“She’s mine,” he said before leaving.
C H A P T E R
1
IT TOOK NIKOS DRAKOS MORE THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS TO LAND AT LAGUARDIA AIRPORT IN NEW YORK FROM HIS HOMELAND, GREECE. He could have gotten there in less than twelve hours if he had taken his father’s offer to ride in their private family jet, but Nikos never liked indulging himself in his father’s luxuries, so he bought a coach ticket and sat in a window seat, watching as he left his old life behind to start a new one that his father had been forcing on him ever since Giannis Drakos realized he was having a second son.
After being on the plane for so long, fatigue caught up with him, and Nikos found himself restless as he yawned. When he visited America when he was younger, he had been excitedto see the places he had always seen on television. But Nikos was twenty-five now, and America wasn’t nearly as exciting anymore. He wished his father would have shipped him off to a more exotic location, but their second largest brotherhood was here, and Nikos had heard the stories of the empire his father had built here back when he had come to America for the first time, leaving his wife and two kids behind—visiting every once in a blue moon— to apparently start a new family with another woman here in New York.
Though he had learned of this truth more than three years ago, it was still a bitter pill for Nikos to swallow. Every time he thought about his mother’s pain and humiliation, it made him despise his father and lose what little respect he had for him to begin with. It was already enough that his father lived this kind of dangerous, immoral lifestyle, forcing his children to be a part of it. It was another thing entirely to be unfaithful to his wife and have another family.
It was wrong, actually, and Nikos didn’t think he could ever forgive his father for that.
Nikos’s luggage rolled behind him as he stepped outside the airport. He lifted his hand, shielding his eyes from the sun before he put his shades on. After being on the plane for so long, everything felt out of whack, and now he wished he would have taken the jet just to avoid the jet lag he was feeling.
With his eyes properly shielded from the intense rays of sunlight, Nikos scanned the lined-up cabs and cars in front of the terminal until his eyes fell on someone familiar. Nikos waved his hand, and his cousin, Theo, thrust himself off the car he had been leaning on. Nikos jogged over and was pulled into a friendly bear hug by Theo.
“How long has it been, man?” Theo asked as he clapped his back. “I haven’t seen you in like, what... Seven? Eight years?”
“Yeah, it has been that long, huh?” Nikos said as he thought about the last time he had been here around his late teens when he had come to visit his brother for a brief vacation after graduating from high school.
Theo stepped back and took in his appearance, letting his green eyes rove over him from head to toe. Nikos did the same. Since Nikos had last seen his cousin, Theo had managed to lose a significant amount of weight, and instead of being over two hundred pounds like he had been before, he actually had a muscular build now. The only reason Nikos had been able to recognize him was that in spite of his weight changing, his eyes and shaggy blond hair were still the same, not to mention the scar just beneath his jaw that he had gotten as a child while playing on the cliff side when he had visited them in Greece.
“You’re still a pretty boy, man,” Theo said, shaking his head, and Nikos laughed. “You’re going to have the women going crazy, especially at the club. Don’t cause too much trouble.”
Nikos shook his head. “I didn’t come here for that. I’m just chilling.”
“You’re saying that now until you see the women at Tonis’s club,” Theo said as he rapped the door of the truck. The driver’s side door opened, and an older gentleman stepped out, coming to grab Nikos’s luggage and place it in the trunk.
Theo squinted as he looked over his shoulder. “Who is that girl behind you?”
Nikos sighed as he turned around, and certain enough, thereshewas still behind him. She had been following him ever since he had left his beach house in Greece and got on a plane to come here.
“Do you know her?” Theo asked, curiously looking at the girl who stood a few feet away from them, her brown eyes focused on Nikos alone.
“Yeah, I do,” Nikos said, but unfortunately, he wished he didn’t. He withheld his sigh and crossed the distance to stand next to her at the pillar she was leaning on.
“Rheagan, why are you still following me?” Nikos asked, exasperated. He hadn’t said anything when she booked the same flight as him or when she sat next to him at the Athens terminal while he was waiting for his flight. Nikos knew she was from New York too, so she was coming back home. But he had hoped that once they made it here, she would go her own way and stop acting like his shadow.
He didn’t want to see her because if this were supposed to be a new start for him, how could he start over with her here with him?
“I have no one now and nowhere to go,” she said sullenly, and Nikos gritted his teeth, feeling a wave of guilt come over him. He tried not to think about what transpired that night. Every time it crossed his mind, it filled him with regret and embarrassment, knowing he had done something so petty and childish, causing something so terrible to happen between two sisters.
He could still remember the dead expression on Raelyn’s face. It wasn’t pain or hurt, just nothing, and that was how she felt about him now. Everything she said to him that night, she meant, and he really didn’t mean anything to her anymore now. She had burned the thread connecting them, just like she burned that thread with Rheagan, cutting off all familial ties with her and treating her younger sister like a stranger.
When Rheagan said she had no one anymore, she meant it. She had lost her parents and grandmother at a young age, and now her aunt and sister were gone. And what made it worse was that Rheagan was young. She thought she was grown because she was twenty, but because Nikos had been twenty before a couple of years ago, he knew she was just a baby, considering that he was only twenty-five and he was still trying to figure it all out on his own.
“Let me go with you, Nikos,” Rheagan said as she leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her brown eyes sparkled with hope. “Now that Raelyn is out of the picture, we should be together. I know you feel bad for her, but she’s already made it clear how she feels about us. Let’s just—”
Nikos grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms off his shoulders, taking a step back to put necessary distance between them. He wanted to tamper down his annoyance, but he was coming off jet lag, and it had been merely seventy-two hours since everything happened that night. The pain was still there, and the wound was still fresh.
“I’m going to be blunt with you,” Nikos told her as he slipped his shades off and looked her in the eye. “I only used you to get back at your sister. We have nothing together, so it doesn’t matter if Rae is here or not because nothing will change between us.”
Nikos dug into his duffle bag hanging from his shoulder, rummaging through it until he found a white envelope. His brother Aris had given it to him, wanting to give him extra cash if necessary, but Nikos didn’t think he would need it. He put the envelope in her hands. It had to at least be more than fifty grand in there.
“Make do with this, and take care of yourself,” Nikos told her sincerely. He felt that he owed it to her. Though he knewRheagan’s relationship hadn’t been good with Raelyn in the first place, he still was a part of the catalyst to make it end entirely because of his petty revenge. He at least wanted to do one last thing for her.
“After this, you’re on your own,” he said. As Rheagan looked into the envelope, dollar signs already appearing in her eyes, Nikos walked away, getting into the back of the car with Theo. He didn’t look back as the car pulled off.
