Chapter 9: Corrupted Heart: Chapter 9

“Did you follow protocol getting into the hotel?”

I nod as Taylor smooths a lock of red hair back into place, glancing out the big window of the hotel suite and down to the Meatpacking District below.

“Yup. Took a cab to the French restaurant down the street, slipped out the back door, stayed out of sight, and entered the hotel via the service entrance.”

“You’re sure you weren’t followed?”

“Positive.”

She turns to give me a wary half-smile. “Just checking all the boxes.”

No, we’re not having a clandestine affair. In fact, I doubt Taylor Crown dates at all, given how married she is to her job.

Taylor’s the “Crown” in the hugely prestigious Crown and Black law firm, which my family uses extensively for both our legitimate and not-so-legitimate business needs. She’s also my personal attorney. Normally, for pretty much anything else, we’d be meeting at their plush offices in Midtown. But not today.

Not for this.

Taylor glances at her watch as my pulse chugs along like thick oil.

“She’ll be here any minute.”

Something sharp and barbed twists in my gut. A cold sensation and the need to escape from something unseen overwhelms me.

“Have you talked to your family about any of this?”

I shake my head. Taylor nods.

“Okay. Just curious.” She clears her throat, folding her arms over her smart, elegant, all-business charcoal gray skirt suit. “Like we discussed, she’s going to try and throw you with all sorts of scary threats. But remember, the CIA cuts deals all the time. Now, again, she’s almost certain to try and use the history between you to rattle you. So let me do the talking.”

I just nod slowly, staring past her out the window.

Yes, Taylor knows Amaya and I have “a history”. But she doesn’t know what the true nature of that history is.

Nobody does. Nobody alive, that is, aside from Amaya and me.

Jesus. One of these days, all the secrets I keep inside might drag me down…or make me explode. But until that day comes, nothing about the situation is going to change. Not even to my lawyer, who’s sworn to attorney-client privilege.

Yeah, Amaya and I have “history” all right.

A dark one.

The sort of history that scars and shapes you, that ends childhoods far too early and molds you into something brutal and twisted.

She helped make me the monster I am today.

But that’s not the reason we’re meeting her today, in a hotel room of all places, so that no one knows about it.

Back then, when it all happened, Amaya Mircari was working for the FBI. My father wanted a friend in the Bureau. He also wanted to “make a man out of me”, since I refused to be his attack dog.

Amaya was gladly able to help with both those things.

That was seventeen years ago. Now, she’s moved on and gone up in the world, switching from the FBI to the CIA. That’s how our paths have managed to cross again.

Because I fucked up.

Our family has been slowly moving most of our business from the shady and illegal to the legitimate. But there’s still a lot of money in smuggling weapons and drugs into this country.

If you do it right, it’s actually pretty low risk. We only work with people we’ve known for years. We keep the exchanges under a certain monetary threshold to avoid close scrutiny, and we always meet on our terms.

But a few weeks ago, I got sloppy.

Ares had been muttering about a dip in profits from the previous quarter’s financial investments. At the same time, I got contacted by a “friend of a friend of a friend”—a merchant who knew someone I’d worked with once, who was friends with someone I deal with regularly. They wanted a huge shipment of weapons.

It was stupid, but they were waving big money around. I got greedy, and it bit me in the ass, hard. Because after the lights went down and the curtain went up, it turned out my new “buyer” was the CIA, conducting an anti-terror sting operation.

On the plus side, I did the drop myself, alone, so none of our guys got picked up. And my family doesn’t know about any of this shit yet, thank fucking God.

But yours truly is royally screwed.

Not just because I’m potentially looking at spending the next thirty years in Federal prison. Even worse, the lead agent on all this is her.

As if on cue, there’s a knock at the door. Taylor turns, her brow furrowing just a little as we lock eyes.

“Seriously. Let me do the talking. The very fact that we’re having this meeting is significant. They want something, and it’s not your ass in prison, or you’d be there already. Got it?”

I just nod.

Yeah, Amaya fucking wants something all right.

As if she hasn’t already taken so much from me.

I’m silent as Taylor straightens her blazer and walks over to the door to the suite. My jaw grinds painfully when she swings it open and a regal-looking woman in her late forties walks in.

Amaya smiles briefly at me. I don’t smile back.

“My my, Kratos,” she says softly. “All grown up now, aren’t we?”

Her hair is dyed blonder than it used to be. Her face has the shiny, tight look that suggests she and Botox are besties now. But those fucking eyes of hers haven’t changed at all.

Dark. Cold. Cruel.

She’s also still got the brutal-looking scar running up the side of her neck. I don’t give a single shit how she got it, but I remember it used to scare me, when I was a kid and we first met.

…Before I found out there were much scarier things about her.

“If you’d like to address my client, you can talk to him via me⁠—”

“And you can take that cunty attitude and ten-thousand-dollar Chanel suit and fuck right off,” Amaya says with a wide, venomous smile at Taylor.

Taylor’s brows arch sharply and her nostrils flare.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Agent Mircari, and I speak fluent bitch. So, we can stand around slinging shit at each other all day, or we can have a productive meeting about⁠—”

“I think it’s time you left, Ms. Crown.”

