Page 7 of The High Priestess

His mouth lifts in a sneer before he backhands me across the face. As my head whips to the side, he says, “Never forget your place. You’re not in charge yet. You’ll go to the damn island and get my money back from that farce of an alliance.”

When he storms out of the kitchen, I hear my siblings' breaths speed up, and Kiki is the first to let out a sob.

Mom rushes around the table, and wrapping her arms around me, she hugs me tightly as she says, “We’ll find a way to control him. You did the right thing by agreeing with him.”

I shake my head, and my tone is heavy with worry. “He’ll get us all killed. The bratva is too powerful for us to take down.”

“Let’s get past Eleni’s birthday, and then you can deal with your father.” Mom pulls back, and lifting her hand to my face,she gently cups my cheek. It’s still stinging from when Dad backhanded me.

Yeah, but how do I deal with this mess? There’s not much I can do until Dad steps down and names me the head of the organization.

And God only knows if and when that will happen.

My body is shaking violently, and I suck in a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm down.

Mom gives me another hug before framing my face with both her hands. Her eyes sparkle with unshed tears as she says, “You did good,agápi mou.I’m proud of you.” Her hands move down to settle on my shoulders. “You’ll make a great leader, but for now, we have to bide our time. Okay?”

I nod and suck in another calming breath.

My sisters come to give me hugs, then Eleni wraps her arm around my lower back and rests her head against my shoulder. “We’re all here for you.”

Without them, I wouldn’t survive this brutal world. I need to dig deep and somehow become more powerful than my father.

But how?

Chapter 3

KNIGHT

Standing to the side near the SUVs, I’m holding an automatic machine gun while my eyes scan the shipping docks.

Santiago is busy meeting with a businessman who needs to be safely extracted from Albania. From what I understand, the man got his hands on sensitive data and the company he’s employed with now wants him dead.

I’ve been working with Santiago for over two years, placing me in the position where I’m able to kill the most evil motherfuckers.

Like the ones who murdered my sister.

The image of Ronnie’s lifeless body flashes through my mind, and my jaw clenches as my finger tightens around the trigger. While I was away from home on a tour as a Navy Seal, my sister was grabbed from her campus and sold into sex slavery. She suffered for nine months before I was able to track her down.

But I was too late. The fuckers pumped her full of cocaine, and she overdosed while some bastard was raping her.

Sweat starts to bead on my forehead and the back of my neck, and I have to try to forcefully shove the gruesome image from my mind for the zillionth time.

Santiago found me after I killed every single fucker responsible for Ronnie’s death. I was standing among a pile of bodies when his men breached the house where my baby sister died. Apparently, the same assholes who took Ronnie grabbed the girlfriend of one of his soldiers, and they were there to get her back.

The day I lost Ronnie, I also lost my will to live.

Ronnie and I grew up in a rough neighborhood, and our father wasn’t around much, because he was too busy getting drunk. Our mother up and left the night before Christmas. After that, Ronnie and I only had each other. As her much older brother it was my duty to take care of her.

She was my entire life. That’s why I joined the Navy. I wanted to make something of myself so I could provide for her. She was studying to become an engineer and had a bright future ahead of her.

A tremble ghosts through my body as the past creeps around the edges of my mind. It’s always there to haunt me, and when there’s no work to be done and things are quiet, it fucking torments me to within an inch of my sanity.

It’s a fucking miracle I haven’t pulled the trigger on myself.

Yet.

Santiago ends the meeting and watches as the businessman gets into a container that’s been rigged with an air conditioning unit, the interior looking like a luxurious living room.

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