10. Ilias
ILIAS
T he low hum of Fortune's early morning quiet settled over me like a second skin as I walked into the back room. Sunlight didn’t touch this part of the club, and the air still smelled faintly of bourbon and old leather—the ghosts of last night’s chaos lingering in the walls.
Fortune was built on the land of the original strip club where the blood oath was signed.
Our little ‘fuck you’ to our fathers. We pooled our resources and gave design control to Angelo.
Granted, we had already had a rival burn it down once, but we built it back better than ever.
Fortune wasn’t going anywhere.
Maxim was already there, standing near the bar with a tumbler of something dark in his hand that he wasn’t drinking.
Conall leaned back in a chair, one boot up on the table, a toothpick between his teeth.
Angelo made his entrance with a clap on my shoulder and a muttered curse about the traffic on the FDR and that someone almost scratched his car.
The guy was an absolute baby about his cars.
"Morning, sunshine," Conall drawled, eyeing me with a smirk. "You look like hell."
"Nice to see you too, O'Kelly," I muttered, taking the chair beside him and running a hand through my hair. It was too early for this, and I hadn’t slept. Instead, I’d lain awake with my door propped open, thinking about the fragile beauty in one of the guest suites below, who I knew for a fact had dragged a chair and propped it under the doorknob. We’d chased her down the street and dragged her to a strange place.
I wasn’t expecting her not to be freaked out.
“How’s Frankie?” Conall’s wife Francesca was pregnant, and I knew Conall was being his over-protective alpha-hole self lately. She’d had a pretty serious bout of morning sickness, but I thought she was doing better now.
A blazing smile lit his face. “My wife is perfect. She’s feeling healthy, although I’m not sure she should be walking around as much as she is.” He gave Angelo a worried look. “What do you think?”
Angelo wisely threw his hands up. “I’m not getting in between Theo and Frankie and how much they walk, fratello . You shouldn’t either unless you want one of them to stab you.”
“Fine,” he muttered before sending a text I was sure was to his wife, saying something incredibly stupid.
Maxim turned to face me, expression unreadable. "How is Galena?”
I exhaled slowly. "She’s... sorting through things. She’ll be okay. She’s strong.”
I meant that. Galena had surprised me with her courage.
We had eaten together, and while Maxim and I were careful to maintain our distance, she still interacted with us and stayed in the living area until early evening.
She’d asked about self-defense classes, and I’d already asked Kostas to call someone he knew to come and meet with her at the house.
Galena had more support than she knew about.
Cora, she’d already met, but Francesca and Theo would want to meet her as soon as I would let them.
What I was most worried about was overwhelming her.
But first, after this meeting, we were going to get her shit from the storage place.
She’d made me promise. It seemed super important to her.
“So she’s at your place?” Conall asked with a cool look. Conall was the leader of our merry band of thieves, the oldest of the group and the most level-headed of all of us. In many ways, he played the roles of both father figure and friend equally.
“Yep,” I said, not elaborating, even as they all watched me carefully.
They understood better than anyone that I didn’t let women stay in my personal space.
I loved my family more than anything and worked hard to cultivate a safe home for my youngest sister.
Casual fucks had never been welcome in my home, and I’d never indulged in long-term relationships.
Dating had been a waste of time for so many reasons.
Galena was obviously none of those things, which was why she was at my brownstone right now, curled up in a bedroom.
Angelo raised a dark brow as he sat, his long legs stretched out. “She’s going to be living with you?" I gave him a short nod. “Not going to get her a separate house or some weird shit like that.” I scoffed. Maxim would kill me if I did something like that.
“She’ll go through with it?” Conall asked.
I flinched before I could stop it, but I knew they caught the motion.
I’d kept the tension locked down the night before, playing steady and calm while Galena’s life tipped sideways.
But now, under the scrutiny of my closest friends, it all felt too raw.
Too exposed. Maxim was watching me closely as he crossed over to sit down.
“In name only," I said evenly. “We’ll get the oath finished, and she’ll be under my protection.” They all gave me an evil look. “ Our protection.” That mollified them. “I’m going to have her sign the paperwork today.”
