Chapter 37
CRISTIAN
In the dark of night, the truth often reveals itself.
It was something my father used to say, but I’m no closer to concluding anything as I watch her in the darkness.
She’s been asleep for hours, and I’ve sat here, too paralyzed to move.
I’ve replayed the entire timeline through a new lens, mentally dissecting every interaction we’ve had with her.
They all feel tainted now.
She spread through my veins and into the marrow of my bones, a venom so lovely and sweet, I didn’t even know she was poisoning me until it was already too late.
I knew if I fed this addiction, it would eventually ruin me. I just didn’t expect that maybe that was her plan all along.
I was blind to what was right in front of me, willfully disregarding every sign. In retrospect, I can see why Ares derived so much pleasure from taunting me with her.
He referred to her as his old friend. He kept showing up at her club, watching to see how this would play out. He teased the idea of an alliance…by marrying one of his cousins. And with so little effort, he goaded me into the words he knew I’d come to regret.
I’d sign my own death certificate before I ever marry a Greek woman.
“Fuck,” I mutter, scraping a hand through my hair.
I don’t know how to reconcile these two versions of her. The beautiful, fragile, deeply traumatized woman I first met—who also happens to have the blood of my mortal enemies running through her veins.
Some things are indisputable.
What happened between us at Sanctum was real. She had no way of knowing who I was then, and her reaction when she found out was genuine terror. I understand now why she ran that day. Because she realized then what I’m realizing now.
This was never supposed to be more.
It feels like a bad joke, and I’m still waiting for the punchline.
With every passing hour, I try to make sense of it, but I can’t.
All I have to go off of right now is the word of a man who was clearly fucking delusional.
But as confused as Elias was about his imaginary relationship with Chantel, everything else was crystal clear.
Thalia Stavros was Ares’s aunt. After she married Lucas Drakos and moved to New York, her relationship with her family grew distant. Ares and his father believed Lucas had created this rift, but after Thalia died, it got worse.
According to Elias, Lucas would only allow contact with Thalia’s daughter Katarina at formal gatherings that were few and far between. They suspected that Lucas was hiding something, but they couldn’t confirm it.
So when the opportunity presented itself for Ares to spite Lucas, he seized it with both hands.
He tasked Elias and Andreas with smuggling Katarina to Seattle, where she could hide in plain sight under a new identity.
At Ares’s instruction, they delivered her to Mariella, which inevitably led Mariella to form a friendship with her.
It was a series of events that created a spark that over time turned into a wildfire. She infiltrated our lives slowly, drip-feeding me the poison that became an obsession, and I drank it so willingly.
That spark also created the first ember of infatuation for Elias. In his mind, he felt as if he had saved her. But he didn’t have a chance to nurture that fixation until five years later, when, as luck would have it, Ares assigned him to watch over Chantel.
For a year, he spent every waking hour learning her routines and documenting her life to the point of insanity. She had no idea he was there, and when she saw him in the club, he was nothing more than a friendly face from her past. But to him, those small interactions were far more significant.
He’d already been escalating when he received news of Marco’s impending return. He’d made plans to remove him from the picture, but he found a new target in me when he saw that I was protecting her.
In his own words, I ruined everything for him when I attached myself to Chantel, and Ares saw the writing on the wall. He told Elias this development would be useful to him and reassigned him to another position, which sent him into a full-blown spiral.
The one thing Ares didn’t account for was that Elias was a fucking lunatic.
When he became the obstacle between him and Chantel, Elias started plotting his demise too.
Before he made his final grab for Chantel today, he sent word to New York about what Ares had done.
He hoped that it would start a war between the Greeks, and Ares would be a natural casualty of that.
Whether that’s true remains to be seen, but it presents another problem.
Chantel’s father is coming for her, and now my only choices are to go to war or let her go forever.
The thought splinters inside me.
I already know what I can’t do, and that option has far-reaching consequences that won’t only impact me.
It could destroy my whole family.
As if she can sense the lingering fire of resentment in the room, she stirs from sleep and opens her eyes.
When they land on my silhouette in the chair, she sucks in a breath and sits up.
“Cristian?”
“Is it true?”
My question charges the air between us, heavy with the weight of her deception and my anger. But beneath that, there’s an undercurrent of something raw.
