Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
Everyone knows that. Except kings usually know they’re going to be kings long before they take over the throne. They prepare for it their whole lives, train for it. They’re ready when the day arrives.
I wasn’t. Because I was never meant to be king. I’m Lancelot, burning and pillaging and fucking his way through the countryside. Not King fucking Arthur.
But life, or fate, or karma, or whatever you want to call it, had other plans for me.
Nine months ago, my father Aeneas, the head of the entire Drakos Family, died at the hands of my older brother, Atlas. My father was a hard, brutal man. But Atlas was unhinged. And power-hungry.
Not to mention a knuckle-dragging fucking idiot.
His “reign” lasted less than three weeks. Then he was killed waging a pointless war against a man with deep pockets and dangerous friends, all over a woman.
It’s an absurd story. Years and years ago, Atlas had once been betrothed to this woman’s mother, Saoirse —an Irish Mafia princess and Cillian Kildare’s sister. But Saoirse ended up having a fling with someone else, producing a daughter, Rose—who went on to end up with this man with the deep pockets and dangerous friends.
Atlas decided the daughter of the bride he’d been cheated out of should be his. Obviously, the man with whom she lived and shared a bed disagreed. And when the dust had settled, my brother was dead, and I was king in his place.
Sometimes I’m convinced life really is a Greek tragedy.
Or a comedy, depending on how cynical you are.
But, heavy as the burden to lead is, I was born for this. All my siblings and I were. Living under our father’s rule may have been a lesson in brutality and viciousness, but it hardened us. It prepared us to lead and to conquer. When I took the throne that was unexpectedly thrust upon me, I was ready.
And then, of course, life threw me another curveball.
My siblings and I were all born here in New York. But my father ultimately preferred England, where he’d grown up. So that’s where the real seat of the Drakos empire was for the last twelve years, while my uncle Vasilis oversaw our operations back here in New York City.
Until four months ago, when, as I say, the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan.
Our family and the Irish Kildare family have never gotten along. There’s generations of bad blood between us, going back who even remembers how long. At one point, there was at least a half-truce—when Saoirse was promised to Atlas. And even when that marriage fell through, things at least cooled off between our families for the next twenty years or so.
Until things went sideways, badly.
I’ve heard it started as a potential peace agreement. Vasilis sat down with Declan Kildare, Cillian’s half-brother and the head of Kildare operations here in New York. But whatever “peace” they were trying to hammer out shattered when a gunfight broke out between them, killing them both.
It should mean all-out war. A bloodbath in the streets. The final showdown between the Kildare and Drakos families until only one is left standing.
Luckily, neither Cillian nor I is suicidal.
Cillian is a fucking psychopath, there’s no question about that. He’s been described more than once as the kind of man who wants to watch the world burn because he enjoys the smell of the smoke. And I think that’s a fair assessment. But either out self-interest or greed, we’ve managed to work out an arrangement.
It’s time to settle this bullshit between our families once and for all.
And the key to settling it is currently glaring daggers at me from across the room. Clearly, nobody’s told her yet. But she’s it.
We’re it.
My eyes narrow, my mouth tightening to a line as I let my gaze drag across the scowl on Neve Kildare’s face.
It makes sense that she hates me. Even if neither of us had anything to do with the violence of a few months ago, at the end of the day, my uncle and her father killed each other. From what I gather, neither she nor her sister Eilish was very close with Declan.
But still. Blood is blood.
And soon, we’ll be blood.
Joined.
Bound together forever.
My jaw grinds as my mind flashes to other more literal ways I could bind the stunning and furious-looking redhead across the table from me.
My tempting, sinfully attractive neighbor who really ought to have some curtains put up in her bedroom.
The one who’s been spying on me. The one I’ve been spying on right back. I’m just much better at it than she is.
Desire makes my cock swell as my mind flashes back to earlier today. When I was standing in my kitchen rinsing out my coffee cup, staring through the windows above my sink…
Into her bedroom. Where I watched her strip off her sweatpants and hoodie and prowl naked around her disaster of a room until she found some other clothes to pull on—
“You realize she’s going to bite your dick off the first chance she gets, right?”
My jaw grinds and my train of thought is interrupted as I glance sideways at my younger brother, Hades, sitting next to me on our side of the conference table.
