Page 1 of Before Broken Vows

1

THEO

The man is already bleeding when I step into the warehouse.

I shrug off my jacket, tossing it over a rusted hook by the door. My dress shoes make a faint sound against the cracked concrete as I walk toward him.

His head jerks up at the noise. One eye is swollen shut, blood crusted thick along his temple. He's breathing hard through a broken nose, blood bubbling faintly with every shallow inhale.

When his good eye lands on me, recognition flickers across his battered face, and with it, the desperate edge of fear.

He's slumped in the chair we bolted to the floor, wrists zip-tied behind his back, mouth torn raw at the corners from when one of my men got a little too creative—or bored—waiting for me to arrive.

Yannis.

That's his name. But names don't matter here. What matters are the numbers, the transactions, and the shadows shifting behind the accounts.

I drag a chair across the floor, the metal shrieking, and set it directly in front of him and sit. Like we're two old friends catching up over coffee instead of separated by power and the inevitability that only one of us is walking out of here alive.

I study him for a moment as one of my men steps forward, hands me a manila folder, and returns to guarding the door.

"Yannis, I'm—" I say.

"Go fuck yourself," he says, interrupting me and spitting blood at the floor. "I know who you are."

I smile, slow and cold. Some may think I should put a bullet right in his head for that level of disrespect, but not me. No, that response tells me he's scared, he's lost, and I've won. I mean, I'm not the one tied to a chair.

"You work for Sebastian Makris," I say.

His lip curls. "Worked. Past tense."

"Ah yes. My brother made sure of that, didn't he?" I say with a laugh and open the folder. "Anyway, you're running the Athenian Warriors now, I hear. Good thing you weren't at the restaurant that night we stormed it or I wouldn't be talking to you now."

Yannis spits more blood onto the floor. "You think you're scary because you pay someone to smash my face?"

I lean forward slightly. "No. I'm scary because you're still breathing."

He swallows. I let the silence linger for a moment and look down at the papers I'm holding.

"You can make this easy, Yannis. Just tell me who's been depositing those payments."

"I don't know what you're talking about." His swollen eye twitches. "Besides, even if I did, they would kill me if I?—"

I lift a hand, silencing him. "Right now, I'm the only one you should worry about killing you."

I jab the corner of the folder into his ribs, making him flinch.

"You see, I have a problem. I traced all these deposits made to Athenian Warrior accounts through Athens Central Bank. Big numbers. Clean laundering. Whoever's backing you has money and reach."

I shove the page in front of his face so he can see it.

"At first, I thought it was George Zervas."

His face twitches, betraying a flicker of confusion.

"But it's not," I say softly, pulling the paper away. "And that surprised me."

Zervas and my family—we're allies now. In theory.