Aunt Destiny leans closer to her phone. “Cecilia, sweet girl, it’s okay to admit when the dicking is divine.”
“MOM. AUNTIES. PLEASE.”
I stand up from the couch, pacing in front of the massive glass doors overlooking the sea.
“HE HAS SERVANTS HERE. THEY CAN HEAR YOU.”
Aunt Sofia shrugs. “Then they’ll learn something.”
“No. Absolutely not. This call is over?—”
And that’s when the front door slams open so hard the walls shake.
My cousins scream through the phone,
“CECE? CECE?! WHAT WAS THAT?”
But I barely hear them because gunshots explode through the hall.
Shouting.
Boots pounding.
The sound of bodies hitting marble.
“Mom, tell Dad!” I shout, eyes flicking to my phone one last time.
I whirl toward the doorway just as one of Atlas’s guards is thrown face-first across the floor, blood streaking behind him.
“NO—NO—STOP!” I scream, backing up.
But they’re already coming.
Huge men in all-black tactical gear—faces covered, movements precise, brutal, professional.
Not amateurs.
Not thieves.
A hit squad.
One grabs me around the waist, wrenching my arms behind me.
“LET GO OF ME!” I fight like hell—kicking, twisting, biting—but they don’t even grunt.
My phone crashes to the floor, cousins and aunts still shrieking,
“CECE?!? ANSWER US!!”
Another man slams a hand over my mouth.
I try to scream anyway.
“Move,” one of them grunts in accented Greek.
They drag me toward the door, my heels skidding on marble as I try to brace myself.
Another gunshot rings out—closer.
