Page 56 of The Diávolos: Part One
As I walk around my car to meet my second-in-command, he bows his head and smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He turns around and leads me inside to a private area near the back door. Before I get the chance to question him, Dion speaks.
“It’s Aria’s engagement party next week,” he states.
Dion seems to be having a hard time accepting that Aria is getting engaged. I don’t know what happened between them on the night of the club, but he’s been a sad puppy ever since.
“I’m sorry to hear that,Dionaki.”
He doesn’t acknowledge me. Greek men are proud, and we pretend to be strong even when we don’t feel it, so I know Dion is putting on a front.
“You know we’re going to be expected to attend the party, right?” he asks, ignoring my sympathy.
“Oh, fuck,” I reply. How did I not think about this before?
“Yeah. ‘Oh, fuck.’ How are you gonna explainthatto your missus?”
I completely forgot I would have to be at the engagement party on behalf of the Vasilakis family, now that I’m the new Godfather.
I can’t tell Angelica now. She’d never speak to me again.
“I have to come up with an excuse and you’re going to help me find it,” I order. Dion swears under his breath. “Before that, we have to figure out what to do about Jurian and Peter,” I continue.
I’d had no intention of starting a full-on battle with the Kouvalakis clan, but Peter had other ideas. Jurian didn’t come to my club by his own will. Not only did Peter have my uncle murdered, he also tried to kill me, and could have potentially hurt his daughter in the crossfire, had she not been hiding. I wanted to be fully healed before my next move, but as time passes, I get angrier.
I want to personally slit their throats and hang their severed heads on my mantle like prized possessions. A fitting decoration for my very cold house.
I know Peter is hiding something. Jurian mentioned a ‘plan.’ It’s up to me to figure out what it is. And once I do, I’m going to end them.
“I’ve been doing some digging using the information Cyrus gave us, and I think I got a lead,” Dion says. “Xander had started sniffing around, but I had to take over…” He puts his head down and my jaw clenches at the thought of my brother, not from the same mother and father, but chosen, who selflessly risked his life to save mine. Dion had waited until I was fully conscious and stable to tell me that Xander was in critical condition, knowing I would turn the whole place upside down, injured or not. That didn’t stop me from trying to extricate the IVs out of my veins and unplug the machines to rush to his side. Dr. Pappas and Dion had to hold me down until I calmed down. I still have the bruises where I tried to force the needles out of my skin.
Fortunately, Xander made it out alive, but his recovery will be much longer than mine, since his injuries were more than flesh wounds. His back was riddled with bullet holes, like a target sheet. Some bullets damaged bones and hit organs. One of his kidneys had to be removed. It’s a miracle he’s alive.
I grab onto Dion’s shoulder. “How’s he doing?” I ask.
I haven’t seen him since the day of the shooting. He’s been recovering at the hospital, while I’ve been on bed rest at home.
“He’s good, but the stubborn bastard keeps asking about you, as if he’s not riddled with holes, like a block of Swiss cheese,” he jokes.
“Do you expect anything different from Xan? The mammoth cares more for others than himself.”
Dion laughs and agrees. I’ll have to pay him a visit now that I’m able to move around.
I revert to the lead they found. “Follow it and get back to me. Whatever it is, I want you to oversee it. Do what you gotta do to find out the truth,” I say, and Dion nods.
While I was stuck in my penthouse recovering, I went over computer files and physical documents that Dion had brought me from my uncle’s office, looking for something—anything—that would lead me to the bigger picture. In my research, I stumbled across a name. The Sisterhood.
It was the title of a file on my uncle’s computer, hidden deeply within other folders. When I clicked on it, it was empty. It didn’t make sense that there was nothing there. He must have wiped the folder clean before his impending death, like he saw it coming.
I know my way around the dark web, so I pulled up search tools, looking for anything pertaining to the Sisterhood. It was a dead end, until I discovered a forum that had several posts from usernames I did not recognize from the underground world.
Throughout the forum, there were comments from users, who I assume were men, asking how to get access to the Sisterhood. From what I could gather, it’s a secret society that only allows access by referral. I got a bad feeling about it, and it’s been gnawing at me ever since.
The last entry was posted a month before my uncle was killed, by someone with the username ‘2young4you,’ and it only contained an attachment.
When I opened the document, I felt sick to my stomach.
It was pages and pages of names. Girls’ names. With their date of birth, height, eye and hair color, weight, where they were from, along with medical records. I skimmed through the list and saw that none of the girls were over thirteen years old.
The document looked like school records dating back to fifteen years ago, and I couldn’t push down the queasiness I felt.What the fuck?
