Page 91 of Reaper’s Wrath

Kairos smooths his hair back and out of his eyes, his breathing slowly recovering. “I have no fucking clue.”

“Where’s Tessa?”

“I told her to stay in her room until I came to get her. I guess she listened, for once.”

“Miracles do happen.”

Kai huffs a laugh and steps away from the body. “It would appear so.”

“And the others?”

“Stavros and a few of the crew went to the mainland for supplies earlier. The old man went with them but must have come back early. I was sitting here trying to figure out what I was going to do when I heard him come back. I talked to Tessa, then confronted him. You know the rest.”

“We need to figure out a plan for when they return.” I don’t expect Stavros to take this well, and I’m not sure where loyalties will lie with the other men.

“Do you think they’ll accept our takeover?” Kai asks, snaring my full attention.

“Is that what we’re doing?”

“I don’t know why not.”

I nod because it makes sense. The Greek may have been a monster, but he was also the head of a lucrative operation. What else would we do if not take over? “I think they’ll fall into line. Not sure about outsiders.”

“I don’t see how our internal operations are any of their fucking business.” He shrugs. “No one’s laid eyes on the Greek in years. What do they care if he’s dead or alive?”

“The name carries a lot of weight,” I point out.

“Then I’ll be the Greek. It’s just a name.”

I nod again, this time with more conviction. “You’re not wrong.”

“Of course, I’m not.”

I smirk. “Pompous ass.”

“Hey, watch how you talk to me. I’m your new goddamn partner.” He extends his hand, and I give it a firm shake. As our hands come apart from one another, a gasp draws our attention to the window. Stavros is outside, watching in horror as we shake hands over the Greek’s dead body.

Eyes hardening, the older man darts out of sight.

Kai and I look at one another before bolting for the door. By the time we make it outside, Stavros is in a golf cart used for getting around the island and racing toward the docks.

“He’ll be in a skiff and onto the main island before we reach the dock,” Kairos states in a grave tone.

“Let him run. There’s nothing we can do about it now, and he’s only one man. The others must be at the barracks.” I don’t like it any more than Kai, but that won’t change anything.

“Help me get rid of the old man, then we’ll come up with a plan to tell the rest.”

“I’ll go round up a tarp.”

Kairos and I settled on a new joint-ownership arrangement to run the Greek’s business alongside the men who chose to stay on with us. We debated whether allowing them to leave alive was too great a threat and decided we’d seen enough senseless killing. If they wanted to go, we let them leave. Only two chose that route.

Kai chose to stay on the island with Tessa while I have been making the rounds on the Calypso. He’s been digging through the back end of the business, trying to get a grasp of the financials. Apparently, the Greek’s filing system wasn’t spectacular. Without a paper trail, figuring out transaction histories isn’t easy, and we need that sort of information to determine what was going on.

We agreed that any endeavors either of us objected to would be left behind. First and foremost, that meant no children. No kidnapping. No trafficking. No profiting off either of us in any way.

While I keep things running, Kai has been trying to identify revenue streams and determine if they’re conscionable enough to continue. Then he’s going to see where the remaining income leaves us. We have enough in assets that a simple investment strategy would keep us afloat, but we’re not the sort of men to sit back and coast. Especially knowing Stavros is still out there.

We have to stay on our game, which is what I’m doing when I come across a boat I suspect of smuggling drugs through our islands, only to discover that isn’t the only contraband on board. It’s the first time since we took over that we’ve come across children. It happened a few times in the past, and we were always ordered to forget they existed.