Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
LYKOS
Hours later, I was alone in my bedroom. Violet had long since retreated to hers, and I was still feeling off-kilter from her confession.
My jaw clenched so tightly it throbbed as I stared out the window into the dark night. Life hadn’t dealt Violet or me a gentle hand, but that would change.
I dragged a hand down my face.
Violet hadn’t abandoned our daughter. Her father threatened her. Threatened them both.
That was his first mistake.
“And soon, it’ll be your last,” I muttered to the empty room.
I’d never paid much attention to her family over the years.
All I knew was that her parents’ names were Dick and Mary Freud, and her mother’s side of the family was old money.
It was generational wealth, dating back three centuries.
Her family has been quite influential over the years, involved in politics and rumored elite society, although there hadn’t been any evidence of it.
But now, I would make it my business to learn all there was about her father, and then, I’d slaughter that motherfucker.
I recalled the night she brought Aria to my penthouse. Pale, alone, and tired. She was scared of what her father might do, so she did the only thing she could do.
She handed me our child and then walked away.
The worst part was that I’d let her go.
I had been a fool, but not anymore.
I stood and made my way down the hallway to the other wing of the house where my children’s bedrooms were. I poked my head into Dimitros’s room and found him sleeping. I entered, covered him up, and went to Aria’s bedroom through their adjoining bathroom.
My gaze found her curled into herself, sleeping with a soft smile on her lips. I kissed her forehead and took a seat in the corner, just wanting to be close by.
No one touches what’s mine. Not my daughter. Not Violet. Not my family.
A dangerous calm settled over me, followed by a resolution.
I’d spent years building an empire in the shadows. Money, power, influence. It was time I used it all and taught Violet’s father a lesson.
First, I would dig into every aspect of his life and learn things about him that even he didn’t know about himself. And then he would feel the thorns of war and taste my wrath.