Chapter 4
Four
A vra
After dinner, Vik and I left the house in the car our driver had left behind. As soon as we reached the main road outside the estate, I took a long, deep breath.
“That fucking bastard.” Vik pounded his hand on the steering wheel.
He wasn’t inclined to show emotions, but seeing the place ruined and transformed like that, with Ozias lording his control over my family’s home, had affected even him.
I nodded, gazing out the window momentarily to collect my composure. Now that I was out of Elias’s presence and free of Ozias’s, I wanted to decompress. To simmer down from being on edge .
But there was no time for it.
“Are you all right?”
I shot him a side-eye as he drove.
“I want to make sure you’re confident in your plan.”
“What, did you think seeing him would scare me off?” I shifted in my seat and reached under my dress to unclasp the holder for my blade, pulling it free from my waist before tucking it into a compartment at my feet.
Vik shook his head. “No, but…”
“But nothing. It’s too late, even if I want to change my mind. We’ve revealed ourselves. We’re here. We’re back.” I swallowed hard. “And we’re targets again.”
“What about him, though? Elias?”
I arched one brow, trying to figure out his concerns.
“I noticed the tension between you.”
I opened my mouth to remind Vik that Elias had to view me as the enemy as much as I did him, but I clamped my lips shut, trapping my retort in my mouth. I couldn’t blame our family rivalry for all the tension that had sparked in the air.
Elias wasn’t anything I anticipated. It was disconcerting how this energy pulsed between us. And then there was how he looked at me when he walked me to the car, possessive and territorial.
It made no sense.
No, what made no sense was that I had no problem with it.
Then, while we were in the garden, his dominance and no-nonsense tone made me feel alive and charged. I’d argued with him .
The last thing I expected was this sudden awareness, this unexplainable need to be near him. Something about him made me want to push every one of his buttons, to challenge him, and see how he handled someone who took none of his shit.
The physical attraction to Elias Xenos was one thing. Still, the temptation of learning about the beast I saw lurking in those eyes was another.
“I did some digging on him,” Vik said, snapping me from my thoughts.
“On Ozias?” Obviously.
“Elias.”
That was news to me. “I thought we already had everything possible on the Xenos family.”
“There is always more to find out. Once word of your marriage offer spread, people talked.”
“And? What did you find?”
I needed to go into this marriage with all the information possible. I couldn’t go in unprepared if he could unsettle me with one evening.
“Elias is extremely private.”
Great. Then he can keep to himself and not bother me.
“He doesn’t like his father.”
Elias’s comment about not living with Ozias at that house had helped me figure this out.
“He also has a lover who won’t like that he’s off the market. So you should be ready for that as well.”
I smirked. “For what? A scorned lover? I’m not some weak woman who can’t stand my ground with others. ”
“I’d think not. Get prepared for the next part of tonight’s adventure.” He turned the car, heading away from the house I shared with him and my sisters for now.
I’d be moving again in a month. Tonight, though, I had another stop to make.
I nodded. “I wonder if she’ll remember me.”
Vik and I had made the preparations for this crucial step in my grand plan, but now that the moment was here, I wondered if I could pull off this next part. Offering myself as a “sacrificial lamb in marriage” had been easy. Facing Ozias and Elias at dinner was difficult. But this?
“She’ll remember as soon as she gets a good look at you.”
I licked my lips, envisioning the last time I saw my aunt. She’d pushed me through the tunnels under the estate, urgent and desperate for me to flee without giving me a chance to return to my mother’s lifeless body and tell her goodbye. I was the one who’d found her there on the ground.
Theia Cloe insisted vehemently that I take my sisters and leave. She practically pushed Laya and Cali into the stairwell. I felt obligated to follow them, aware of the darkness surrounding us and that I was their only support.
I clenched my fist as the memory returned in full force. Cali had only been five at the time, crying as she clutched me tight. I’d held her as we hurried through the tunnels, pushed to run from the sheer terror Theia Cloe instilled in us. Cali had reached her hand back as I carried her away, and I would never forget her pleas and tears, sobbing for our parents.
Reminded of that hellish night, I knew I was ready. I was more than ready .
“Here.” Vik handed me a duffel bag, and I took it without question.
I crawled into the back of the car and changed into the clothes we’d set aside in there. Layering a shirt over my dress, then pants beneath it, I pulled off an entirely new outfit without revealing anything indecent. I’d learned the trick under Vik’s training when he’d coached all three of us girls on how to manage a swift disguise on the go, should we ever need it.
As I shifted in my seat, ensuring everything fit, Vik pulled up to the curb a few streets from Theia Cloe’s home.
“For Juno and Eudora,” Vik said.
I nodded at him once, then exited the car without giving him any other response.
I needed to go. I had to do this. Now that I was here, hidden in street clothes to disguise my identity from any street cameras, I flipped the hood of my jacket up and walked to her door.
I could have had my men do this. Letting them handle it would have kept my hands clean.
Vik had volunteered to handle the situation.
Laya had even offered to take care of this step.
Still, it had to be me.
It was my plan and my responsibility to do it.
This was about justice, looking her in the face and making her understand the depth of her betrayal of the family.
