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I kept a healthy distance as Nerine headed into the ladies’ lounge, where I’d positioned a female team member to watch for any information she may hear tonight.
“So, how mad is she?” Xander asked into the earpiece.
“Between one and ten. I’d say nuclear. Something isn’t right.”
“As in?”
“It’s like she wanted to antagonize him. As if she wanted him to lash out at her.”
“There has to be some truth to the rumors.”
I clenched my jaw as roaring flooded my ears. “We didn’t protect her.”
“How the fuck were we supposed to protect her when we were living on different continents and were barely able to see which side was up? You need to let it go.”
“I was assigned to protect the family.”
“No, Theios Mik was assigned to them. You were nowhere in the vicinity when everything went down.”
No, that wasn’t how it had gone down.
Theios Alex had ordered Papa and my brothers to watch the five Angelos children so Xander and I could take our fucking finals.
The memories of the blowup I’d had that morning with Papa still haunted me to this day. The old man had raged about having to babysit instead of doing, as he liked to call it, real work in the field. He viewed my time spent studying or teaching any of the Angelos girls anything as time wasted.
He’d never respected me or anything I valued. In his eyes, a college degree had no value in our world. And for the most part, he was right, but he also knew about the promise I’d made to Mama to become the first person on either side of our family to go beyond high school.
Papa only believed in keeping his word for things that benefited him, and I was never part of that equation since he’d hated me from the moment of Mama’s death.
Hell, even before that, I couldn’t remember a time the man showed me any affection other than the standard nod of the head. It had always been my mother who’d given me any form of kindness or an ounce of love.
My brothers were the ones Papa loved. They were over-macho assholes like him who used brute instead of brains.
Fuck, what the hell was I doing?
I focused back on Xander. “I bet Papa is sitting in hell thinking that if I hadn’t skipped out on my responsibilities, Theios Peter, him, my brothers, and countless others wouldn’t have been slaughtered.”
“I loved Theios Mik, but he was a dick to you.”
“It doesn’t change the fact the bastard was right in this case. That degree has done nothing for me, just like he said it would. And in the end, we had to play traitors.”
In one afternoon, Xander and I had lost everyone, from our leader and his little boy to all of our siblings and my parents. The only reason Andraius let us live was because we pledged loyalty to him. And we’d agreed to that only because Theios Alex said the only way to protect the Angelos women was to hold our noses and play the betrayers.
I still couldn’t understand how Andraius believed we would immediately give him our allegiance. But thank God for small favors.
“Wrong. Without your degree, we couldn’t have run this organization without the moron knowing. Now, do you want to ease up on the guilt? I thought it was my job to play the martyr.” Xander hummed. “I know you need to visit Father Michael. He’ll give you akomboskinito pray over as you count the knots, and then all the sinners’ guilt will disappear before you finish all fifty-two prayers.”
“You’re such a jackass.”
“The truth is the truth.”
“Shut up and come down from your perch. We need to get Nerine home.”
“On my way.”
Xander had barely finished speaking when Nerine came out of the lounge. From how she moved directly toward me and the ire filling her blue eyes, I’d done something to piss her off.
What the fuck could I have done already?
