Page 53 of All for her Forgiveness

Love and hate, need and anger, all mixed in a toxic cocktail, have kept me awake most of every night since Pam's murder.

In my dreams, during unconsciousness, Kennedy was mine. In the morning, reality brought me back to my purpose of revenge.

The bell rings again, ending the fight. I don't move from the middle of the ring, and when someone tries to pull me by the arm, I react with a punch to the bastard's face.

"Son of a bitch!" a man curses at me, and when I look back, I realize he's as tall as I am, with a beard. He doesn't make any move to react to the aggression. He's dressed in a leather jacket, which means he didn't come here to fight. "You're coming with me, Greek. Enough already."

"Fuck you, bastard!" The whiskey is already doing its job of numbing my brain, and coupled with exhaustion, it almost knocks me down, but I'm not willing to give up.

"My name is Roman, and I'm here on behalf of"—he approaches and speaks so only I can hear—"Beau and Odin. They're both waiting for you in a car outside."

"Odin is here?"

"Yes."

I look around and see some men watching us, probably expecting another fight. But despite my desire for blood not having dissipated, I have an even greater one: to find out if everything Odin believes Pam did is true. Because I have no doubt that if he's here, it's because he's found something out.

"There's a private bathroom in that direction." The man points. "Clean clothes, too."

"Do you work for Beau?"

"He's like an older brother to me."

"And you guys come to this place?"

"No, but if you didn’t know yet, Hades Kostanidis, Beau is as much the king of New Orleans as your cousin is of technology. Every time you stepped into this fight club, we knew."

"And you never told my brothers or cousins?"

"Cousin. I suppose you're talking about Christos Lykaios. Neither he nor your brothers knew. But as for Odin? Ask yourself that question and tell me if you believe he doesn't keep an eye on your every sneeze. Maybe he was just giving you space to deal with your ghosts."

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Hades?" Odin asks when I enter an office that from the outside looked like a warehouse.

As soon as I left the club, Roman took me to a car and said Odin and Beau would be waiting for me somewhere. I know neither of them can stand still on the street, inside a vehicle, like normal people. They both have many enemies.

Beau just greeted me when I arrived and then left this room, leaving us alone.

"Dealing with my demons. The DNA test results arrived two days ago. King is indeed mine. And it's not just that. I asked Ares to examine the drinks in my grandfather's office. If it was Pam who drugged my drink—or rather, the drinks that were in the library, because all the bottles were spiked—she never removed them from there."

"No, she didn't." He takes the phone from his suit pocket and hands it to me.

"What's this for?"

"Your grandfather had cameras inside the house."

"What?"

"I'm assuming Pam or Vina didn't know about them. Especially not your ward, since I didn't find anything incriminating the housekeeper in the recordings."

"What's on them, then?"

"What interests us: the whole event involving Pam and the drinks. And also you and Kennedy. Don't worry, I didn't watch as soon as I realized what was happening. Voyeurism isn't one of my perversions."

I still don't click on the video to start the recording. "Are you telling me my grandfather, even after he died, was still monitoring that house?"

"Not from beyond the grave." He gives one of his rare smiles. "But the service is still active, being paid for by automatic debit from the Kostanidis Group. He hired a security company to do the job. I still need to study all the footage carefully. I focused only on recordings from three years ago until now. It's a lot of footage, and it'll take a while to unravel everything."

"Why did he do that? No one else lived there."

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