A flicker of irritation slipped into her tone. “You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust the situation.”
“Well, lucky for me, I’m not asking for your approval.”
I closed my eyes for a second. “Let me at least connect you with someone?—”
“No,” she cut in. “No more therapy. No more talking it to death.”
“This isn’t talking it to death, this is?—”
“This is me handling my own life,” she snapped. Then, softer, “For once.”
That stopped me. Silence settled between us.
“I just don’t want you getting hurt,” I said.
“I won’t be the one walking away this time.”
My chest tightened just as voices sounded in the background on her end.
“I’ve got to go,” she said.
“Sienna, wait?—”
“It’s fine,” she added, lighter now, like she was already moving on. “I’ll be careful.”
I didn’t believe her.
“Sienna—”
“Talk soon, Doc.”
The line went dead.
Too late. I was left with silence as I put out a silent prayer that the Baldwins would intervene.
SIX
LYKOS
The air outside Athens was cooler tonight, but it did nothing to quiet the storm inside my chest.
The villa lights glowed softly behind me, the faint sound of the sea drifting up from beyond the cliffs and putting my mind at ease. Inside, my children were finally asleep.
Or at least pretending to be.
I promised Aria there would be no killings, but the lie sat heavy on my tongue. Truthfully, I couldn’t risk any more incidents. I couldn’t allow my children to continue suffering, and the only way to ensure that didn’t happen was to end Amara’s life.
The world thought her dead already anyway.
Her family would be the only ones asking for Amara, but they were all dead by now. Her sister was the last survivor, but she’d always been too selfish to even check in on her sister, never mind her nephew. No matter though, because she was dead now too.
My own family was dead too. All I had were my children, and all they had was me. Well, me and their adoptive uncle, Salvatore. Much like Salvatore, I’d taken over my family’sbusiness and expanded it, building an empire that stretched well beyond the borders of the country we lived in.
Gravel crunched in my periphery and Salvatore Remo, the head of organized crime in Malta, stopped beside me. He lit a cigarette, the flare of the lighter briefly illuminating his supposedly handsome face with coal-dark hair and blue eyes. It was a face that made women fall all over themselves, doing everything they could to be noticed by him. And notice them he did. For a few hours, anyway; Salvatore was notorious for slipping from his paramours’ beds before the light of day.
“You look like shit,” my best friend said.
