“Is there a problem?” his uncle asked.
“Not anymore,” Honey said before leaving. Nikos watched her go and smiled, glad to know they were okay now. For a second there, he had been worried that he would have to deal with Honey’s glare for the rest of his time in New York. That wouldn’t have been pleasant. Nikos wouldn’t necessarily say that he cared about what other people thought about him, but for some reason, he didn’t want her to dislike him.
“What happened?” his uncle asked in a serious tone.
“Uh… the other day ago, I said some…insensitive comments about the girls’ morals, and Honey took offense to that andreamed me out about it,” Nikos explained to him sheepishly, still mildly embarrassed by his words. “I realized I was wrong, and she wouldn’t stop giving me the cold shoulder and glaring at me, so I wanted to show that I was sorry hence the flowers and things for the girls.”
“Do you want Honey to smile at you?” his uncle asked him, and Niko sat up straight, seeing where this conversation was headed. Whenever Honey was a part of it, his uncle acted like a dog with a bone, refusing to release his jaw on it.
“It’s not like that,” Nikos said, wanting this cleared now. “The day that Honey smiles at me is the day that hell freezes over. Besides, I’m certain that Honey is the only woman here that doesn’t like me.”
But his words didn’t seem to assure his uncle as Antonis continued to stare at him. “Do you think that Honey is beautiful?”
Was it supposed to be a trick question? Of course, he thought Honey was beautiful. She was the most beautiful woman in the club. Every man who saw her thought the same.
“A lot of women here are beautiful,” Nikos said, holding his uncle’s gaze. “But I understand who Honey is to you.”
“Good,” his uncle said, seemingly pleased with his answer. Nikos felt relief course through him. A wild crazed look always appeared in his uncle’s eyes whenever he spoke about Honey, as if if any man so much as breathed on her, he would pluck their eyes out. Nikos would like to think them being family would be enough to save him from that, but he had a feeling that none of that mattered. His uncle would hurt him if he ever thought he was doing something with Honey.
It was a good thing then that Honey didn’t want him because if Honey ever gave him the chance, he wasn’t sure if he could saythat he wouldn’t take the opportunity. She even looked good in a pair of sweats. If Honey gave him the chance, he would have her bent over in a heartbeat, giving her his absolute worst and best. But where their relationship was now, which was absolutely nothing, Nikos knew that wasn’t possible and could only be in his mind as a fantasy. Honey would never give him a chance.
C H A P T E R
12
NIKOS REFRAINED FROM BREATHING AS HE STOOD AGAINST THE CORRIDOR WALL in a rundown apartment building on the second floor. It wasn’t because parts of the hall smelled like piss and other mysterious smells that shouldn’t have been there. It was because he always had trouble breathing regularly when he did something like this, like something was latching onto his throat, making him unable to breathe.
“Are you ready?” Christos asked him quietly as they stood posted outside apartment door 208 at the end of the hall.
Nikos nodded, though he wasn’t. He didn’t think he would ever be.
Christos took his nod as confirmation as he looked at Jackson, who was on the other side of the door, along with William, another one of his uncle’s men who occasionally worked with them. Jackson pulled out his gun and nodded while William did the same. Though he had been here for a month already, Nikos was still shadowing, and when it came down to tasks like this, it wasn’t expected of him to do the gritty work that Christos, Jackson, and William did, and Nikos liked it that way. He liked returning home at night without blood on his hands, even if the guilt of being there sometimes ate him up inside. It was better than pulling the trigger, and Nikos hoped to keep it that way as long as possible.
Christos knocked on the door, and they all stood waiting in the hall for a beat until the door opened, and a Black woman stood in the doorway. She wore a silk robe loosely tied around her waist. The smile on her face immediately disappeared. Before she could open her mouth, Jackson pointed his gun at her head. The scream that wanted to come out from seeing four intimidating men outside her door died.
She lifted her hands up in surrender, her eyes wide with fear as she whimpered. Jackson gave her a warning look, and she clamped her mouth shut.
“Baby, who is it?” A man called from inside, the very man they were looking for tonight.
Christos stepped in front of her, giving her a warning look before he gestured for her to speak. The Black woman took a shaky deep breath before she spoke.
“It’s my neighbor,” she replied in a fake cheery voice.
The man yelled something back in Spanish, and a tense air fell over them. Nikos pressed himself closer to the wall, knowing that anything could go wrong quickly. They had come here todo the killing, but it could easily turn around on them. He wondered how his brothers did this, living with this kind of anxiety and fear. Did Aris ever question if he would make it back home to his wife? Did his father and Pierce ever question if they would release another breath? He didn’t know because he had never asked.
“What did he say?” Jackson whispered fiercely, looking anxiously over the woman’s shoulder as if he expected someone to jump out.
“To get rid of you and come back,” she translated.
“I better not hear a peep of Spanish out of you,” Jackson warned her as he spoke harshly in her face. “Or I’ll assume you’re snitching, and I’ll shoot you.”
The woman nodded, a layer of tears forming in her eyes.
“Is that Hugo?” Christos asked.
From the name alone, the woman looked at all of them before she started to cry. “Please, don’t do this. Hugo will kill me.”
“We’ll kill you first,” Christos said without a hint of sympathy. “From your reaction, that must be him. Step aside.”
