"I could try to give you an exact number, but I don't think I could lock it down," Archer said regretfully.
Jules glance at him as though he was going to snap, but turned away again.
"Okay." He turned around slowly. "Say our father is Zeus. What then?"
"Then we figure out how to deal with him," I said. "As influential as he is. It's not going to be easy."
"It'll be fucking easy if I walk up and stab him in the heart," Jules snarled.
"You'd have to get a knife past his security," I pointed out.
"I could…" Jules stopped.
I saw his mind turning over and over.
"Hypnos said he knows who you are," he said finally. "So he knows who we are. He must have been feeling me out. That's why he wanted to have lunch with me. He wanted to know if I knew who he was. Asshole," he spat. "He had the nerve to ask me for a favor."
"What favor?" Cass asked, looking disbelieving.
Jules pressed his mouth together, lips together so hard his lips turned white. "I was going to do one thing for him and he agreed to leave you alone. He promised."
"I think he plans to break that promise," I said softly.
How had I gotten all of us into this situation? If I hadn't become involved with Cass and Jules, they wouldn't be in the middle of me and their father. Regardless of who he was, this whole situation was sticky. Not in the good way.
"No, this is a good thing," Archer said. "You had no idea he was Zeus. He thinks none of us know. Why would he? It probably hasn't occurred to him Hypnos would have said anything. If it has, we've just proven we're clueless."
"Right," I said, catching on to his train of thought. "We know who he is, and he thinks we don't know. There has to be something we can do with that. Without using Jules or Cass as bait," I added quickly before anyone else had that bright idea.
"It might be the only way," Cass said. "I can go to him. Ask him to leave Jules alone. And then… I don't know. Strangle him with his own tie."
"Why do I get the feeling you've given that a lot of thought?" Boner asked. He raised his hands to either side. "I'm not judging. I'm impressed. I was starting to think Titmus the younger wasonly going to be an observer to all our shenanigans. You might have the makings of a serial killer yet."
He placed a hand over his heart and pretended to look weepy. "They grow up so fast. One minute they're throwing up at the sight of a severed finger. The next minute they're graduating to using a silk tie to cut off someone's air until their eyeballs pop out of their heads and they die." He leaned to the side, pretending he was going to drop to the floor, before righting himself and grinning.
Cass shrugged. "It seems obvious. You know, it's around his throat already." He pointed to his own neck. "Sometimes I wonder why people wear them."
"We could say the same for scarves," I said absently.
Anything around the neck could be used as a weapon. Although if you were creative enough, almost anything could, including a coffee mug, a fidget spinner, and a fridge magnet.
Those are a story for later.
"We need to sit down and figure something out," I said.
"Quickly," Jules added. "He's put out his feelers. Knowing him, he won't take long to act on it."
"Then we act first," I said firmly. "But we look before we leap." I gave him a direct, meaningful look. He could try to march in there and snap his father's neck. I doubted Forrest would make it that easy. There was a reason he asked for that meeting in public. Witnesses.
In private, the only witnesses would be people who worked for Forrest. People paid to take a bullet for him.
No, we had to be careful. We couldn't afford any wrong steps. We'd made too many mistakes in the past. I wasn't going to do that again. Every risk had to be calculated. Every step planned out. Every counter move anticipated. We had to think moves ahead of Forrest. I hated the idea his sons could help with that. Trap their own father. Who knew him better than they did,though? It was an advantage I had and I'd have to use it. Like it or not.
"Harlow, can I have a word in private?" Jules said, not breaking my gaze.
CHAPTER 8
JULES