"You sure about this?” Angelo asked, voice gentler than I expected. “You’ve held off for a long time.”
"Yes, I’m sure.” I actually meant it now that I’d seen her, which was hard to explain to them. There was something about her that seemed right . Maybe we wouldn’t have an entirely conventional arrangement, but I was okay with that.
Maxim set his glass down with a soft thud. "She’s been through enough, Ilias. I want to make sure you understand that you’ll be living up to the bargain you struck with her.”
"I know, asshole,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to. Maybe I was already regretting what kind of bargain I struck, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep it. The room went still. I swallowed hard. “I’ll keep my promises. This isn’t about anything other than protection. A name."
Conall finally removed the toothpick from his mouth and sat forward. "You always were the quiet one, eejit . Didn’t think you had a martyr complex to match."
"It’s not that." But it was. It always had been.
Because I was broken, not just cracked at the edges, but hollowed out and rewired wrong. I had learned to mask it well through discipline, violence, and control. But the idea of taking something soft, something fragile, like Galena’s trust or her body, and trying to make it mine?
That would be unforgivable. Galena was built like every wet dream I’d ever had, but that was a very dangerous combination since she was about to become my wife. I would respect her. Protect her, even if it meant protecting her from myself.
Angelo leaned forward. "What aren’t you telling us?"
Maxim was still silent, but he looked like he already knew. Or maybe he suspected. He’d grown up around the same kind of darkness. Maybe he recognized it in me .
I stared at the table. “It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that this is the only way to guarantee she’s protected.
The men who went after her and Maria, I’m sure, now know who she is.
They cornered them and attacked because they were alone.
Galena won’t be alone now, and I’m going to find those sons-of-bitches. ”
Conall ran a hand down his face. "We’ll be right there with you.”
"What else did she tell you?" Maxim asked, voice low.
“Three men,” I said, remembering the look on Galena’s face as she looked so small on the sectional in the library as we talked.
She had wanted to get it over with, knowing that we needed all the details to try to catch these fuckers.
“Dressed in suits, but she said not as nice as the ones Maxim and I wore.” The suits bothered her.
It wasn’t a question I’d ask directly because I knew that she didn’t fully trust me, but it was something that I wanted to hear about.
Today, I kept my clothes casual to see if that helped her.
“She said one of them had a gold ring on.”
“We can have Veronica send over files for her to look through. One outfit at a time,” Angelo suggested.
“On it.” Maxim was already whipping out his phone. Kostas and Veronica were already covering those bases, but I didn’t bother telling them that we were already handling it. Sometimes it helped people to feel like they were contributing, so who was I to rain on his parade?
“They didn’t want money. They didn’t take anything.
One of them said her mother had been Alexei’s whore.
” Maxim stiffened. “And they mentioned the Commission, but she couldn’t remember exactly what they said about it.
Something about the Commission thinking we were in charge, but she wasn’t sure and was confused and scared. Hurt.”
“But they knew who she was? Who Maria was? It wasn’t random,” Conall said with a sharp edge in his voice.
“I don’t think it was random.” I thought about it for a moment.
“Galena didn’t think when it happened that it was targeted, but I could tell that it was starting to dawn on her that the attack was specific.
She also said that she thought they might be Italian, but again, she wasn’t completely sure.
She said that they had dark hair, and they called one of them boss.
” When Angelo started to open his mouth to ask a question, I held up a hand.
“I asked. She didn’t hear the word ‘don.’ But she wasn’t sure.
Her memory might not be perfect in that area.
They didn’t hold back on her mother’s beating; the three men didn’t seem to care if she lived through it.
Galena did say that they were careful with her, and the boss stopped them from going too far. ”
Angelo’s expression darkened. “That’s not a mugging.”
“No,” I agreed. “That’s a statement.”
“A warning,” Maxim added. “They wanted her scared. And they wanted us to find out. No way they didn’t.”
“Which means they knew who she was to you, Ilias,” Conall said. “Or suspected. This wasn’t just directed at Maxim, but at you too.”
