Nikos arched a brow because if he weren’t mistaken, Honey didn’t start working at the club until after Aris returned home. He thought they had never met before, and he would think they had never met before with the way Honey still acted cautiously around his brother.
“It was when I was ambushed here. I had gone to his club while I was hiding, and he helped me.”
Nikos looked down, knowing that Antonis was the uncle that Aris was closest to. When people questioned Aris’s position because he wasn’t blood, Antonis was one of the few who spoke up and rallied for him to take their father’s position. He knew his brother was stuck between a rock and a hard place and could still remember the blank expression his brother had when he explained to him what had happened.
Maybe things would have been different if he had taken heed to his uncle’s warnings, but it was too late now. He had already tasted the forbidden fruit, and he wanted nothing else. He would kill his uncle before he allowed him to take her away from him against her will.
When he had first come here, he did it to run away from the relationship he had formed that nearly destroyed his family and helped their enemies, and now, he was in New York, doing the same thing again.
He was certain that his brother was disappointed in him, and when his father found out, he would be too, and he didn’t even have to bother to guess with Pierce. Nikos already knew he wouldn’t hear the end of it once Pierce found out that he had let a woman be his weakness again.
Nikos wanted to say that he regretted his actions, but he didn’t. Not at all, actually.
Still, Nikos said, “Sorry, brother,” because he knew his brother was losing someone because of his actions.
“Antonis made a mistake trying to kill you and should have handled it differently,” Aris said, and Nikos was pretty sure that differently was speaking to his father, who probably would have instructed him to stay away from Honey. But Nikos doubted his father’s orders would have changed anything.
He had been drawn to Honey since the moment he first laid eyes on her. The only person who could stop him from having Honey was Honey herself, and he wouldn’t give her a reason to.
“Familiarity doesn’t matter to me. You’re my brother. You always come first.”
Nikos clapped his brother’s shoulder, grateful to have his brother’s support, though he had never doubted it for a second. Nothing mattered more to Aris than family, and it was why whenever he needed help, Aris was always the first person he thought of.
“So, how do you want to handle this?” Aris asked. “Do you want to bring Father into it yet?”
His father still thought him dead from the call he had received from Antonis. Even though Aris had received a different call from Ava an hour later, who told him that he had arrived at her place wounded, Aris still hadn’t told their father yet, waiting for his word on the matter.
Nikos was grateful his brother respected him enough to wait for his decision because this was his problem and his matter to handle. His father was still under the impression that he was dead, and Aris was investigating, and Nikos wanted to keep it that way.
He knew the moment his father learned the truth, he wouldn’t hesitate to come down here and handle it himself. But Nikos was his own man now, and with his time spent in New York, he had built his own power.
He would handle it on his own.
“No,” Nikos said, ignoring the guilt of having his family still mourn him, especially his mother, who he was certain hadn’t taken the news well at all.
“You’ll have to handle it soon. Father is expecting an answer from me and a head to roll, and Pierce is ready for a bloodbath after what happened with Evelyn.”
Nikos clenched his fist.
He would handle it soon. This was his fight, and unlike the last time, he would win.
C H A P T E R
49
HONEY SCROLLED THROUGH HER PHONE, LOOKING AT THE COUNTLESS TEXT MESSAGES SHE HAD RECEIVED FROM THE GIRLS AT THE CLUB. All their texts read the same.
Where are you?
Antonis is looking for you.
Antonis is pissed.
Honey read their texts as her nails tapped against the brightened phone screen with each scroll. She nibbled on her bottom lip with worry and went back to look at Antonis and Georgios’s contacts again, just to make sure they were blocked.
She had been hiding out at Ava’s place so Antonis wouldn’t find her. It had even gotten to the point that Nikos’s brother had gone to her sister, giving Olivia money so she could take time off from work and stay at a friend’s house so she wouldn’t be bothered. And she had even stopped letting Kai go to school for the time being, in fear that Antonis or one of his men would appear at his school.
After looking through all of their messages, Honey called Amber, who picked up on the third ring. Immediately, she had to pull the phone back from the deafening music assaulting her ears.