Taylor almost looks amused. “That’s obviously not happening, Agent Mircari. This is a legal meeting, and I’m Mr. Drakos’ attorney⁠—”

“And I’m about ten seconds away from waving close to a thousand anti-terror provisions in your face courtesy of the Patriot Act, Ms. Crown,” Amaya spits back, with an almost gleeful expression on her face. “We can start with section C, paragraph twenty-seven. Then we’ll move on to provision nine-fifty-two, section D.” She smiles icily at Taylor. “Do I need to keep going?”

I can see the wheels turning in Taylor’s head. I notice the way her jaw clenches. When she turns to me, I already know where this is going.

“Kratos…”

“It’s fine,” I growl quietly.

“With the charges being firearms, and given that it was a terror sting op, she can actually⁠—”

“It’s okay,” I mutter.

“Goodbye, Ms. Crown,” Amaya snaps with a brittle laugh, opening the door for Taylor.

My attorney glances at me once more, her face grim. Then she steps out, the door slamming shut behind her.

The room is quiet as the she-devil from my past slowly turns to me, arms folded over her chest as she leans against the hotel room wall. The seconds tick by in silence as she grins at me, and I glare death right back at her.

“Unbelievable,” she finally says quietly. “You got even bigger.”

“And I can only assume you’ve grown another forked tail, some more horns, and scales,” I hiss quietly.

Amaya chuckles, slowly shaking her head.

“I’ve missed⁠—”

“Fuck you,” I snap.

She scowls.

“Seems like you’ve got yourself in a bad spot, Kratos. And it would also seem I may be your only way out of this mess. So, maybe we act a little more civil to each other?”

I bark out a cold laugh. “You want me to be civil to a piece of shit like you?”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, in any case,” she says, clapping her hands together, “our past⁠—”

“We don’t have a fucking past,” I growl darkly at her. “You’re not my fucking ex, you miserable bitch.”

“Ohhh, I don’t know if that’s true, do you?”

I look away. “What the fuck do you want, Amaya.”

“It’s what the CIA wants, actually,” she shrugs. “Not me.”

“Which is?”

Her smile widens. “Information.”

I snort. “You’re wasting your time. I’m not a rat.”

“No. But you’re a Drakos.”

My eyes flash with rage, my lips curling.

“You’re fucking high if you think I’d ever give you a goddamn thing on my family.”

“Even if it keeps you out of prison?”

“Like I said,” I smile coldly. “Fucking. High.”

She shakes her head sadly. “Like I said, you’re in a rough spot, Kratos. I think you need to face facts. Maybe it’s not your family I want. Maybe it’s the Irish you’re so chummy with.”

“No idea what you’re talking about…cunt.”

Amaya laughs mirthlessly. “Well, I guess we’re going to be changing gears, then.” She takes a deep breath. “I know you don’t care if I threaten you.”

I smile, shrugging. “Not at all.”

“So, here’s what’s going to happen, Kratos. You are going to rat for me. You’re going to get me information on whoever the fuck I want, whenever I want it.”

“Whatever you’re smoking, I’d suggest laying off it a little⁠—”

“If you don’t,” Amaya barrels on, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out a stack of manilla file folders. “Then I start going after the people you care about.”

She slaps the first one on the table between us, and my jaw tightens.

Ares’ name is typed across the front of it.

“Wire fraud, witness intimidation, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, weapons charges, racketeering, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking⁠—”

“If any of this was anything more than conjecture, my brother would already be behind bars.”

She shrugs, dropping another file on the table. This one has Hades’ name on it.

“More trafficking, more murder, more gun charges, grand theft, grand theft auto, impersonating a federal officer, indecent exposure in a moving vehicle…” She smiles. “Shall I go on?”

“Like I said, if you had anything⁠—”

A third folder drops on the table. My jaw clenches when I see Callie’s name.

“You know what all this is, Kratos?” Amaya smiles. “This is a case under the RICO Act. You know, the shit we use to go after mobsters like you and your family. What it means is, we can connect all of you to a criminal conspiracy and charge you all with everything.”

My pulse starts hammering.

“I don’t have the hard evidence yet, you’re right,” Amaya hisses. “But I will soon. And when I do, if you don’t do what I ask, I’ll put your entire family—your brothers, your sister, even your dear old grandmother—in prison for the rest of their lives. Just think: poor little Elias, growing up without his mommy and daddy, because they’re behind bars.”

Rage explodes behind my eyes. My lips curl into a dangerous snarl as I glare death at this witch of a woman.

“The walls are closing in, Kratos. So: get me something big. I don’t care where you start, or who you throw under the bus. But get me something good, a bigger fish, or I go after the biggest one I have right now, which is you and your family.” Her lips draw to a cold smile. “Do we understand each other?”

She makes for the door.

“Do they know what you are?”

Her head turns back to me. “Who?”

“The CIA,” I growl. “Do they know you’re a fucking predator?”

Amaya holds my gaze with hers. “Really? Is that how you think of me?”

“I don’t think about you at all, you miserable cunt. I was thirteen,” I hiss coldly. “I was a fucking child.”

She rolls her eyes. “As if you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

She turns to leave again.

“What I think you are, Amaya,” I snarl, “is a fucking monster.”

“Takes one to know one, Kratos,” she shoots back. Then she grins. “And I guess that means you do still think of me.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Seeing anyone?”

My hands curl to fists. “Go to hell.”

She snickers quietly as she walks to the door. Right before she opens it, she turns to me again.

“To answer your question, Kratos, they don’t give a shit what I am, so long as I put people like you and your family behind bars. Remember that and do what you’re told like a good boy.” She smirks as she opens the door. “You always were good at that.”