Chapter 3
Three
N erine
“Tonight, you will see how a proper wife behaves in public.”
I stared out the window of the limousine. I and the jackass who’d forced me to marry him were going to the Drakos Estate for an evening of hobnobbing and elbow-rubbing. I’d spent the last ten minutes ignoring Andraius as he rambled on and on about my lack of ability to be the type of spouse he desired. He played this monotonous track every time we were near each other, especially on evenings when we attended any event.
My response, as always, was to give him my flat, expressionless face. The image of a woman who felt nothing and gave no reaction to any dig thrown her way. She protected herself with an ironclad armor that no person could penetrate.
The facade was all bullshit, but a girl had to learn a few tricks to survive in her hellhole.
One day, I’d escape this prison. I’d take my mother and sisters and find my freedom. Then, everyone who wanted to take this dynasty could do whatever the fuck they wanted with it.
Destroy it, for all I cared. I wouldn’t be in the picture. The Angelos women would disappear, and no one would find us ever again.
Especially this bastard who sat across from me. The one who’d stolen so much from me.
I loved my family history, the long Angelos legacy going back nearly seven hundred years to old-world Greece. But this legacy, this lineage, had cost me too much, and I’d rather have no part of it.
Papa, please forgive me for thinking this. I would rather live and be free of this family than preserve it and stay locked in a cage.
“Don’t ignore me, Nerine.”
“I couldn’t ignore you even if I tried.” I glanced in his direction. “We both know you wouldn’t let me.”
His dark brown eyes held a glaze of irritation, and a few glasses of bourbon. “I mean it. You need to watch and learn. Nyx Mykos-Drakos is the type of wife I need.”
He must have forgotten that before her marriage, people called her the Mykos Hellion for being a cutting bitch to anyone who crossed her. There were even rumors that she liked to pull knives on people and threaten to slice their throats.
I guessed marriage to the right man had tamed her wild ways.
“What do I need to look for since you have spent so much time ogling another man’s wife?”
“She stands by her husband’s side, increases his connections, knows how to conduct herself in public, and occupies her time by doing feminine things like gardening. I believe she will spend the summer developing the new botanical gardens.”
The woman has a PhD in horticulture, that’s why the foundation invited her to lead the construction of the botanical gardens, jackass.
I’d read about it in the news. Nyx loved plants and studied them, not as a hobby but as a vocation.
Her father and brothers believed in treating her as an equal and sent her to school just like the rest of the family. Something I would have had if Papa was still alive.
Instead, a fifty-year-old man had forced me to marry him at gunpoint and shattered my dreams of a college education by never allowing me to take a single class at Boston College again.
The dumbass thought if he kept me from an educational institution, I’d give up on pursuing my education.
Big mistake.
I’d improvised and used the very library in my family’s home as a classroom. Andraius thought I wasted my time reading all day and writing in my journals about my sad life when in fact, I’d enrolled in online classes. I’d never get the degrees I wanted. Still, it hadn’t stopped me from taking every available course to achieve multiple degrees. I’d even gained some mentors who taught me skills that weren’t on the average curriculum of any school.
Fucker had no idea the shit I could do with a computer. I wasn’t perfect at it, but I was getting there. One day, I may even achieve hacker-level status.
I sighed dramatically. “Then it’s too bad that she is married to her age-appropriate husband, who she is madly in love with and has the physique of a Greek god.”
I lifted my chin in a dare as Andraius clenched his fists. Reminding him of his age and lack of physical prowess was always good.
In all honesty, Andraius was a handsome man. He kept in shape and looked years younger than men his age, but I’d never give him the ego stroke he craved.
“You didn’t even give our marriage a chance.”
The nerve of this bastard to even utter those words.
“Explain why I would even microscopically consider giving you a chance after you murdered my father and baby brother, forced me to marry you at gunpoint, and then carved whore into my body on our wedding night? It’s impossible to think of you as anything but a monster.”
Ignoring everything but the bits he found pertinent, he said, “Well, you were nineteen. Who were you fucking before you married me?”
The loves of my life.
