Chapter 63
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Aric
We arrive at Palermo the following morning. Ayanna and Eero wait in a hotel while I head for the meeting with Nikos. He agreed to see me on short notice, which I appreciate. I know he’s taking this as seriously as I do.
The meeting room is on the second floor—smaller than the Council chamber, but with the same mythic structure. Stone walls with carvings of Greek gods. A single marble table and two chairs.
Nikos is already seated when I enter, a cup of espresso at his elbow. He’s dressed in black suit as always and his eyes track me from the doorway to the chair across from him.
“You have my attention,” Nikos says.
He already knows the evidence I presented during the last meeting at Asgard, so I fill him in with what’s new and what Ayanna shared with me last night. Then I tell him about the trap I want to set for Leandro, which I need Nikos’s blessing and help for.
Nikos’s expression doesn’t change, but something behind his eyes recalibrates. I’ve sat across from this man enough times to know when he’s shifted from listening to calculating. Eventually, he leans back, and his fingers drum against the table.
“You’re making a serious accusation, Vold.
” His voice is calm, but the weight beneath it is immense.
“Against a man who is currently going through initiation to become one of us. A man this Council agreed to accept on the basis of an alliance that you married into.” His dark eyes search mine.
“And a man who is the father of your wife.”
“I know what he is.”
“Do you?” Nikos tilts his head. The gesture is almost identical to mine.
We’ve both spent years studying each other, and certain habits cross-pollinate.
“Because what you’re asking me to do is help you trap a man whose candidacy I personally endorsed.
If you’re wrong, it doesn’t just fall on you.
It falls on this table. On me. On the integrity of the initiation process. ”
“I’m not wrong.”
“You don’t have undeniable proof either.”
“That’s why I need the trap.”
Nikos studies me for a long moment. His espresso must’ve gone cold by now.
“And if you are wrong?” he asks, and the question isn’t rhetorical.
It’s a door, and he’s holding it open so I can see what’s on the other side.
“If we do this, and Leandro passes the test, and it turns out the evidence points where it points because someone built it to, then what? You’ve accused a Council candidate of conspiracy without hard proof.
You want to manipulate the initiation process for personal investigation. The Council won’t overlook that.”
My gaze doesn’t waver, because I’ve already run this calculation a hundred times, and the answer is the same every time.
“If I’m wrong,” I say, “I’ll be the one trialed.”
The stakes are high. A seated member of the High Council, the Second, voluntarily submitting himself to trial. Not since the society’s founding has a member of my rank made that offer. It’s not just a stake. It’s my life on the table. And we both know it.
“You’re that certain,” he drawls.
“I’m certain enough to bet my seat and my blood on it.”
Nikos lifts his espresso and takes a sip. “Tell me the plan.”
The same night, I stand behind a Venetian mirror in another chamber of Olympus.
The glass is old, original to the building.
Nikos once told me his great-grandfather installed it in the early years of the society, and that it’s one of the very few rooms he hasn’t renovated since he took over.
One way. From this side, I can see every detail of the room beyond as clearly as if I were standing in it.
From the other side, it’s a mirror—ornate, gilt-framed, the kind of piece that looks like decoration and functions like a weapon.
The room on the other side of the mirror is about the same size and has the same decor as the meeting room where I sat with Nikos this morning.
Nikos stands by the window, his back to the door, hands clasped behind him.
He’s changed since this morning—dark suit, no tie, the collar open just enough to reveal the edge of the tattoo at his collarbone.
Serena’s name in Greek. The man wears his wife on his skin the way I wear mine in my chest—permanently, irreversibly, in a place that can’t be surgically removed.
He looks relaxed. That’s part of it. Part of the performance.
The door opens, and Leandro walks in slowly. His face calm, diplomatic, the carefully neutral mask he’s always wearing. He scans the room the way I would, exits angles, the position of every object that could be a weapon or a recording device. His eyes pass over the Venetian mirror without pausing.
Good. That’s what it’s designed for.
“Leandro.” Nikos turns from the window and extends his hand. “Thank you for coming on short notice.”
“Of course.” Leandro takes the hand and shakes it firmly. “When the Supreme Leader calls, one doesn’t decline.”
“Sit.”
They sit. Nikos in the chair facing the mirror.
Leandro across from him, angled so I can see his profile—the set of his jaw, the movement of his throat when he swallows, the precise way his fingers rest on the arm of the chair.
Relaxed but ready. He knows that invitations from men like Nikos always come with a price.
“I’ll be direct,” Nikos says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Your initiation has been exceptional. The trials, the tests, you’ve exceeded expectations at every stage. The council is impressed.”
“I’m honored.” Leandro inclines his head.
“But there’s one final task. And I won’t lie to you, Leandro. It’s the most difficult you’ll face. More than anything that’s come before.”
