Iwas going to die. If my heart didn’t give out and my body didn’t crumple to the floor in a pile of flesh and blood right there at the altar, Damianos would kill me when he realized I wasn’t a virgin. My stranger’s somehow intimate knowledge that I was left-handed naturally had left me feeling like I’d walked into a trap. Like this entire thing was a stage, and I’d end up in the pit where my mother had died.
I couldn’t even look at the man next to me, and he was about to be my husband. Only minutes separated me from being Thalia Hasapis, and his dark eyes were inquisitive as he stared at me in his peripheral vision. The priest continued with his rambling rant as if anyone cared about God’s wishes when I was in a church filled with murderers and thieves.
“Do you, Thalia, take Damianos to be your lawfully wedded husband?” The room seemed to vibrate around me, a buzzing sound filling my ears as I tried to process the words I’d known were coming. Still, I went rigid. My world ended, narrowing down to the memory of a stranger’s hands on me, of his mouth and his body against mine.
Did I take the man I’d never wanted? I didn’t know if I could live my life knowing that real passion was out there, but never being able to reach out and grab it for myself.
My mouth dropped open to answer, the only words I could ever truly give in the situation. The choice had been taken from me before I’d even known what marriage was. The name and the face of my husband were irrelevant.
The result would be the same.
I should just be grateful that he didn’t appear to be an overly cruel man. He had high expectations of me, but he wasn’t the same kind of monster as my father. He’d be a step up from my life at home.
Of all the men who might have won the right to marry me in ο λάκκος, Damianos was arguably the best of my choices. Even still, I couldn’t make my lips form the words.
Damianos clenched his jaw as he watched my reaction, his anger palpable in the air as he waited. I knew every second of hesitation was an embarrassment that I would likely suffer for, both from my soon-to-be husband and my father. His hand tightened on mine as he turned me to face him, his face transforming with a brief understanding. ‘I will protect you, η νύφη μου.’
I raised my eyes to his finally, my heart filling with a moment of hope. Perhaps he wouldn’t kill me when he discovered the truth. ‘I—’
My voice cut off as a scream tore through the chapel, and I craned my neck to face the door. Something hot and wet splashed against my cheek, and I nearly fell to my knees as Damianos dropped to the floor. His grip on my hand nearly dragged me down with him, and I gasped as his head struck against the wood floor. The gaping hole where his eye had been stared back at me, his other eye staring up, blank and unseeing.
Prying my fingers free desperately, I reached up to wipe the wetness from my face. They came away stained with dark, viscous fluid. I’d seen enough of it, felt enough of it on my skin, to know exactly what it was.
Blood.
The blood of the man who would have been my husband. I spun to face the doorway and the crowd of men filling the back of the chapel with assault weapons in their grips, but it wasn’t the crowd or impending death that stole the breath from my lungs.
It was the shockingly familiar face tucked just behind the barrel of a pistol with a silencer attached to the front. The light eyes that studied me intently, cold and unyielding. No trace of the teasing amusement or dominant lover I’d met a month before remained, but there was no doubt that they were one and the same.
Damianos’s mother screamed, lunging to her feet in the audience and finally drawing my eyes to her and away from the man I’d never thought to see again. Her chest shook as my stranger turned his gun to her, firing two shots into her breast. Inky black bloomed on the fabric of her dress as she staggered and then fell to the floor, the rest of the people in the chapel finally vaulting to their feet in panic.
Jeno and my father pulled out their own weapons as the five families erupted into chaos and bullets exploded everywhere. Despite the gunfire, the stranger from the hotel lowered his gun and stalked up the center aisle toward me. His eyes never left mine, leaving no doubt to his intent as the lightness in them shone with fury.
I darted forward, snatching Malva’s hand in mine and yanking her away from her mother where she huddled in the pews. She cowered, clinging to me as I lifted the side of my dress and ran for the door at the back of the chapel. The priest ran in front of us, leaving the people of his congregation to their fate as he saved himself.
I supposed my father’s donations meant nothing once he was dead.
Just as we reached the door, a familiar grunt sounded behind us. I spun, looking to confirm the sound I would never forget. Even when we’d been children, the sound of him when he was hurt had been imprinted on my memory in a time when I’d wanted nothing more than for him to love me as a brother should. But he hadn’t, and he’d deserved every bit of punishment he got.
Jeno’s eyes widened as he touched the wound in his chest. A knife protruded from it, my stranger staring him down as he pulled the knife free.
‘Run, Thalia,’ Jeno begged, his voice rasping out his final breath as he collapsed to the floor. My stepmother’s scream echoed behind me, her body curled over my father where he sat clutching his side while the stranger stalked toward me.
I shoved a sobbing Malva forward, fleeing from the chapel and into the back. Down the hall, to the right, we moved as quickly as we could. The door at the back loomed large and welcoming, the priest’s hand only inches from grasping the knob as he turned back to speak to us urgently. ‘My car is back here,’ Father Yiannis said. I had no faith in his desire or interest to keep us safe, but if we could just get away from the massacre then maybe there would be hope.
The back door opened, two men stepping into the church and staring us down as they closed the door behind the priest. I came to a stop, backing away a step as they walked closer. ‘Miss Karras, I have to ask that you and your sister return to the wedding,’ one of them said, his lips tipping up in amusement.
‘What wedding?’ I hissed, shoving Malva behind me. ‘They killed the groom!’
“There will still be a wedding, λουλούδι μου” a voice behind me said. My flower. My blood froze, turning to solid ice in my veins as I slowly turned around. The voice was familiar, the same raspy one that had murmured orders to me while I writhed beneath him.
His face was the same, breathtaking and rugged in a way I didn’t often see with the proper men of the five families.
But that name? That name was something from the past. A ghost who had left me to the fate my family had chosen, when I’d been too young to understand he wouldn’t come back for me.
And all that he’d left me to suffer.
As soon as my eyes connected with his light gray stare, I wondered how I hadn’t seen it. Calix had been my protector. My everything.
An arrogant smirk twisted his lips as he watched the breath expel from my lungs in sudden shock.
‘Hello, Little One.’