When we were kids, I used to roll my eyes at the way our father named all of us after Greek gods, titans, and muses—Atlas, Ares, Hades, Deimos, Kratos, and our sister, Calliope. But as we’ve gotten older, we’ve all weirdly grown into the mythological figures we were named for. Hades especially.
There’s a darkness and an edge in all of us—our father made damn sure of that with his heavy hand and strict discipline. But Hades—named for the god of the dead, the king of the underworld—always seems to revel in it. The sadistically sociopathic glint I can currently see in his eyes is a testament to that darkness.
He shrugs at my cold silence.
“You know I’m right.”
“What I know is this is neither the time nor the place, Hades,” I grunt back.
My brother shrugs again, pushing his longish hair back from his face. He got our mother’s piercing ice-blue eyes. I got our father’s dark, brooding ones.
Behind him and towering above all of us despite being younger than Hades and me, Kratos mimics my stern glare at our brother.
“It’s a good arrangement,” he rumbles in that mountainous way of his.
I nod to my brother. Kratos is a good, steady voice of reason. Though Deimos, who’s holding down the fort back in London, is the true peacekeeper of all of us siblings.
A peacekeeper in the style of a nuclear deterrent, that is, not Gandhi.
“Oh, I agree,” Hades smiles brittly. “It’s good for peace and will bring an end to bloodshed. I mean, it’s not my cock that’s going to get chewed off.”
“Could you attempt to not be a dick for just two minutes, Hades?”
I turn to smirk quietly at Calliope, my sharp-tongued little sister, sitting on my other side. The youngest and smallest of all of us, and yet somehow, she’s the law-keeper. She’s got our grandmother Dimitra’s genes.
Across the room, the group of Kildare men who’ve been talking quietly amongst themselves finally come find seats at the table. Cillian and I catch each other’s eyes, and we nod.
This wasn’t his idea, or mine. It was Dimitra who first put it forward: a way to put the hostilities between our families and our subsidiaries behind us for good. As she pointed out, the closest we’ve ever gotten to peace before was when Atlas was set to marry Saoirse.
What better way to settle our differences than by becoming family?
But when I glance at Neve sitting across the table, still glaring pure malice at me, it’s clear her uncle still hasn’t told her what’s about to happen.
This should be interesting.
Cillian clears his throat, sitting back in his seat as his green eyes slice across the room, silencing it with a look.
“I’m not one for fancy speeches, so I’ll get straight to it. We’re here because the hostilities between our organizations have reached an untenable level. Rivalries are one thing. But we’ve crossed too many lines, and there’s too much blood in the streets.”
He pulls a silver cigarette case out of his breast pocket, opens it, slips one between his lips, and lights it deftly with a flick of a silver Zippo. Smoke curls around the Irishman’s head as his glinting green eyes pierce through it.
“I’m not going to get all weepy and sentimental. The truth is, the reason all of us are here is that war will mean ruin to both the Kildare and Drakos families. It will destroy our business interests. And there are already enough jackals circling, waiting for the first sign of weakness to strike. The Bolinaro Cartel. The Carveli Family. The Reznikov Bratva, not to mention their allies.”
Cillian’s icy gaze lands on me.
I don’t blink.
“So in the interest of not getting hit from behind by an enemy while we bicker like schoolboys, Ares and I have come to an arrangement—one that will end these hostilities forever, and make both of our families stronger than ever as a united front.”
I watch Neve’s face scrunch up in confusion as she turns to frown at her uncle.
Oh, this is about to get good.
“A united front?”
Goddamnit, Ezio.
I frown quietly as I lean forward, turning to stab my gaze down the length of the table to where Ezio Adamos is glaring daggers at Cillian.
“Please, go on about this fucking united front we’re supposed to have with—”
“Ezio.”
My voice is neither raised nor very forceful. But it cuts through the room all the same, quickly silencing him. He stares at me, fury and pain boiling behind his eyes.
The Adamos family is a subsidiary, tributary family to ours. Their allegiance has been pledged to the Drakos family for generations, and the way I can see Ezio about to suicide bomb this entire discussion has my jaw grinding harshly.
But I get it. And I feel for him.
Ezio’s only son, Jason, was at the meeting where Vasilis Drakos and Declan Kildare opened fire.
