Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
LYKOS
The moon was high in the sky and the house had finally gone quiet.
I’d tucked Aria in. I cherished it, knowing the day would come too soon when she would no longer want it. Dimitros was way past that age, but I still passed by his bedroom and peeked my head in.
“You good, son?” I asked, finding him seated at his desk and scrolling the internet.
He glanced over his shoulder.
“I’m looking into Dr. Freud.” My eyebrows met my hairline in surprise. “Did you know she’s treated criminals? Even some people in the mafia?” My son’s gaze turned to the screen and he read off facts. “She’s had sessions with Christian DiLustro. Dante Leone. The Ashfords.”
“I did know that.” My son did not need to know I’d been keeping tabs on her for years. “Although, that’s confidential information, so I’m wondering how you discovered that?”
He shrugged. “I hacked into her clinic’s database and found her notes.”
Well, damn.
“Are there any notes worth… learning?” I couldn’t believe I was asking my sixteen-year-old that. “About our family?”
“No, but there’s one interesting note about hers.”
I stiffened, recalling the conversation over dinner. Her candid answer had surprised me. I suspected it was for Dimitros’s benefit, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
And all the while, the timeline ran through my head again and again. We met when she was twenty-one. The same winter she buried her sister. No wonder her grief had spoken to me. It was fresh, unlike my own, because my wife had been spiraling for years by that night.
I didn’t help Violet that night by taking her into my penthouse. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“What does it say?” I asked, entering his room and joining him at his desk. I leaned over, my eyes scanning the screen.
“Look at this.” His finger landed in the middle of it. “Does this make sense to you?”
I froze, the words on his laptop’s screen sinking in slowly. I read them again and again.
Birth never recorded… No paternity established… PTSD… Insomnia… Anxiety… Trauma-related disorder… Self-medicated.
My mind darted back to the night she came to me, then handed me over a bundled-up baby like it was an inconvenience she couldn’t be bothered with.
The wind cut sharp across the terrace of my penthouse while the city below buzzed with excitement over the upcoming holiday. It was almost Thanksgiving, an American tradition that had never meant much to me. As a Greek, I had no attachment to it, nor any reason to celebrate it.
I traveled often for the real estate empire I’d built here, which served well for laundering money made from my not-so-honest business related to drug smuggling, money laundering and other criminal activities. However, lately this country had started to feel… small, if that were at all possible.
Ever since that one night with Violet in this penthouse, I saw her everywhere. In passing reflections, in strangers’ profiles, in the bedroom of this penthouse, and always right before sleep took me.
“Maybe it’s time I bought a new place,” I muttered.
But I knew I wouldn’t.
It was masochistic, really. Pathetic, if I was being honest. Some part of me didn’t want to forget her, and I hoped she hadn’t forgotten me.
God knew no other woman had managed to take up space in my head like that. Not even Amara.
My jaw tightened slightly at the thought. She didn’t even recognize me when I visited her in the hospital half the time. Sometimes I wondered why I bothered.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a heavy sigh. My wife didn’t recognize me, and the woman I had cheated with didn’t want anything to do with me. How fucking appropriate! It had to be karma at its best.
No matter though.
I would fly out tomorrow back to Greece, to my son. He was the only one happy to see me these days.
The doorbell rang and I frowned. I wasn’t expecting anyone, especially not at this hour.
I left the terrace and cut across the room toward the front door, checking my weapon to ensure it was loaded.
I opened the door and inhaled sharply.
Violet stood at the threshold, face pale with circles under her eyes. She wore a dark coat, the biggest purse I’d ever seen, and… a bundle of blankets.
For a second, I thought I was imagining her. She stood so still, like she’d been carved out of the night itself.
Then the bundle in her arms shifted and let out a gentle cry.
It’s a baby, I realized.
I stared at it, then slowly dragged my eyes to Violet’s face.
“What’s this?” My voice was rough. My chest twisted—or maybe it was panic. “Why are you here?”
The baby stirred again, and my gaze dropped despite myself, locking on to the small shape tucked against her chest.
“This is your daughter,” Violet croaked. “I need you to take her.”
Instinctively, I took a step forward, while a feeling low in my gut twisted.
“How… is that… possible?”
We used protection, albeit the condoms… The condoms!
“Yeah,” she said, clocking my horrified expression. “I take it that the condoms had expired.”