“It doesn’t matter because I never wanted to marry you in the first place.”
“My Lisa was a virgin when I married her, and she was twenty-two.”
His first wife, my late cousin Alisa, was no virgin on her wedding night. However, the women in our family knew how to keep secrets, and they taught their daughters ways to convince their traditionalist Greek husbands of their purity.
For me, it hadn’t mattered.
I smirked. “You keep believing that. Alisa could have fucked all my father’s men, and you would never have known.”
“Of course, I’d know.” A vein pulsed on his forehead. “The rumors would have reached my ears. I’m a fucking Angelos.”
“Wrong. Alisa was a true Angelos by blood. You don’t have a drop of it. I’m a true Angelos. It doesn’t matter who she fucked or who I fucked. Those loyal to the true Angelos descendants will keep our secrets to the grave.”
My words held a bit of truth and some lies. The loyal Angeloses would only ever tell Papa all the secrets, others not a chance.
I’d kept my secret from nearly everyone—even my sisters and especially my parents. Yes, Papa believed his daughters had equal rights as Linus when it came to ascending to his seat as head of the Angelos Family. However, he wouldn’t have been able to handle the idea that I’d fallen in love with two men and that we were in a committed relationship.
“And hence the reason you will see whore marking your body until the day you die.”
I shrugged as if I couldn’t have cared less.
“It still doesn’t stop you from attempting to impregnate me whenever your dick decides to work. What does that say about you?” I tapped my lips. “Ahhh, yes. It says you like to fuck whores. And you can’t deny it since you have so many of them tucked away around the city in hopes of getting them pregnant to pass off as my child. Isn’t that right?”
Before I realized what he had planned, he grabbed my wrist in an excruciating hold and hauled me toward him.
His alcohol-infused breath wafted over my face. “Listen very carefully. You will behave tonight. You will act like a dutiful wife. You will not cause a scene.”
“And if I don’t.” I clenched my jaw, trying desperately to ignore the pain radiating down my arm. “What will you do to me that you haven’t done before?”
“I will kill you,” he gritted out through his teeth. “I will replace you with a younger woman who will give me a child.”
I laughed, “Go ahead. I die, and my money goes to my sisters. Not to you, asshole. You think Papa was stupid. The Angelos money will never, ever go to a spouse.”
“But it will go to a child.”
“That would require you to get me pregnant, not one of your whores. DNA, or did you miss that lesson in school?”
He lifted his hand as if to strike me, and I tilted my chin up, waiting for the blow. Maybe my stupid streak had reared its ugly head tonight, but I wanted the people of this ball to see the monster I’d married and what he did to me.
He threw me back onto the bench seat. “You bitch. You wanted me to hit you so everyone sees the bruises.”
“Why not? It takes a big, strong man to beat his wife into compliance.” I rubbed my wrist, where I had no doubt I’d bear the marks of Andraius’s brutal hold.
“Listen, Nerine. All I want is a fucking child. Give me that, and I will never come near you again. Is that too fucking much to ask for?”
I wanted to shout, “Yes. I will never have your fucking child, you bastard.”
Instead, I said, “Did you ever think that you are the problem? You are the common denominator. You have doctors telling you I’m healthy and when I’m most fertile. Yet still, it doesn’t happen. Not a single one of your whores has ever gotten pregnant.”
It was a wonder this fucker hadn’t given me an STD. Good thing I tested myself constantly with the way he passed himself around.
Disgusting piece of shit.
God, when had I become so bitter?
Oh yes, when I decided it was either break under the weight of my existence or become the very thing he believed I was and fight back.
There was no place for weakness in the world I lived in. The time when I could let my guard down and let my vulnerable side free was gone, along with the two who’d broken my heart.
“You’re doing something to prevent it. I know it.”
Yes, I am, dickhead. I will continue to do everything I can to keep from carrying your child, even things that aren’t detectable through medical testing.
Thank you, Mama, for all your secret, old-school methods of preventing conception.
“Believe what you want. Just know I will never ever claim another woman’s child as mine. So don’t even think about it.”
