Ezio lurches to his feet, his face a mask of seething rage as he whips his head around to glare at me.
“This is insulting! I will not sit here—”
“Yes, you will.” My gaze hardens on him.
I’ll tell him again how sorry I am for his loss later. Not here.
“You. Will.”
His mouth thins to a line as he points a finger across the table at Cillian.
“This piece of shit dares to offer me money?! I lost a SON, Ares!”
“And I lost a fucking brother,” Cillian snaps coldly. “But here we are. And you can either get on board, or go find a nice length of rope somewhere and join your boy.”
Yeah, they’re not exaggerating when they call Cillian a sadistic sociopath.
The room goes silent. Ezio’s face turns purple. He looks like he’s seriously considering jumping across the table and murdering Cillian with his bare hands. But instead, he spins on his heel, glares at me viciously, and storms from the room.
“Well, I have to say. This is TWICE as much fun as I imagined it would be,” Hades mutters next to me.
Cillian sighs, drumming his fingers on the table as his gaze drags back to me.
“You need to keep your dogs on a tighter leash.”
“He’ll keep to the truce,” I growl back.
My eyes swivel to Neve again, drinking in her fiery red hair, the dusting of freckles across her nose, and the sharp green eyes so like her uncle’s, still squinting in confusion.
“And you?” I murmur, pulling my gaze from Neve to Cillian. “You’ll keep to our agreement?”
He takes a long, slow drag of his cigarette, and then nods slowly.
“We will.”
He turns to his niece, and my eyes lock onto her as well.
“Neve,” Cillian sighs. “There’s no easy way to say this. And if there was any other way…” he shrugs. “But there isn’t. Not one that doesn’t end in more blood.”
Her brow furrows deeper.
“Uncle, what are you talking about? And why am I—”
“You’re going to marry Ares Drakos, Neve. That will be the final truce to forever end this bullshit between our families.”
The room goes silent. Neve’s face turns white as she stares dumbfounded at her uncle. She blinks, frowning as if willing him to laugh at the spectacular joke he’s just made.
But this is no joke.
This is happening. And as reluctant and unhappy as I am about it, I’m guessing from the look of horror that spreads across her face that she’s twice as reluctant and unhappy.
“What?!”
Cillian takes one last pull from his smoke, exhaling toward the ceiling before dropping the butt in the mug of coffee in front of him.
“It’s the only way, Neve. You’re going to marry Ares, and that’s final.”
She blinks, shaking as her mouth forms silent words, none getting out.
“No—”
“I’m afraid this isn’t a discussion, Neve,” he says quietly, a flicker of regret and rare-for-Cillian apology on his face.
“Like hell it’s—!”
“Neve,” he growls thickly. “It’s. Been. Decided.”
Slowly, her face pale as a ghost, Neve turns to let her fierce green eyes stab into mine like knives.
I stare right back.
My little peeping Tom of a neighbor.
My enemy.
My wife.
“I think you’ll find, Neve, this is the best way to settle all of the bad blood—”
