“So fucking what?”
“So, what if they go looking for…him?” Louis said, nodding his head in Theo’s direction. “What if he’s recognized?”
Fuck!
“Fine, pay them off,” Maurice said to Louis, then turned to Dani and Theo and pointed. “And you two? You’re coming with me.”
Maurice marched them out of the store and straight to the SUV. But the minute Theo and Dani settled into the back seat, Maurice clicked the door locks, reached over the center console, and pulled Theo toward him by the collar.
“You little shit!” he growled.
Theo closed his eyes, bracing himself for impact with Maurice’s fist. After a year together, Theo had grown accustomed to Maurice’s mannerisms and reactions. One of his least favorites:Maurice’s fist’s attraction to Theo’s face. Growing up a nerd unfortunately resulted in Theo being on the receiving end of more than his fair share of punches, seeming to be the subject of bullies up until he moved schools and became best friends with Eddie.
Or rather, until he became best friends with Dani’s brother. Dani was taking on thirteen-year-olds when she was ten, eighteen-year-olds when she was fifteen. Like that time Bobby Thomas and his buddies cornered him behind the school, and Theo threw a book at them while Dani picked up a fistful of dirt and tossed it in their faces so he could get away. Nobody messed with Dani or those she cared about.
So as he squeezed his eyes tight waiting for a fist-meets-face connection for longer than normal, he eked one eye open, unsurprised to see Dani beating on Maurice from over the headrest.
“Leave him alone,” Dani called out as Theo struggled to break free from his grasp. “Let him go or I’ll poke your eyes out. It was an accident!”
Glad to see she hadn’t lost her spunk.
“Bullshit!” Maurice said, shoving Theo into the back seat and straightening himself in the front. Theo held his shoulder, trying not to let the pain show on his face. “I know you did that on purpose, trying to get away. Do I need to break your nose again? Because I’m getting really tired of having to put you in your place.”
“I stumbled, that’s all,” Theo protested, though he wasn’t sure how convincing he actually was. Stumbled into an entire pyramidic display of olive oil? Please. This wasn’t the Three Stooges.
“And look,” Dani said, holding up a dark glass bottle of oil, “I got it.”
“Let me see that,” Maurice said, snatching it from her hands. He turned the black bottle in his hands, inspecting it. “This is it?” he barked. “How thefuckisthissupposed to help us find the eye?”
Theo barely caught the bottle when Maurice tossed it at his stomach, wincing as he lifted his arm to catch it before it hit him in the same spot where he got hit earlier. He grunted as he cushioned the bottle with his body—that’s gonna bruise—and he rubbed his abdomen with one hand, while bringing the bottle up to inspect it with the other.
Like Maurice, he turned the bottle in his hand. But unlike Maurice, he actually knew what it said.
Δημητρ?ου
And beneath the word, a symbol. An eye with a μ. Okay.NowTheo was beginning to believe it wasn’t a coincidence.
“What does it say?” Dani asked.
“Demetrios’s.”
As in Demetrios Papantonis, perhaps?
Her eyes lit up and a crack of a smile formed on her face, though it was obvious she fought not to appear too excited. Under normal circumstances, Theo would have been excited, too. Right now, though, all he wanted was to figure out what it all meant.
“Is there anything else?” she asked, scooting closer to him to get a better look. Their sides were flush together and her side- boob accidentally grazed his biceps. Or, at least, he assumed it was an accident.
He pushed the thought out of his mind and turned the bottle over to the back and read the short narrative aloud:
“Demetrios’s olives are grown on the slopes of Chania,Crete. There, our olive trees grow out of the soils made fertile by the watchful eye of our ancestors. We pay respect to Demetrios by making the finest, richest olive oil in all of Crete in the hopes that one day, our ancestors will return.”
“Watchful eye?” Dani said. “Do you think that could be a reference to the eye of the Minotaur?”
“Possibly,” Theo said. He had to admit, it was a pretty interesting word choice on a bottle of olive oil.
“One of you better start explaining what you’re up to,” Maurice said.
Theo had almost forgotten he was sitting in the front seat.