He was also killed.
“Ares, please,” he hisses at me, pain glinting in his eyes. “You cannot seriously be considering allying ourselves with these backstabbing, honorless Micks—”
“Be silent,” I snap.
I’m not completely heartless. I understand he’s in pain. But this is decidedly not the place for it. Or the time for him to start hurling slurs.
Cillian clears his throat, eying Ezio across the table.
“What would…ease your grief?”
Fuck.
This isn’t Cillian being diplomatic.
This is him going for the throat, and Ezio’s about to walk right into his trap.
“What would ease my fucking grief?!” He snaps at the Irishman.
“I don’t believe I stuttered, Mr. Adamos. What’s the going rate on grief these days? Ten thousand? Twenty?”
Goddammit.
Ezio lurches to his feet, his face a mask of seething rage as he whips his head around to glare at me.
“This is insulting! I will not sit here—”
“Yes, you will.” My gaze hardens on him.
I’ll tell him again how sorry I am for his loss later. Not here.
“You. Will.”
His mouth thins to a line as he points a finger across the table at Cillian.
“This piece of shit dares to offer me money?! I lost a SON, Ares!”
“And I lost a fucking brother,” Cillian snaps coldly. “But here we are. And you can either get on board, or go find a nice length of rope somewhere and join your boy.”
Yeah, they’re not exaggerating when the call Cillian a sadistic sociopath.
The room goes silent. Ezio’s face turns purple. He looks like he’s seriously considering jumping across the table and murdering Cillian with his bare hands. But instead, he spins on his heel, glares at me viciously, and storms from the room.
“Well, I have to say. This is TWICE as much fun as I imagined it would be,” Hades mutters next to me.
Cillian sighs, drumming his fingers on the table as his gaze drags back to me.
“You need to keep your dogs on a tighter leash.”
“He’ll keep to the truce,” I growl back.
My eyes swivel to Neve again, drinking in her fiery red hair, the dusting of freckles across her nose, and the sharp green eyes so like her uncle’s, still squinting in confusion.
“And you?” I murmur, pulling my gaze from Neve to Cillian. “You’ll keep to our agreement?”
He takes a long, slow drag of his cigarette, and then nods slowly.
“We will.”
He turns to his niece, and my eyes lock onto her as well.
“Neve,” Cillian sighs. “There’s no easy way to say this. And if there was any other way…” he shrugs. “But there isn’t. Not one that doesn’t end in more blood.”
Her brow furrows deeper.
“Uncle, what are you talking about? And why am I—”
“You’re going to marry Ares Drakos, Neve. That will be the final truce to forever end this bullshit between our families.”
The room goes silent. Neve’s face turns white as she stares dumbfounded at her uncle. She blinks, frowning as if willing him to laugh at the spectacular joke he’s just made.
But this is no joke.
This is happening. And as reluctant and unhappy as I am about it, I’m guessing from the look of horror that spreads across her face that she’s twice as reluctant and unhappy.
“What?!”
Cillian takes one last pull from his smoke, exhaling toward the ceiling before dropping the butt in the mug of coffee in front of him.
“It’s the only way, Neve. You’re going to marry Ares, and that’s final.”
She blinks, shaking as her mouth forms silent words, none getting out.
“No—”
“I’m afraid this isn’t a discussion, Neve,” he says quietly, a flicker of regret and rare-for-Cillian apology on his face.
“Like hell it’s—!”
“Neve,” he growls thickly. “It’s. Been. Decided.”
Slowly, her face pale as a ghost, Neve turns to let her fierce green eyes stab into mine like knives.
I stare right back.
My little peeping Tom of a neighbor.
My enemy.
My wife.
“I think you’ll find, Neve, this is the best way to settle all of the bad blood—”
“And I think you’ll find yourself, Ares, with a knife in your throat if you come anywhere fucking near me.”
She stands abruptly, her eyes wild with fear and anger.
“Neve,” Cillian hisses quietly. “It’s done—”
“Oh, we’re done, all right.”
Without another word, she whirls, storms to the conference room doors, and blows right through them.
Shit.
“So,” Hades sighs, his voice dripping with amusement. “You ready to discuss body armor for you dick yet, or do you wanna talk bachelor party?”
