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"No."
"How do you know she's clean?" Helios asks and immediately puts his hands up. "I'm not saying anything against her."
"This lack of caution isn't like you," Orion adds, eyes the same blue as mine trying to see into my soul.
Good luck with that, brother. My soul withered nearly twenty years ago under torture and the knowledge my grandfather would rather hold on to his territory than his grandson.
"We got tested." I grab a steak with my fork and plop it on the plate in front of me before adding some cucumber salad.
I hope Gina made it. Zeus can grill, but none of us are good cooks otherwise. Not like Lucia. What that woman can whip up in her tiny kitchen is amazing.
"Your idea, or hers?" Orion asks.
I finish my bite of salad. Our housekeeper definitely made it. It has the perfect amount of feta, olives and dressing.
"What's with the twenty questions?" I ask, instead of answering my brother.
"I'm worried about you."
"Yeah, it's almost like you're human, or something," Zephyr teases.
I shrug. I don't allow emotions to be used as weapons against me, but that doesn't make me a robot. It makes me smart.
This weird lightness inside? It's okay. "I think I'm happy."
"You're volatile is what you are." Helios cuts into his own steak. "Like an elephant in musth."
"What are you? A zoologist now? The fuck are you talking about elephants?" Zephyr demands.
Helios ignores his brother. "They go into this thing when they want to impregnate a female. It's called musth and it makes them violent and unpredictable. Dangerous."
"Are you saying I'm dangerous?"
"You're the most dangerous man on the west coast, hell maybe the continent," Zeus says drily.
"That's not what Helios means." My cousin is talking about me being dangerousto my family.
Maybe to Lucia.
My cousin looks worried. "You're right. It's not. Your special skills as an assassin makes controlling your emotions even more important."
"I'm not going to shoot one of you." Or break their necks, or shove a stiletto through their hearts, or…okay the list could get pretty long.
I know more ways to kill than there are letters in the Greek alphabet.
"Just throw your cousin across a room." Orion's tone is hard. "Listen, brother, seeing you smile after all this time. It's pretty damn terrific, but if you lose control of your emotions after keeping them locked down so long…" He shakes his head.
"You could burn this city down and the whole state with it," Zeus says.
I frown at my oldest brother. "A few smiles and some laughter doesn't mean I'm out of control."
"You laughed?" Helios asks, dumbfounded.
My brothers and cousins all stare at me with varying degrees of disbelief.
Done with this, I surge to my feet. "You gave me a job to do, Zeus. I'm doing it."
"Sit down, Atlas." Zeus doesn't make it an order. There is almost a plea in his eyes. "Eat with us. Tell us what else you've learned."