“Nerine, I run this family. Not you. Remember that.”
“Without me, there is no family, Andraius. I’m the true Angelos in this pairing. Remember that . You are only an interloper.”
* * *
“Don’t forget what I told you,” Andraius warned as we entered the main ballroom of the Drakos mansion on the outskirts of Boston. “I am going to talk to Drakos’s family. You find Nyx and kiss her ass.”
“I don’t kiss anyone’s ass. You should know this better than most.”
“Use your manners instead of behaving like an animal.”
I adjusted my cuff bracelet over the sleeve of my gown where it rested at my wrist and said, “I’ve attended balls from the time I turned six. I’m well-versed in etiquette. The reason I don’t use it around you is that I hate you beyond anything imaginable.”
“Nerine, I?—”
“However,” I continued, cutting him off, “for my mother’s and sisters’ sakes, I’ll behave tonight. Because if I don’t, I’m sure you’d find a way to take it out on them, even from across the ocean.”
“How the fuck did I get saddled with a bitter, cold cunt like you?” he muttered to himself.
Pausing as I walked away, I tilted my head and answered so he could hear, “Since you have such a short-term memory, let me remind you for the second time in an hour. You betrayed and murdered my father, brother, and countless others who trusted you.
“Then you forced me to marry you in front of a corrupt priest by threatening to kill me, my mother, and my three minor sisters, and to seal the deal, you raped me in front of said corrupt priest. Then to top it off, you mutilated my body. You’re the cream of the crop, aren’t you?”
With my shoulders back and spine straight, I strolled around the edge of the crowd. They socialized and discussed the latest developments in society and politics while sending me curious glances as I passed them.
I kept to myself, smiling and nodding acknowledgment at those around me but not engaging otherwise. I had nothing to say to any of them.
I’d fight Andraius nonstop in private, but I’d grown reserved and quiet in public.
The partygoers probably wondered what had happened to the outspoken Nerine Nicolette Angelos. Where did the girl who stuck her nose into her father’s business when other girls wouldn’t dare go? And most of all, tonight’s event attendees probably wanted to find out what Andraius had done to get the misfit of the Greek syndicate world to become a quiet mob wife.
A server paused before me and offered me a glass of champagne. After tipping my head in thanks and taking a flute, I scanned the room.
Not far from me stood Simon and Nyx Drakos. Surrounding them were the Mykoses, Nyx’s four brothers, and her parents. From the information Andraius had told me to learn, Nyx was the first female born into the Mykos family in over a hundred years, and her marriage to Simon fulfilled some contract negotiated for the previous female in the family.
In my opinion, it was all bullshit. No arranged marriage resulted in the type of affection Simon Drakos showed for his wife. The man had a reputation as an emotionless, cold-blooded killer. Their story went deeper than her giving their marriage a chance, no matter what Andraius wanted to believe.
Simon glanced down at Nyx as she spoke to one of her brothers, and his deep green eyes lit up right before he lifted a finger and traced down the side of Nyx’s cheek.
That simple, intimate gesture sent a wave of sadness into the pit of my stomach. I’d had that long ago with someone. Actually, with two someones. As unconventional as we were, it worked for us.
Then it all imploded, and I’d buried it under a mountain of lies and secrets.
It had taken me the first year of my marriage to feel as if I wasn’t cheating on them, to accept I’d had no choice, to understand staying alive meant others stayed alive.
“Nerine, it’s so good to see you,” Nyx exclaimed as she approached me.
She moved toward me in a way only a woman with complete confidence in who she was could pull off. She owned her sexuality. She wore her dark black hair in a one-shouldered style piled to the side, and her long ivory gown accentuated the golden hue of her skin perfectly. She had an ethereal glow about her that made you pause to look.
Then there was her husband, who approached along with her. To say Simon was gorgeous was an understatement. He epitomized the bad boy vibe but in a very tailored way. However, it was his green, almost emerald-colored eyes that made a person stop to study him. Like a snake, he could mesmerize until one was under his enchantment.
They were a power couple at their finest.
