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The slit that goes all the way up on her thigh isn’t helping. Neither is the fact that she’s obviously not wearing a bra.
Which Ishould not be noticing.
“Try not to have too much fun or anything. It’s a party.”
I turn toward Kratos, who’s just appeared at my left elbow. The third Drakos brother after Ares and Hades, and before Deimos who lives in London, Kratos is by far the biggest of them all. I’m six-five, and he’s got a few inches and probably thirty pounds of muscle on me. He’s a quiet guy, and we’ve gotten along pretty well since Ares and Neve got together. Recently, I’ve been dragging him into the boxing ring for some sparring practice, so we’ve been hanging out a lot more often.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m having a blast,” I mutter.
He snorts. “Please. You look like you’re at a fucking funeral.”
I shrug, glancing away casually as if randomly scanning the room, when in reality my eyes are zeroing back in on the bar, where that fucking bartender is smiling away as he chats up Callie.
He keeps that shit up and there WILL be a funeral here tonight.
I do my best to shake the weird thought from my head as I sip my drink. Yeah, that’s really enough of that.
Pulling my attention back to Kratos, I lift a non-committal shoulder. “Nah, just…cautious.”
“Of Gavan?”
I nod. Kratos shrugs.
“I get it. But, I dunno, man. A few months ago, yeah, I’d have said this was a trap of some kind. But I mean, look at him.”
He nods past me to where the dark-haired, steel-eyed, heavily tattooed Russian kingpin is twirling Eilish across the floor to the strains of the string ensemble as if they were a royal couple in a goddamn Disney movie.
I sigh, shaking my head. “You’re right. Just…”
“Just having some trouble letting go?”
I arch a brow at him. “When did you go all zen master?”
He chuckles. “I’m just saying I get it. End of an era, in a way.”
“I haven’t been bodyguard to either one of them in years, Kratos.”
He just rolls his eyes as he clinks his glass to mine. “Sure. Sure. Well, trap or not, Ya-ya is having a ball.”
Gavan’s initial invitation apparently included Cillian and Una. But they’re still honeymooning in Ireland, so Kratos came instead, with his grandmother as his date. When Kratos gestures with his chiseled jaw, I turn and grin. Currently, Dimitra looks like she’s having the time of her life, dressed like a golden age movie star, talking to a prince and princess. And I mean that literally.
That’s another aspect of Gavan I’m slowly learning more about: the man isconnectedin ways I did not realize. One of his buddies from school is Misha Tsavakov, head of the Bratva-affiliated Tsavakov empire, and husband to Princess Charlotte Bergendem of Luxlordia.
Both of them are currently cracking up at something the Drakos matriarch’s just said.
“Fifty bucks says that was her ‘how many Greeks does it take to screw in a lightbulb’ joke.”
I chuckle. “And exactly how many does it take?”
“Beats me, but there were forty in the Trojan Horse, and there weren’t any women to screw inthat, so you do the math.”
I laugh as Kratos shakes his head. “All right, I’m going to go rescue the prince and princess before Ya-ya starts giving them a history lesson on the Peloponnesian War.” He claps a heavy, muscled hand on my shoulder. “Try to have some fun, brother.”
I nod as he navigates his way through the crowd. Then I turn to level another lethal glare at Callie. The bartender has been pulled away. Now, she’s chatting away in that very Callie way she has to two men in tuxedos who are easily twice her age.
This is one of the reasons I never once took Callie’s flirting seriously.
Because she’s aflirt.
