I swallowed down my nerves as Calix led me into ο λάκκος the next day. True to his word the night before, he’d sent his men to track down his father after banishing him from Philadelphia under the threat of death. To live his life, finding a new place to settle and wait out the rest of his days, wasn’t a fair fate after what he’d done to my mother.
“Are you sure you want this?” Calix murmured as we ascended the stairs. “I’ll give you anything you ask. I just hope you can live with it on your conscience, Little One.”
“I will never be able to live with myself knowing he roams free while my mother rots in the Νεκροταφείο below us as we speak. She deserves the peace that will come from knowing every last one of her abusers has also entered the afterlife,” I said, striding toward the doors of the council chamber. “They cut off my mother’s head because of what he did to her. I want his put on a stake to show what happens to men who take what is not theirs to touch.”
“Then that is what you will have, my bloodthirsty flower,” Calix murmured, grasping the handle of the door and pulling it open for me. The rest of the council waited in their chairs around the circle in the room, staring at us expectantly as we moved into the room.
“You called this meeting, Regas. The least you could do was be on time,” Councilor Galanis muttered, watching as Calix guided me to my seat. I lowered myself into the metallic chair.
Calix gestured to the man waiting at the entrance as he moved toward his seat, sitting down slowly as two men dragged his father’s filthy, beaten form into the council chamber. He’d been gagged with a cloth wrapped around the back of his head and knotted, his broken hand swollen and purple where it was tied to his good one behind his back.
“What is the meaning of this, Regas?” Elias Lykaios asked as the two men dragged Calix’s father to the center of the room. They left him kneeling at the center of the circle between us all, his head hanging forward as I glared at him.
“Eugene Regas, you stand accused of raping the wife of a former council member of the six families. How do you plead?” I asked, watching as one of the men unknotted the gag from the back of his head. Eugene spit the rag from his mouth onto the circular mechanism at the center of the room.
“I do not respond to bitches who never learned their place,” he said finally, running his tongue over his teeth that were darkened by blood.
“Then allow me to pose the question as well, Regas. Did you rape the wife of a former council member?” Elias asked, leaning forward in his seat.
“No. I did not rape Neri Karras. Rape would imply she didn’t want my cock, and we all know that the Karras women practically beg for it,” Eugene said.
“I put it to the council to decide the fate of my father, given the new turn of events,” Calix said, standing from his seat. He stepped onto the outer ring of the circle, tapping his foot twice against a spot in the wood. The center circle where his father knelt rose from the mechanism, spinning as it approached the ceiling while Calix returned to his seat.
He placed his hand within the snake’s mouth, signaling the beginning of the formal meeting. I followed suit, carefully controlling my face as the pin pressed into my finger and blood swirled down into the floor. The remainder of the floor surrounding that center circle retracted, parting to reveal the sands of the pit beneath the council chamber.
“I nominate Elias Lykaios to stand in as an impartial party to lead the proceedings,” I said, following the guidance Calix had given me in the car on the way to the pit.
“Seconded,” Calix agreed, raising a hand. “Do we have a third?”
Tobias and Alexander kept their hands down, but it came as no surprise that Atticus raised his hand, stating “third” proudly.
“What evidence do you have of these allegations?” Elias said, turning to look at me.
“He confessed to Calix in a fit of rage when trying to convince him that I should be taught a lesson in the same way he taught my mother one. I have no physical evidence, as it has been over a decade since the incident in question. But I think it is fairly obvious to anyone who spent any amount of time with my parents that my mother was not likely to risk my father’s wrath on a worthless affair,” I said, turning my head up to glare at the man who had helped my father take everything from me.
“Calix, do you corroborate her statement that your father confessed to you?” Elias asked.
“Yes. What she says is true,” Calix answered, studying the man who served as head of the proceedings.
“That isn’t enough,” Galanis barked, practically spitting with his rage. “We cannot kill a member of one of the six families without any actual evidence beyond the words of a married couple. They could purely want to eliminate Eugene to eradicate his ability to take the Regas seat on this council.”
“I do not need the council to kill my father, Galanis. Remember that when you consider your next words. I brought him here to make sure that this council knows that what was done here all those years ago was wrong, and an innocent woman was put to death because the people who sat in these seats did not do their due diligence. She never should have been killed for what was done to her; in fact, it should have been my father who bled on the sands of ο λάκκος. Instead, my family line was banished for the criminal acts of one member, because of the corrupt assholes we allowed to remain in power,” Calix said, looking about the room before settling his gaze on Galanis once again. “Most of us here are new to the council. We are not the ones who made the choice that has had a ripple effect across this city for decades. But let this serve as a warning for us—of what can come if we become negligent in our duty.”
“What is it you hope to achieve here? You must know we cannot convict him off your word alone, or else we would be just as guilty of corruption as the generation you criticize,” Elias said, tapping the fingers of his freehand against the chair.
“I ask that we go back to the old ways, to the tradition that has served us through countless disagreements,” Calix said, lifting his chin and meeting my stare. “I ask that we let ο λάκκος decide his fate.”
“And who would we nominate as the champion of the council in this case? Who would we nominate to risk his life for the reputation of a woman who is already dead?” Galanis asked, staring about the room. He had to know that nobody would choose to nominate him, unless the goal was for Eugene to live.
“There’s no need to put it to a vote,” Calix said, standing from his chair. “I volunteer to represent ο λάκκος and take his head for my wife, and for the mother we wronged.”
“All those in favor?” Elias asked, and I raised my hand immediately. As much as it should have frightened me to see Calix on the sand below, there was a twisted sense of vindication in watching him destroy the man who had ruined everything, and in the same place my mother had died.
It had all come full circle, righting the wrongs that had been committed before I was old enough to understand any of it.
Elias and Atticus raised their hands as well, and eventually Galanis and Tobias had no choice but to lift their own. They would not risk their ability to vote against us all, or test the tolerance for their lack of cooperation, on a man they did not care about.
Calix touched his hand to the top of the other arm of his chair, laying his palm on it and spreading his fingers. He winced when needles poked into each of his fingers, taking his blood as Elias followed suit. I watched as the others repeated it, glaring down at the arm of my chair before I mimicked the motion.
The pinch of pain erupted through each of my fingers almost immediately, filling the tiny fingerprint-shaped wells in the metal with blood as something glowed from the inside of the chair. The floor panels emerged from where they’d tucked beneath our seats, the wood folding on its hinges to form a staircase that started from directly in front of Calix’s seat. He stood on the first platform, shrugging off his suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves as the center circle rotated down, hanging from the ceiling on a thin wire.
Eugene disappeared below the chamber level, that platform taking him down to the sands of the pit.
“Are you prepared to decide where you want to display his head, λουλούδι μου?” Calix asked, proceeding slowly down the steps to the sand below. I leaned forward in my chair as much as I dared as he disappeared from my line of sight, watching as my husband jumped off the final platform to land on the ground a few steps from where his father clambered to his feet.
Calix grabbed an axe off the wall, turning his molten stare up to me for a brief moment.
And then the fucker winked.
