Page 97 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy
They certainly thought so. Helpless rage coiled in Achilles’s chest as they searched him next, their hands efficient and thorough, finding his last knife. He’d already left his phone behind in their escape. He kept his gaze locked on his father throughout the humiliating process. “Is this how you treat all your guests?” he asked.
“Only the ones who come armed to family reunions. At ease, young wolf,” his father replied, blood beading on his sun-damaged forearms. He was already tying ragged pieces of cloth over his injuries like they were an everyday occurrence. “We won’t be killing each other today.”
One of the searchers discovered the necklace in Achilles’s pocket, the silver chain slithering out like a serpent, the cross catching snatches of sunlight. Achilles gave them a level look, and after a pointed glance from their great leader, they hastily returned it.
He met eyes with Bris, whose gaze had latched onto the keepsake she’d given him. Yes, he hadn’t thrown it out, just like he’d never abandon her like their parents had done to them. Would she understand that as the message he meant?
“I hope that your stay here will be… educational,” Eleni said. He let out a bright chuckle, his amusement creasing his sweat-dampened face.
Achilles’s shoulders hunched, not in the mood to play nice with the traitorous priest. He’d filled his head with all sorts of nonsense. A shrine to his father? Really! These people were brainwashed! The real O Skia was a guerrilla leader, who’d kept their country locked in endless civil war, not a martyr, not heroic!
And now Bris was in danger! He studied her face, the black hair curling tighter in the humidity, the glow of perspiration on her olive skin and the rose flush in her cheeks. Despite the sweltering heat, he pulled her closer, needing her solid presence against his ribs.
The armed men guided them under the ancient olive canopy toward the main building, where the thick limestone walls promised some sanctuary from this oppressive air.
“Nice headquarters,” Achilles said flatly, staring at the crumbling mortar and warped wooden doors darkened by decades of oil and weather. “Is this where you torture secrets from your captives between olive pressings?”
“Oh, you like it? Maybe you can draw your Myrdon friends a nice map. We didn’t survive this long just to show the enemy the location of our base.” Achilles flinched as if he’d been slapped—the enemy. That was all he was to this man—he’d do everything in his power to never forget it. O Skia jerked his head toward the entrance, motioning for them to follow.
Their footsteps echoed over worn cement floors scarred by decades of harvest work. Clay oil jars stood stacked in neat rows,the authentic smell of olive oil hung heavy in the air—earthy, rich, and comforting.
A simple setup of wooden chairs and a scarred table waited in the center of the workspace, the furniture hand-carved and polished smooth by generations of use. Brass oil lamps cast dancing shadows on whitewashed walls where hooks held harvesting tools that looked more like medieval weapons in the flickering light.
Peleus gestured at their surroundings with a sardonic smirk. “Not exactly five-star accommodations, but it beats being shackled in a palace dungeon.”
“Why?” Achilles’s voice cut through the lame attempt at a joke. “Why did you turn against your people, against…us? You said it yourself—you betrayed your family, your friends, everyone.”
O Skia’s broad shoulders squared against the stone archway, and his dark amusement melted from his face. Suddenly Achilles could see the true man beneath—wary, exhausted, carved hollow by years of loss and bloodthirst. Not pretty, but real. “You were Chises Mnon’s hostages. What could I do? Go after you and get you all shot in the crossfire? It killed me that I couldn’t take you away, so yes, I betrayed you. I wasn’t strong enough to get you, and I spent every day regretting the life I led that divided us forever!”
Achilles let out a bitter laugh despite the soldiers and their guns—what kind of excuse was that? Had the great military commander wanted to reach them, he would’ve found a way. O Skia had abandoned them for the wealth of this island, pure and simple.
His father’s temper flashed in his dark eyes. “Do you think I didn’t want you back? That I wasn’t constantly trying to find a way? Every birthday, every holiday, every milestone—I ached to be with my family.”
“You abandoned your wife to Atreus Mnon.”
“Had I known that sooner—” His voice cracked with anguish.
What? Then he would've wrung his hands over her the same way he did over his lost children?Achilles’s anger erupted at the pathetic excuses, remembering the shadow of the woman his mother had become after marrying the youngest royal brother, trapped with that bloodthirsty psychopath for the sake of her children while her spirit slowly died. Now their country suffered in much the same way.
“You hid out here, playing soldier with these hero worshipers who fed your ego.” Achilles couldn’t keep the emotion from thickening his voice, the pain he felt at being abandoned to a man who hated him.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. “Now our people starve! They live in homes decaying from neglect while you sit on what should be the richest land in the Mediterranean! What good does your wealth do anyone? You failed the people with Operation C.I.R.C.E.”
“Operation C.I.R.C.E.,” Peleus repeated, warily this time. He sank into one of the wooden chairs with a creak that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. A strange kind of relief flickered across his expression as he shifted from personal wounds to the safer ground of military history. The brass lamps cast harsh shadows across his features. “After I married Clysta, we thought we had the whole world ahead of us. She took off time from her music career to spend her days with you. We moved to the capital, lived in a villa in Ilion with marble columns near the palace. Achilles, you spent good years there, running through the grounds, finding friends like Peder, Venice.”
O Skia glanced over at Bris, his eyes darkening into a storm when he studied her. “Chises Mnon was my closest friend, and our family was happy… until I returned to the island of Clysta’s birth and realized what the soldiers were doing behind my back. You want to know about Operation C.I.R.C.E.?” He let out aheavy sigh. “It was a cover for foreign invaders, but instead of open warfare, they were drilling and hoarding what they could of our country’s precious resources, using our people as slave labor, and I was expected to enforce that nightmare?”
Achilles’s thoughts turned bitter as he leaned back against the hard chair, feeling the legs creak beneath his weight—his father did more than enforce it, he’d profited from human misery. His friends, those who trusted him, must’ve been devastated by his betrayal. “What? Are you trying to tell me you were just following orders? That you didn’t know any better?”
“None of us understood the scope of what was happening, and I didn’t either,” Peleus’s voice echoed in the stone chamber. “The island was isolated with almost no communication with our leaders. They dropped me here with fifty men in the middle of a civilian uprising, and that’s when I received my orders—massacre all dissidents and their families.”
Bris’s sharp intake of breath cut through the musty air. Achilles saw her knuckles white against the table’s dark wood. “You think my father would order such a thing?” she asked.
“No,” O Skia answered simply. His eyes never left her pale face. “Not back then he wouldn’t… these orders came from Atreus Mnon. He was working behind his brothers’ backs. I thought your father would understand once he knew the truth, once I told him about his brother’s betrayal. And so… I made the mistake of being one of the first to disobey his orders. It led me down a path where I could never return.”
Ah yes, he was going with Priest Eleni’s starry eyed bedtime story that made a god out of the island’s war hero. Achilles glanced over at the man who’d betrayed them earlier as he listened on with fanatical devotion.
“The battle was a bloodbath.” His father’s eyes blazed as he stared into the dancing lamplight. “My men turned against each other, brother fighting brother. Not one of us left that daywithout blood on our hands. I became the very monster I’d sworn to fight.” The bitterness in his voice made the stone walls seem to press closer, suffocating them all with the weight of the past.