Violet stepped forward, closing the distance between us.
“Please,” she said, handing her over along with the oversized purse that was a diaper bag. “Her name is Aria Elora.”
I glanced over her shoulder, but there was nobody else. I stepped aside, making space for her to pass. “Come in. This isn’t a conversation for a hallway.”
“No, I don’t—”
My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ground. “Get. Inside.”
She exhaled and shuffled past me, and it was then that I noticed the fatigue clouding her. I shut the door and followed closely behind her in case I had to catch her.
Once we were in the living room, I urged her toward the couch. “Sit.”
She did, dropping her diaper bag on the floor with a soft thud. I sat down next to Violet, my eyes falling onto the baby again. Tiny face. Eyes closed. A faint crease between her brows. Pouty lips.
Something in my chest shifted and my hand was already reaching out, my fingers gently brushing against her chubby cheek.
“Aria,” I murmured.
“Yeah, she has a set of lungs,” Violet said tiredly. “Now, please take her.”
I let out a humorless breath, although my hands were already taking the newborn.
The baby’s soft breathing calmed the restlessness that had been plaguing me for months. Her face scrunched slightly, then settled. Quiet and trusting. She was warm, smelled of baby powder, and… well, that baby scent. Gosh, she was small. Protective instincts flared within me.
I lifted my eyes and found Violet’s gaze on our baby too.
“You should have told me,” I said, keeping my voice low so as not to wake Aria. “I should have been there when she was born.”
“You’ll be there for everything else,” she said, her voice laced with bitterness. “Because she’s all yours. I didn’t plan for expired condoms and a baby. I don’t have… room in my life for it.”
A hollow, ringing silence filled my head, like a bomb had detonated too close, and I was only just feeling the aftermath.
“You can’t be serious.” I tightened my grip on the baby. She shouldn’t be hearing that kind of stuff from her mother. Granted, the baby couldn’t understand any of this.
Violet stood up and I mirrored the movement, still holding the baby close to my chest.
“I am,” Violet said, turning on her heel.
“You don’t get to just show up here and drop something like this on me,” I hissed, refusing to raise my voice.
She shrugged. “You have a son. Experience in this… shit. I don’t. My life has no room for a child. Yours does. You must have a nanny and… people to take care of children.”
“Yes, I have a nanny. I trust her implicitly, but a child needs a mother. You don’t know what you’re doing by disregarding her like this.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” My voice sharpened. “Because this… this is a life, Violet. A life we created. Aria needs both of us.”
“No,” she said, then cleared her throat.
Again and again. Almost as if she were suffocating.
I stared at her, trying to gauge what the hell was going on.
“I brought her to you because I can’t have her in my life.
I don’t need that… headache right now.” Her voice cracked a bit, but then her expression hardened into a mask.
“Everything you need to know about her is in the diaper bag.”
The wind must have picked up, whipping against the windows. It felt like a storm mirroring the one in my chest.
“It doesn’t matter what you need,” I gritted, “or what I need. The baby… She’s what’s important right now and you—”
The baby stirred again, a soft sound of protest breaking through, almost as if she could feel the tension.
I swallowed hard, eyes fixed on her tiny features before I turned a glare on Violet.
“This baby matters. Not what you and I want,” I said, barely above a whisper.
Violet inched back, and I took one forward. She took a step back, and another, and deep down, I knew she had already abandoned us.
“Violet, don’t you fucking leave our daughter,” I hissed. “We’ll do this together. You can keep up your studies and—”
“I can’t stand the thought of anything that reminds me of you, Lykos,” she spat, her lip curling as if the very air around me tasted foul. “Not a trace. Not a memory. I want everything about you gone from my life so it’s like you and Aria never existed.”
I stood frozen and hurt, holding my newborn daughter and staring into the empty space where Violet stood long after she was gone.
“Dad?” Dimitros’s voice shattered through the memory. No—the realization. “Do you know what all that means?”
“No, son,” I lied, turning on my heel. “Have a good night. I-I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I left his room and rushed down the stairs. I wasn’t ready to seek out Violet. I needed to think this through. I needed to come to terms with what it all meant.
I had seen grief before. Lived with it. Breathed it in until it became part of me. But what lived inside her… She sealed it tight, letting it fester under years of discipline and denial.
And tonight, I’d seen it crack open at my table.
Guilt swelled inside my chest, threatening to explode.