her right now. I want to say something to calm her down, to make her understand that this is about me and not about her.
That she’ll survive.
But I hold my tongue. I don’t want to draw attention to her and give my father something else to use against me.
One of Rastus’s men places a glass of ouzo in front of each of us. A traditional last drink before the end. Rastus grins at me, enjoying his joke, and winks. I don’t touch the stuff.
“I had an interesting conversation with your father a couple days ago,” Rastus says. His smile makes my blood boil. He lights a thin cigar and puffs it like he knows he’s won. The smoke smells earthy and thick. I want to strangle him. “I told him about how you’ve been playing middleman for Balaska and Le Milieu. I told him how you’ve been trying to establish shipping lanes for drugs between here and Marseille. This all came as a shock to your poor father.”