Something broken.
I half expect her to deny it, but instead, she dips her head and swallows.
“Yes, it’s true,” she whispers. “I’m Ares’s cousin…Katarina Drakos.”
A beat of silence passes before I ask her the only thing that matters at this point.
“Was this what he asked you to do? Is that why you’re in my bed?”
“No,” she chokes out. “Cristian, I swear it.”
“I’m not sure your word means all that much,” I answer bitterly.
She curls into herself, and even in the darkness, I can see the tension in her body. I can feel it, the way I always do, when she isn’t at peace. But I can’t let that be a factor right now.
“I need the truth,” I tell her. “And I’d rather hear it from you, but I’ll find out either way.”
When she doesn’t respond, I let out a frustrated breath and shake my head. I’m not sure why I would have expected anything else. Whatever her secrets are, she’s never trusted me enough to hear them.
Why would she start now?
I rise from my seat and head for the door, but she turns on the bedside lamp and calls out to me.
“Please don’t leave me, Cristian.” Her voice shatters.
There’s so much vulnerability in the words I never thought I’d hear from her, it fucking guts me. And when I turn to look at her, registering her red, swollen eyes and the silent tears streaming down her face, it fractures something inside me.
Any self-preservation I may have had left goes up in smoke as I let out a curse and follow the only instinct that’s ever felt right.
I walk around the bed and gather her up in my arms as she starts to sob.
Carrying her to the chair, I sit down and settle her onto my lap.
She wraps her arms around my neck, clinging to me as her entire body trembles. I rub her back, and she draws in a shaky breath as we fall into a familiar dynamic.
“That’s it, dea,” I reassure her with the voice she first learned to trust. “You’re safe here.”
Deep down, I feel like that’s what this has to be about.
When I was clouded by my anger, it was easy to forget the evidence I’ve seen with my own eyes. She’s lived her life in fear, always looking over her shoulder, expecting the worst.
It makes no sense that Ares would use her as his willing pawn. She’s not a criminal mastermind. She’s a woman who’s taken extreme measures to protect herself, and every inch of progress I made with her was hard won.
It doesn’t fit any reasonable agenda that Ares might have. But I still have to ask.
“What is this for you?”
Slowly, she untangles her arms from around my neck and leans back to meet my gaze—her eyes so full of agony, it feels like another gut punch.
“Cristian, I’m in love with you.” A fresh wave of tears streaks down her face. “If you can believe nothing else, please believe that.”
I close my eyes and let out a rough breath. “Then why couldn’t you tell me the truth?”
“Because I’m Greek.” The words scrape from her raw throat. “You told me yourself that you don’t associate with us. You said you don’t keep company with snakes.”
When I look at her, it’s impossible to miss the anguish she’s carried since I uttered those words.
As I recall that night, I can’t forget how angry I was when I saw her talking to Ares.
It was a remark made in the heat of the moment when I thought he was encroaching on what already belonged to me. But it wasn’t anything I hadn’t said a thousand times before. Even in times of peace, our families have never passed up an opportunity to despise each other.
Our feud goes back to our grandfathers, who were once allies before they turned bitter rivals. That tension culminated in a bloody war that lasted five years before both patriarchs conceded to a treaty. And while the killing may have stopped, it didn’t change the way we felt about each other.
Everything has always been a competition between us, but there isn’t a line Ares hasn’t crossed. He broke Mariella’s heart for sport and withheld information that could have saved Angelo and Abella years of separation.
He’s arrogant, self-serving, and unnecessarily cruel, meddling in people’s lives like it’s a form of entertainment. So when I said those words, I meant them. And when I registered the hurt on Chantel’s face, it only made me more defensive of my position.
The thought that she might have any sort of affection toward Ares felt like a betrayal. But I never could have imagined that she might be related to him.
Now, I recognize that, in her mind, everything I said about the Stavros family applied to her too.
I’ve never felt like more of an asshole.
“Chantel—”
“Wait,” she pleads, a note of panic threading through her voice. “I want you to hear me out before you say anything else. I’ll tell you everything.”
Fear lingers in the depths of her eyes, and I’m certain it’s because she’s afraid we can’t come back from this.