Three Alpha Romeo

“I got it, alright?” I stood up to leave, but not before leaning down to give each of them a quick peck on the cheek. I don’t even know why I did it. It seemed a little odd, all things considered.

But is it really though?

The more I thought it over, the more I realized it wasn’t. I felt an instant kinship to the both of them, in that we shared common ground. Maybe it was also because we’d become close, like a team.

Or in some cases… a lot closer than that.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Holden assured me. “Get whatever you need.”

“And pick up milk,” Randall added cheerfully. “And cookies. American cookies. None of these weird Greek brands.”

I put a hand on my hip. “You do realize we’re in Greece, right?”

“Yeah?” he said innocently. “So?”

I shook my head as I walked out, melting into the tourist-filled crowd. The streets would thin out soon, I knew. People here tended to go home earlier than they did back… well, back…

Home.

It still felt strange, calling it that. I hadn’t been Stateside in I couldn’t remember how long. There were times I wasn’t even sure I’d be going back, partly because I had nothing to go back to. But mostly because I knew it would remind me of him.

My father.

There were times too, when I wondered if I were chasing ghosts. Xander Kyrkos might’ve been responsible for ordering my father’s death, but in the end it was my father who’d been the one who’d chosen his own path. Indigo could be as significant or insignificant as I wanted it to be. I had my own life to live. My own path to take… all I had to do was walk it.

I could’ve just as easily let it all go. Until now, that is.

Not now, though.

No, definitely not now. After last night, I was on their radar. They’d find me wherever I went — chase me down, the way I’d been chasing after Kyrkos. I’d started this whole thing as the hunter. Now I was the hunted as well.

But he was my father, and I loved him. No, I adored him. And he, me.

My thoughts were still conflicted as I ducked into the first supermarket I saw. My father had worked tirelessly for the scum who’d killed him. But that also meant he’d done a lot of bad things. Terrible, terrible things.

Things that made me wonder if he deserved what he’d ultimately gotten.

I was only sixteen when it happened, and even then I knew the hole left by his disappearance would never be filled. In the years that followed I’d be well-funded, well-taken care of, but no amount of money could ever take his place. I had the best clothes. The best schools. The best of everything. Yet all of it left the same unquenchable level of emptiness.

An emptiness I knew would never go away as long as Xander Kyrkos was still breathing… and my father was not.

As I walked the aisles, picking through items, I came to the same realization I always did. A compromise with myself really:

My father was gone. There was no path I could take that would ever lead me back to him again.

But no matter what, Alexander Kyrkos needed to die.

Fourteen

ANDREA

Somehow the boys arrived home before I did. I unloaded everything I was carrying into the little office, and began calling for them loudly as I wandered the gym.

“Over here,” I heard Randall say. “In the living room.”

The ‘living room’ was pretty much the couch area back at the far corner. Only now it consisted of something else too: a flat-panel television, hooked up to something that looked like a very fancy, very expensive miniaturized satellite dish.

“We upgraded?” I joked, sinking into the couch.