I would dismantle her life piece by piece. Strip away every illusion of safety. Every person who trusted her. Every place she believed herself hidden.
And when there was nothing left—
only then would I end her.
The vow burned through every nerve ending, hot and absolute.
If this was some elaborate farce—some twisted attempt at leverage using my son—then whoever orchestrated it had made a fatal miscalculation.
“S-Sir... we... we need her consent,” the priest stammered, voice barely above a whisper, eyes darting from me to her like a cornered animal. “I... I cannot proceed without it. It—it’s the law... the rite... I—”
I stepped closer.
Not fast. Not loud. I let the silence do the work.
The priest swallowed hard, backing into the altar rail as my shadow fell over him.
I could see the tremor in his hands, the sweat beading at his temple. Men like him were used to ceremony and scripture—not to the kind of power that didn’t ask permission.
“Consent,” I repeated quietly, tasting the word as if it amused me.
My gaze slid past him—to her. Pale. Still. Standing in borrowed white like a sacrifice that hadn’t realized the knife was already raised.
My voice dropped to a whisper so quiet only he could hear it—smooth, controlled, lethal. “Marry us,” I said. “Or I’ll be burying you alive before the recessional hymn ends.”
His face drained of color.
The priest’s fingers trembled so violently that the leather-bound prayer book slid an inch down his palm before he caught it again, knuckles whitening as if he might drop it entirely.
Sweat beaded at his hairline.
Yannis tightened his grip on Elena’s hand, as if sensing the shift before it fully surfaced.
She didn’t pull away at first—confusion flickering across her face as she tried to understand what was happening. Then, all at once, instinct kicked in, and she jerked backward, attempting to step away.
Her heel snagged in the torn satin of her gown.
She stumbled, barely catching herself. For a fraction of a second, real panic tore across her face—raw, unguarded, animal. Her breath hitched. Her free hand flew out instinctively, as if searching for balance, for help, for an exit that did not exist.
Almost convincing.
Almost.
She knows who I am.
She had to know.
The underworld whispered my name the way children whisper about monsters—half disbelief, half prayer. The Greek King. The man who killed Al-Chapo, a global terror wrapped in human skin, a demon no one else could touch. Twenty-one of the CIA’s best had failed where I succeeded.
I dismantled syndicates with surgical patience. I erased bloodlines when crossed.
The widower who had come to California not to rule, but to hunt.
Now I see it clearly.
This woman is not impulsive—she is deliberate.
Nothing about this was chance. She planned every step, every turn, every outcome.
