“But why?” My voice sounded distant to my own ears. “And better yet—bywho?”
“Oh, you know, a colleague of a colleague of a friend… That old story.” He arched a knowing brow. Dr. Franklin was well aware of the type of clientele I usually handled, although he was ignorant of the reasoning behind it, and for that I was grateful. He was busy with his own practice, and I was always discrete and professional, which granted me independence from Dr. Franklin and all other staff of our practice. “But I was assured that the environment is safe and the man is reputable.”
“The man?”
“Yes, the one who needs help.”
This conversation was going nowhere.
“Do you know him?” I asked, wishing for once that Dr. Franklin possessed even an ounce of nosiness under his tweed jackets and brightly colored ties.
He seemed to finally perk up. “I do know one of his colleagues, as a matter of fact.”
“And who’s the patient?”
Dr. Franklin lifted a shoulder in a small shrug.
“That’s the strange part.” He stared off, a contemplative look in his eyes. “They’ve asked to keep the patient’s name anonymous until you arrive in Greece. There’ll be a file delivered to your hotel that will have all further instructions.”
My thoughts fractured instantly into a thousand possibilities, but one rose above all the others.
Lykos Costello.
The name echoed in my mind like a ghost. Except, the third—and final—time I saw the man, he’d made it clear he hated me and didn’t want anything to do with me. The memory smarted: his cold stare, the door closing between us, the finality in his voice.
No, it couldn’t be him.
But another voice whispered beneath the doubt…What if something terrible happened? Maybe he needs my help.Our connection went deeper than a one-night stand, and that was impossible to ignore. Not that I wanted to ignore it. The stakes were high, and if there was an opportunity that I could be within a hundred miles of Lykos Costello and our secret, I couldn’t resist the temptation.
I had to take this chance.
I stared down at the folder on my desk, but the words on it blurred. In their place, memories from my past flickered through my mind like old Polaroids. Haunting me. Mocking me.
“Where in Greece?” I heard myself ask.
“Athens,” he said, brightening at my question. “It’s such a magnificent city. Ancient history everywhere and…”
I knew he was trying to sell me the job, but my decision had already been made. I stopped listening, looking outside as thesnow continued to fall, blanketing the cemetery in white once again.
I’d already failed twice in my life. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—fail again.
FOUR
LYKOS
Ascream startled me awake and I jolted upright, blinking my eyes only to be met with darkness and silence.
I listened while flicking a glance at my cell phone on the nightstand, showing I’d been asleep for barely an hour. It wasn’t even midnight. The night was quiet, broken only by the lonely hoots of an owl somewhere in the distance.
Lying back down, I closed my eyes and must have dozed off because I jerked awake when an earsplitting scream rang through the house.
It was my daughter.
I grabbed my gun as I jumped to my feet and rushed out of the room, running toward her bedroom. Another scream echoed through the hollow darkness and I stormed into her bedroom, finding my mad wife over my children, slashing my son’s cheek with a blade that she should have never been able to get her hands on in the first place.
My chest turned cold seeing my son fighting off his mother.
Aria’s frantic eyes found mine while she let out a high-pitched cry, holding her neck that had finger marks on it that were slowly turning purple.