A leader never told others to complete their dirty work. As the eldest sister, the mastermind behind this plan for revenge, I had no choice but to do so.
I am the Vitalis. I will not fail the family.
The door opened, and at first, Theia Cloe kept the wood panel cracked. She peered at me, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. “I’m not interested. No solicitors.”
Before she could shut the door, I stuck my foot forward and flipped my hood back.
She squinted more, then opened her eyes wider in recognition.
“Eudora…” She gasped. “Avra?”
Blinking rapidly, she lowered her guard. I’d surprised her, all right. Her mouth dropped open as she gawked at me with wide-open eyes.
“You look just like your mother.” She’d uttered it as a whisper of awe, of stunned shock, and so thrown off by my appearance. She released the door.
It swung open, and I waited for no invitation, striding right in. I slowed only to shut the door behind me.
“I—I just can’t believe it. You’ve grown. You— My goodness, Avra. Look at you.”
I stood back, hands on my hips, as she stared. “And look at you. Still, the traitorous bitch who helped kill my parents.”
“What?” She snapped her brows together and scowled immediately.
But I saw it. I caught that fleeting, instant sweep of fear in her eyes.
“You were involved with Papa’s and Mama’s deaths.” I wasn’t there to ask .
I had no doubt that she had helped Ozias ruin my family. My sources in America had no incentive to lie, and they’d spent years seeking evidence to back up this accusation.
Tonight was nothing more than a confrontation—a final one, long past due.
“You’re insane.” She shook her head. “I never…I would never?—”
“No?” I didn’t budge, glaring at her without a break, waiting for her to fess up.
“No! I wouldn’t have ever gotten involved with something like that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She huffed, shaking her head at me as she walked around the sofa, placing more distance between us. That was all she’d wanted back then. She’d ordered me to go with my sisters. Reinstating a buffer between us now would do her no good. I was onto her, and I refused to be swayed by her pleas.
Taking in the details of her parlor room, I homed in on the artwork hung on the walls. It was in the same bold and modern style as what Ozias had in his home. A few pieces bore the signatures of the same artist. And then there were the liquor snifters with the same symbols etched on them as those my enemy had.
Even the scents that lingered in the air stank of his cologne.
The crest on her necklace cemented that my aunt continued to lie as she protested my accusation and rambled about how she’d never turn her back on her sister.
As she spoke louder, more passionately, to con me into considering her lies of innocence, the pendant slipped from its spot beneath the neckline of her shirt. Gaudy gold slid free, reflecting in the light. It was the same design Ozias had on that fat ring. He wore it on the pinky of his right hand. I’d just seen it at dinner. And spotting the same fucking thing on my aunt was all the proof I ever could have needed to see with my eyes.
Rage filled me. A sweeping wave of fury crested through me, and I strained to keep calm and not reveal how close to lashing out I was.
“And I— I…” Theia Cloe faltered, realizing that I stared at the necklace. She lifted her fingers to her neckline, touched the shiny metal, and tucked it beneath her shirt again. “You’re not thinking clearly,” she warned, likely picking up on how I’d pieced things together.
Crystal clear. “Do your children know that you cheated on their father with another man?”
“I didn’t!”
I was on a roll. “Did you have their father killed like you did mine?”
She slashed her hand through the air. “No! I’m telling you, no?—”
“Because I doubt very much that Theios Stenos died of a heart attack.”
She pressed her lips together so tightly that her chin trembled. Then she wagged a finger at me like I was a naughty child displeasing her, just like her lover had done earlier. The mimicry gave me the urge to snarl.
“I won’t have you telling anyone these lies. ”
I laughed. “The truth, you mean. Everyone knows you weren’t faithful. It was an open secret.”
Theia Cloe shook her head as she crossed the room. I didn’t follow her. I could let her have this last-minute need for distance. It wouldn’t save her. I became more alert as she moved toward the bar, as though she wanted to refill her glass and pour a drink.
She kept her gun near the decanters. She always had. My cousins had mentioned this long ago. I’d been gone for fifteen years, but I remembered regardless. It seemed Theia Cloe hadn’t changed her habits.
As she hurried toward the bar, I watched her with different eyes. She was no longer the bitter aunt I could never quite feel close to. She was no longer the relative who was always ready to criticize her sister or scoff at my father.
She wasn’t family.
Not to me.
All I saw was her deception. Her cruelty. Her pathetic hopelessness as she arranged to eradicate my mother and father.
Reaching around my waist, I grabbed the weapon I’d tucked into the back of my waistband as Vik drove. The hooded jacket hid it from any eyes on the street.
My blade wasn’t necessary for the task ahead.
As I waited for my aunt to turn around and face me, it was up and out in the open, ready for use.
The second Theia Cloe spun and pointed her gun, I shot her between the eyes, one single shot. All the training and practice under Vik’s tutelage had some benefits.
Theia Cloe’s wasn’t the first life I’d taken, but the initial one in my journey for revenge.
I stood there, enjoying her pain and anguish as she stumbled and then slumped to the floor. A wave of relief and peace settled over me right before I gave her the last words I’d rehearsed in my mind for years.
“This is for your betrayal. You’ve paid your debt to the Vitalis family. May God show you the mercy you refused to give your sister.”