Not to mention a knuckle-dragging fucking idiot.
His “reign” lasted less than three weeks. Then he was killed waging a pointless war against a man with deep pockets and dangerous friends, all over a woman.
It’s an absurd story. Years and years ago, Atlas had once been betrothed to this woman’s mother, Saoirse —an Irish Mafia princess and Cillian Kildare’s sister. But Saoirse ended up having a fling with someone else, producing a daughter, Rose—who went on to end up with this man with the deep pockets and dangerous friends.
Atlas decided the daughter of the bride he’d been cheated out of should be his. Obviously, the man with whom she lived and shared a bed disagreed. And when the dust had settled, my brother was dead, and I was king in his place.
Sometimes I’m convinced life really is a Greek tragedy.
Or a comedy, depending on how cynical you are.
But, heavy as the burden to lead is, I was born for this. All my siblings and I were. Living under our father’s rule may have been a lesson in brutality and viciousness, but it hardened us. It prepared us to lead and to conquer. When I took the throne that was unexpectedly thrust upon me, I was ready.
And then, of course, life threw me another curveball.
My siblings and I were all born here in New York. But my father ultimately preferred England, where he’d grown up. So that’s where the real seat of the Drakos empire was for the last twelve years, while my uncle Vasilis oversaw our operations back here in New York City.
Until four months ago, when, as I say, the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan.
Our family and the Irish Kildare family have never gotten along. There’s generations of bad blood between us, going back who even remembers how long. At one point, there was at least a half-truce—when Saoirse was promised to Atlas. And even when that marriage fell through, things at least cooled off between our families for the next twenty years or so.
Until things went sideways, badly.
I’ve heard it started as a potential peace agreement. Vasilis sat down with Declan Kildare, Cillian’s half-brother and the head of Kildare operations here in New York. But whatever “peace” they were trying to hammer out shattered when a gunfight broke out between them, killing them both.
It should mean all-out war. A bloodbath in the streets. The final showdown between the Kildare and Drakos families until only one is left standing.
Luckily, neither Cillian nor I is suicidal.
Cillian is a fucking psychopath, there’s no question about that. He’s been described more than once as the kind of man who wants to watch the world burn because he enjoys the smell of the smoke. And I think that’s a fair assessment. But either out of self-interest or greed, we’ve managed to work out an arrangement.
It’s time to settle this bullshit between our families once and for all.
And the key to settling it is currently glaring daggers at me from across the room. Clearly, nobody’s told her yet. But she’s it.
We’re it.
My eyes narrow, my mouth tightening to a line as I let my gaze drag across the scowl on Neve Kildare’s face.
It makes sense that she hates me. Even if neither of us had anything to do with the violence of a few months ago, at the end of the day, my uncle and her father killed each other. From what I gather, neither she nor her sister Eilish was very close with Declan.
But still. Blood is blood.
And soon, we’ll be blood.
Joined.
Bound together forever.
My jaw grinds as my mind flashes to other more literal ways I could bind the stunning and furious-looking redhead across the table from me.
My tempting, sinfully attractive neighbor who really ought to have some curtains put up in her bedroom.
The one who’s been spying on me. The one I’ve been spying on right back. I’m just much better at it than she is.
Desire makes my cock swell as my mind flashes back to earlier today. When I was standing in my kitchen rinsing out my coffee cup, staring through the windows above my sink…
Into her bedroom. Where I watched her strip off her sweatpants and hoodie and prowl naked around her disaster of a room until she found some other clothes to pull on—
“You realize she’s going to bite your dick off the first chance she gets, right?”
My jaw grinds and my train of thought is interrupted as I glance sideways at my younger brother, Hades, sitting next to me on our side of the conference table.
When we were kids, I used to roll my eyes at the way our father named all of us after Greek gods, titans, and muses—Atlas, Ares, Hades, Deimos, Kratos, and our sister, Calliope. But as we’ve gotten older, we’ve all weirdly grown into the mythological figures we were named for. Hades especially.
There’s a darkness and an edge in all of us—our father made damn sure of that with his heavy hand and strict discipline. But Hades—named for the god of the dead, the king of the underworld—always seems to revel in it. The sadistically sociopathic glint I can currently see in his eyes is a testament to that darkness.
He shrugs at my cold silence.
“You know I’m right.”
“What I know is this is neither the time nor the place, Hades,” I grunt back.
My brother shrugs again, pushing his longish hair back from his face. He got our mother’s piercing ice-blue eyes. I got our father’s dark, brooding ones.
Behind him and towering above all of us despite being younger than Hades and me, Kratos mimics my stern glare at our brother.
“It’s a good arrangement,” he rumbles in that mountainous way of his.