No wonder Andraius wanted me to get in good with Nyx.
I wanted to be like her, but I’d run across hot coals before admitting that to my husband.
And no matter how much Andraius wished it, he wasn’t even anywhere in the same vicinity as Simon. He’d never achieve the power, respect, or magnetism that Simon held without trying.
“Thank you for inviting us,” I said to Nyx, then smiled in Simon’s direction. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Hello, Nerine.” He took my hand and kissed it, which garnered a shake of the head and an eye roll from Nyx.
That definitely wasn’t proper behavior and broke a ton of etiquette rules.
For some reason, that one gesture had me relaxing. She wasn’t the prim-and-proper wife Andraius made her out to be.
Releasing my fingers, Simon searched behind me. “Where is Angelos?”
“He’s probably discussing business with your uncles.” I gestured with my chin to a circle of men deep in conversation.
“Too bad they have no sway over you when it comes to decisions,” Nyx muttered, or I could have sworn she had.
But her utterly impassive expression made me think I’d possibly misheard her words.
Then a smirk appeared on Nyx’s face, and she tucked her arm in mine as if we were long-lost friends. “I’ve arranged for you to sit with me at dinner. I believe we have a lot of things in common.”
I highly doubted that, but okay.
“Wouldn’t you rather sit with your family?”
“Believe me,” Simon interjected from behind us. “You are far better company than any of her brothers.”
Nyx shot him a glare over her shoulder. “I see them all the time. Plus, I fly back to New York every week.”
We moved toward a long hallway decorated to give the feel of walking through a garden.
“I have a question to ask you,” Nyx said.
“Go ahead.”
“When you walked in tonight, were you envisioning ways to slit your husband’s throat?”
I just gaped at her, completely dumbfounded.
Nyx laughed. “And my next question is, would you like me to teach you different ways to do it and not get caught?”
What the hell was happening here? I pulled back. “I’m not sure what you expect me to say.”
“Behave, Goddess. Let Nerine settle in. She just arrived and isn’t used to your sense of humor.”
“I wasn’t kidding, Simon.”
“I know this.” Simon set a hand on Nyx’s waist and leaned in so only Nyx and I could hear his words. “Sometimes it’s better to use a scalpel than a machete.”
“Just because you hang out with Papa does not mean you’re an honorary surgeon. I like blades.”
I felt as if I’d entered the twilight zone. “I don’t understand any of this.”
Ignoring me, Simon said, “Nyx, until Nerine learns to handle the smaller instruments, you can’t give her bigger ones to play with.”
“Are you two for real?” My voice shook as I whispered, “Who are you?”
“The question you need to answer is, who are you ?” Simon’s voice softened. “Peter Angelos was part of a small group who stood by me when my Pappos died and my uncle challenged my legitimacy to the family leadership. That isn’t something I will forget. You deserve better than what has happened to you.”
His mentioning Papa sent a pang to my heart. I missed him so much.
“Play the game with us, Nerine. Don’t you want to fight back?” Nyx asked.
“And do what?” I shook my head. “I don’t want to take the seat. I want freedom for me, my sisters, and Mama.”
“Before deciding who takes the seat, you must remove the person sitting there.” Simon steered us into the dining room.
“How do you expect me to do that?”
“It starts with you learning to defend yourself.” Nyx sighed and then took my hand in hers, shifting my cuff to expose the bruise forming in the shape of fingers. “If he wasn’t who he was and we weren’t where we are, I’d gut him for you. Or get you to do it.”
“Goddess, she doesn’t have the skills.”
“Oh, she will.”
“Let me guess. You plan to teach me.”
Before she could respond, Andraius approached, and she released my arm.
“Ladies, are you ready for dinner?” Andraius offered me his elbow.
“Absolutely.” Nyx smiled at him and said, “Oh, I wanted to say how happy I am that Nerine has agreed to help me at the botanical gardens this summer. I hope we can start her training this week.”
Surprise flashed across Andraius’s face, a hint of pleasure as if I’d finally done something right. “Yes, she is always willing to lend a hand. That is, of course, the Angelos way.”