“I will always have respect for you, uncle, and be thankful for everything you have taught me, but you shouldn’t have tried to kill my brother and kidnap his woman.”
It was the wrong thing to say as Antonis’s face flamed red with uncontrollable rage.
“Honey’s mine!” he barked loud enough that spit flew from his mouth, and in his fit of rage, Nikos winked at her, and she quickly yanked her arm back and jumped to the end of the couch with Kai before Nikos shot Antonis three times. Aris took that opportunity to shoot the other men in the room, and once all of Antonis’s men were down, Nikos quickly lowered his gun and came over to them.
“You can open your eyes now, Kai,” Nikos said as he pulled them both into a hug. She felt like she could barely breathe because of how tight his grip was, his fingers pressing bruises into her back, but it didn’t matter because she held him back just as tight, and so did Kai.
Honey sniffled, feeling overwhelmed with relief and emotion as she held onto Nikos while rubbing her son’s back.
“I was scared,” Kai admitted, his eyes wet with tears. “But I told myself to be brave until you came to save us, Nik.”
“Thank you for your bravery, Kai,” Nikos said, sincerely. “I can already tell, kid, that you’re going to have what it takes to be a pilot one day.”
Kai thrust himself into Nikos’s arms again, and Honey nursed her tears with the sleeve of her shirt until she heard a groan and noticed that just a few feet away from them, Antonis was still alive, groaning in pain.
She looked at his body, noting that Nikos had shot him in the shoulder and both of his legs. She couldn’t muster up an ounce of sympathy seeing him this way. It was what he had deservedafter shooting Nikos the same number of times. She was just surprised that Nikos hadn’t killed him. A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have cared to see a man dead. But after everything that had transpired because of Antonis’s delusions, she could go the rest of her life without seeing him and feel at peace with him in the grave.
“Can you take care of this?” Nikos asked Aris as they all stood together. “I want to get Hope and Kai back home safely.”
Aris nodded, and Nikos said parting words to his brother in his native language before he took them to the car, where they all sat in the back together while Christos drove them. Kai was asleep, his head lying on Nikos’s lap while he drooled, and she rested her head against Nikos’s chest with her hands laced with his as his head pressed against the top of her head.
“What is your brother going to do with Antonis?” she asked.
“My father is here now,” Nikos said. “He’ll handle it accordingly. But rest assured. You’ll never have to worry about Antonis Tsagkarakis again.”
She closed her eyes, realizing that the nightmare was finally over. She was finally free again.
C H A P T E R
53
ON THE FRONT PORCH OF AVA’S HOME, NIKOS STOOD WITH HIS FATHER. The sun hung low, ready to retire and let the moon shine, rippling the sky with a dark orange hue. Nikos glanced at his father, who only looked at Ava’s door as if there were an invisible force field in front of him that wouldn’t allow him entry.
“Why won’t you go inside?” Nikos asked.
“Ava told me I could never come back,” his father admitted, but Nikos was more surprised that his father had listened to Ava rather than his admission.
“I met Nina. She still doesn’t accept me as her brother yet. ‘I only have one brother and his name is Aris,’” Nikos mimicked,smiling to himself as he thought of the young woman with beautiful long locs. “I like her, though. Surprisingly, she reminds me of Pierce.”
When his father smiled, his age lines wrinkled with happiness, and Nikos took note of how much his father had aged over the years. He was still strong, still the infamous Giannis Drakos who ran their family with an iron fist, but now, he just looked like an ordinary aging man who had made many mistakes, mistakes he was still clearly paying for.
“Have you spoken to her?” Nikos asked curiously.
“Unfortunately, I have not. I have not spoken to her since she was a child. At that time, she could barely speak.”
Though he knew he shouldn’t, Nikos couldn’t help but feel slightly bad for his father, even if he was lying in a bed of his own making. His father couldn’t even go inside the home of the woman he loved, nor could he be with his child. It was a cruel fate, and yet it was what his father had deserved for fooling two women and creating another family outside of his own.
“I’m proud of you and of what you have accomplished here,” his father said. “You’ve surpassed every expectation I have ever had of you.”
Nikos blinked, surprised.
“I thought you would be upset about everything that happened with Antonis.”
Although his uncle had no right to make such claims on Honey to begin with, he had only given him one rule when he first came here, and Nikos had broken it and tasted the forbidden fruit, devouring it and making it his own. Nikos had to admit that none of this would have happened if he had simply done as his uncle had requested, and he thought his father would think the same.
“You’re my son, and you always come first,” Giannis said, sighing as he leaned against the banister. “Clearly, Antonis flew too close to the sun, and that has always been his biggest problem from the beginning. You have nothing to do with that. It was just in him. Many men with power have to learn the hard way that they can’t have everything they want.”
Nikos agreed.
