“Twenty-one.”
Two frown lines showed on Lykos’s handsome face, and I saw the moment he figured it all out.
TWENTY-FOUR
LYKOS
The moon was high in the sky and the house had finally gone quiet.
I’d tucked Aria in. I cherished it, knowing the day would come too soon when she would no longer want it. Dimitros was way past that age, but I still passed by his bedroom and peeked my head in.
“You good, son?” I asked, finding him seated at his desk and scrolling the internet.
He glanced over his shoulder.
“I’m looking into Dr. Freud.” My eyebrows met my hairline in surprise. “Did you know she’s treated criminals? Even some people in the mafia?” My son’s gaze turned to the screen and he read off facts. “She’s had sessions with Christian DiLustro. Dante Leone. The Ashfords.”
“I did know that.” My son did not need to know I’d been keeping tabs on her for years. “Although, that’s confidential information, so I’m wondering how you discovered that?”
He shrugged. “I hacked into her clinic’s database and found her notes.”
Well, damn.
“Are there any notes worth… learning?” I couldn’t believe I was asking my sixteen-year-old that. “About our family?”
“No, but there’s one interesting note about hers.”
I stiffened, recalling the conversation over dinner. Her candid answer had surprised me. I suspected it was for Dimitros’s benefit, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
And all the while, the timeline ran through my head again and again. We met when she was twenty-one. The same winter she buried her sister. No wonder her grief had spoken to me. It was fresh, unlike my own, because my wife had been spiraling for years by that night.
I didn’t help Violet that night by taking her into my penthouse.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“What does it say?” I asked, entering his room and joining him at his desk. I leaned over, my eyes scanning the screen.
“Look at this.” His finger landed in the middle of it. “Does this make sense to you?”
I froze, the words on his laptop’s screen sinking in slowly. I read them again and again.
Birth never recorded… No paternity established… PTSD… Insomnia… Anxiety… Trauma-related disorder… Self-medicated.
My mind darted back to the night she came to me, then handed me over a bundled-up baby like it was an inconvenience she couldn’t be bothered with.
The wind cut sharp across the terrace of my penthouse while the city below buzzed with excitement over the upcoming holiday. It was almost Thanksgiving, an American traditionthat had never meant much to me. As a Greek, I had no attachment to it, nor any reason to celebrate it.
I traveled often for the real estate empire I’d built here, which served well for laundering money made from my not-so-honest business related to drug smuggling, money laundering and other criminal activities. However, lately this country had started to feel… small, if that were at all possible.
Ever since that one night with Violet in this penthouse, I saw her everywhere. In passing reflections, in strangers’ profiles, in the bedroom of this penthouse, and always right before sleep took me.
“Maybe it’s time I bought a new place,” I muttered.
But I knew I wouldn’t.
It was masochistic, really. Pathetic, if I was being honest. Some part of me didn’t want to forget her, and I hoped she hadn’t forgotten me.
God knew no other woman had managed to take up space in my head like that. Not even Amara.
My jaw tightened slightly at the thought. She didn’t even recognize me when I visited her in the hospital half the time. Sometimes I wondered why I bothered.