Leandro nods, seemingly unfazed, but I see a micro-shift in his eyes, and the almost imperceptible tightening of his fingers on the arm of the chair.
“As you know,” Nikos continues, “The Council operates on absolute loyalty. Absolute discipline. Our laws exist because without them, empires like ours would devour themselves from the inside. When a member breaks those laws, the consequence is absolute. No exceptions. No appeals. Not even for the Second.”
The word “Second” makes Leandro’s eyelid twitch. He keeps his poker face intact, but I see the implication did its work.
“Aric Vold has broken the law,” Nikos states flatly. “The specifics aren’t relevant to your task. What’s relevant is that this table has decided his fate, and the sentence is death.”
Leandro doesn’t speak or move, but I know—the way I know the weight of a gun in my hand, the way I know the sound of a lie when I hear one—that something just changed behind the surface.
“Your final task,” Nikos says, “is to carry out the sentence.”
“You’re asking me to kill Aric Vold.” Leandro’s voice is careful. “My daughter’s husband.”
“I know what I’m asking. And I know the cost of it. That’s precisely why it’s the final task. The Gods don’t accept men who are willing to do easy things. We accept men who are willing to do the necessary thing, even when it tears them apart.” Nikos pauses for a beat. “Even when it’s family.”
Leandro’s jaw tightens. “My daughter—”
“Will be taken care of.” Nikos leans back in his seat. “She’ll be provided for. Protected. Given the full status of a fallen God’s widow and every privilege that comes with it. The Council will see to it personally.”
“And the seat?”
There it is.
Not what about my daughter’s grief. Not she’s already lost a child, and now you want me to take her husband. Not how will she survive this.
And the seat.
I feel my fingers curl at my sides the way they curl around a trigger.
“Yours,” Nikos says. “Effective upon completion. Full Council membership. Full voting rights. Everything you came here for.”
Leandro is quiet for a long time. Long enough for me to count his breaths—twelve, thirteen, fourteen—and long enough for the room to feel like it’s contracting, walls pressing inward, the mirror between us thinning until I’m certain he can feel me watching.
Then he leans forward. “Where? And when?”
Nikos slides an envelope with The Gods emblems across the table.
“Time and location inside. Aric will be there at eleven, alone. He believes he’s meeting me to discuss Council restructuring.
” He sits back. “He’ll be unarmed. No security detail.
The building has a single entrance and a second exit through the basement, which will be sealed. He’ll be vulnerable.”
Leandro nods simply as though accepting a contract.
Nikos rises but signals Leandro to stay seated.
He moves to the cabinet against the far wall and opens it.
From inside, he lifts a matte black case.
He sets it on the table between them and opens the lid.
Inside, nestled against dark velvet, rests a gold handgun, the society’s emblem engraved into it’s grip.
The same pistol I loaded with blank rounds before this meeting.
Nikos and I agreed on it this morning, because there is a version of tomorrow night where Leandro walks into that safe house and pulls the trigger before I can draw a single word out of him.
Where the diplomat in him calculates that a clean kill and a quick exit is safer than conversation.
Where he decides that dead men don’t ask questions and a confession is a risk he doesn’t need to take.
In that version, I need to still be breathing when the dust settles.
So the gun is real. The emblem is real. The weight is right, the action is clean, and if Leandro pulls the trigger, it’ll sound exactly like a live round.
He’ll feel the recoil, hear the report, and for one priceless heartbeat believe he’s killed me.
By the time he realizes I’m still standing, Nikos’s men will already be in the room.
One shot. One chance. A magazine full of lies standing between me and a bullet.
“Every sanctioned execution carried out in the name of this society is performed with this weapon,” Nikos says, turning the case toward Leandro.
“It’s tradition. Older than either of us.
The gun is registered to the council, engraved with our seal.
When the task is done, you return it.” His gaze sets on Leandro’s.
“No other weapon. No delegation. Your hand, this gun. That’s how it’s done. ”
Leandro looks at the weapon before he reaches into the case and lifts it. He turns the weapon over in his hand, but he doesn’t check the magazine.
A professional would. A man who has spent his life in the shadows of power and knows that trust is the most common murder weapon in the world—that man would eject the magazine, inspect the rounds, confirm the load before accepting any firearm from any hand, no matter how trusted.
Leandro doesn’t because he trusts the emblem. Trusts the idea that the Supreme Leader of The Gods has handed him a sacred instrument and would not dare compromise the ritual.
“I understand,” he says.
“I need to hear it clearly, Leandro.” Nikos’s voice drops. “Do you accept the task?”
“I accept.”
I stand behind the mirror, and I watch my father-in-law agree to kill me without so much as a blink.
Leandro rises, shakes Nikos’s hand, and walks out of the room with the measured stride like he’s just been handed the keys to a kingdom. He doesn’t know that what he’s been handed is a noose, and that he just tightened it himself.