“She remembered their faces, and they didn’t mask up.
But it wasn’t amateur hour. It was intentional, I think.
They threatened to find her and cut out her tongue.
That’s why she didn’t tell the police all the details.
Said they might come back again, but I think they just did that to fuck with her. ”
“Well, at least we know it wasn’t Carlotta.” Angelo sighed. “She wouldn’t have hired men like that,” I said. “Professional. Clean suits. No splash. Blend-in types.”
“True,” Maxim conceded.
That was something, but Galena had mentioned that they were ‘made men’ multiple times. That served as a starting point, and they were aware of Alexei and the Commission.
Angelo exhaled slowly. “It never ends, does it? One fire gets put out, and another flares up.”
“Yeah, but she wasn’t raised in our world.
She’s had to survive this attack alone. It came knocking with knives.
” That pissed me off. We’d had plenty of trouble lately with other outfits, but all of us grew up around this shit.
Even the women knew about the worlds they inhabited, but Galena had been completely innocent.
“She told us she wanted revenge,” Maxim said. “That’s what’s driving her cooperation more than anything else.”
“That’s the beginning of it,” I said. “The fight. She wants to stand on her own two feet.” It made me proud of her that she had the spine to want that for herself.
"Good," Angelo said, a shadow crossing his face. "That will help her, and we’re pretty decent at revenge,” he smirked.
Maxim glanced between us. "We need to find out who sent those men. The timing’s too close to what happened with Carlotta. She’s gone, but maybe someone thought they found a weakness. ”
"Or is trying to exploit one,” Conall muttered.
I nodded. "Either way, Galena’s involved now. She deserves justice.”
"You think she can handle the kind that we’ll dish out?” Angelo asked. “We’ll try to keep her out of it.” He shrugged.
The meaning was clear. Sometimes things happened in the underworld.
We tried to prevent it from affecting our loved ones, but inevitably, it did at times.
I thought about how her eyes looked flat and cold when she talked about the attack.
She was agreeing to marry a man she barely knew just for a chance at revenge, which was pretty selfish of me to push for, but ultimately, it seemed like the safest option.
There were so many wolves at the door and only so many ways to keep her safe.
And maybe I was one of those wolves if I was being honest.
"Yeah," I said. "I do."
Angelo grunted in approval. “Then let’s give her the tools.”
“Easy,” I said, holding up a hand. “First, we keep her breathing. We find out who those men were, who sent them, and how many more are out there.”
Conall leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That this ties back to one of Alexei’s old enemies,” I said. “Maybe something to do with the way he did the oath? Or who got left out of it?”
“Ironic,” Angelo muttered. “Man tried so hard to shape the future, he forgot the past could still bleed.”
Maxim finally sat down. “She asked me if she was just a piece on a chessboard. I didn’t have an answer for her. Hard to admit to her that, to the old men, that’s all we were. I know it feels like to her that’s what she is, but …” He looked down at his hands in thought.
“Let’s show her in actions, then that’s not what she is,” I said. “That she means more to us than that.”
Angelo’s mouth curled into something like a grin. “I’m in.”
Conall nodded. “Me too.”
Maxim looked down into his drink, then back at me. “She stays at your place?”
“She’s safe there, and she’ll be my wife. She’ll have her own space,” I justified.
He nodded once. “Then don’t break her.”
I didn’t respond at first. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because the truth was still unfolding into something real inside me.
Maybe with Galena, I wouldn’t be the most broken person in the room, and that was fucked up because I liked that thought.
Last night I’d hovered on the stair landing to see if I could catch her scent before I climbed the stairs.
Then I’d sat on the edge of my bed pressing my palm to my cock, trying to convince myself that I should not be thinking about jacking off to the image of those blue eyes and those fucking curls. I’d lost that battle. Twice.
"I’ll take care of her," I said softly, more to myself than to them. "No matter what."
Maxim nodded. “Okay, brat . Good enough.”
She was already broken when she got here. How bad could it be, I thought guiltily.