Chapter 65

65

Once there, Hades guided Persephone to a private room in the back. Usually he came here for weekly poker nights with his associates and key lieutenants. A spread of food lay on the long table, reminiscent of the one they’d left.

Hades and Charon left her for a moment to speak with Shades in low voices. They came back in and sat down.

Persephone sat and waited. It felt like old times—Hades off doing business while she waited for him.

She took a deep breath and decided she wasn’t going to wait anymore. When Hades turned from speaking to his men, she was standing in the door, arms folded.

His eyes warmed as he approached her, but her next words stopped him cold. “What’s my mother up to? What’s happening with the Titans?”

She watched, fascinated, as the mask slammed down over his features. She was so used to seeing him unguarded with her that watching him face her like she was one of his enemies was novel. Fascinating, even.

He moved into her, herding her back into the room with his body. She let him, even sitting in the seat he pulled out for her.

“Have you eaten?” He didn’t wait for an answer before filling a plate from the family style dishes on the table. “You need to eat.” He set the plate in front of her, full of chicken verdicchio. Her mouth watered; it did smell good.

Instead, she picked up her fork and pointed it at him. “You wanted me to talk to you. I’m here, listening. So talk. Tell me what I’m up against.”

She couldn’t be the girl who stuck her head in the sand anymore. She still wanted nothing to do with Hades’s world. But it didn’t look like his world was going to let go of her so easily. If she was going to live in the light, she had to be aware of the shadows and how to avoid them.

Taking his own plate, Hades sat next to her right, between her and the door. A slight smile quirked his lips. “And to think you were once a meek, country mouse.”

He started eating, arching an eyebrow and nodding toward her own plate. She wouldn’t get anything more out of him until he got his way, so she crammed food in her mouth. The second she did, flavor exploded on her tongue.

A moan of pleasure must have escaped her lips, because Hades bumped her elbow intentionally, and she turned into the full on blaze of his smile. Her mouth nearly dropped open at the sight of it. Instead, she gulped down her food and mumbled, “It’s really good.”

“Two months without Gio’s cooking. You were due.” He rested his hand on her knee, which sent electric little tingles straight to her core. Her body fell into old habits whenever she was around him. Her eyes fell closed. She should move her leg away. And she would. In another minute. Or five.

Gah, what was wrong with her?

She pulled her knee away from Hades’s touch. “Tell me about my mother.”

He let out a long-suffering sigh.

“I was gonna shield you from this?—”

“Wake up, Hades, it’s not working,” she said, a little surprised at her own forthrightness. Athena’s bluntness was rubbing off on her. Hades went still, a sign he was surprised, too. Persephone put her hand over his, damning herself for the action because the electricity was back. Still, she didn’t let go.

“You’re not one hundred percent to blame. I’ve been trying to keep my head in the sand. But it’s not working for me anymore and I need to stop. What’s going on? I’m tired of being in the dark.”

“Poseidon put you in the middle of this,” Hades growled. “He’s a dead man.”

Persephone felt a chill; she knew all too well that he would make good on that promise. The image of Ajax’s limp and disfigured body flashed through her head. And the sound of the wet saw as they prepared to cut him into pieces to send back to the Titans as a ‘message.’ She’d never forget the sound of the wet saw cutting through the night air.

The food didn’t seem so appetizing anymore. She pushed her plate away, and taking a deep breath, she looked up and met Hades’s gaze.

“I’m involved no matter what. Being married to you comes with a price. Not just late nights and hanging around men with guns, or the chance that I might get shot at while eating in a restaurant. I have to be a player too, and you’re keeping information from me.”

“It’s not your fight.”

“Hades, what I don’t know will hurt me. I don’t know what to look for, I don’t know who the threat is. I don’t know who your enemies are.”

“You shouldn’t have to worry about those things.” The vein in his forehead was visible, a sure sign that he didn’t like what she was saying.

Too bad. It was the truth. He thought he could control everything but as much as he might like to pretend otherwise, he wasn’t a god. He couldn’t see everything at once, be everywhere at once.

“You treat me like a child, but I’m not a child. I’m a grown woman. You married a woman and I need to know what we are facing.”

“She’s right,” Charon put in. Persephone turned to him, blinking. She never expected support from his corner. Hades glared at him but the large man could take the heat. “She’s not reckless because she’s stupid. She’s just ignorant.”

“Thank you,” Persephone told him and frowned. “I think.”

Hades glared at them both. “Another reason I don’t want you involved. You get picked up by the cops, you can deny everything.”

She scoffed and tossed her hands in the air. “Hades, I know Santonio has a stable of women. I know the DePetri brother’s run shipments of contraband up and down the coast. I don’t know what Rosco’s men sell on the streets, but my guess is they’d sell anything you want.”

He looked like he wanted to interrupt so she continued before he could, “We have dinner with them; they talk, and so do their girls. I’m not an idiot. I can put the pieces together.”

Hades pushed his chair forward, getting right in her face.

“You don’t get my business. It doesn’t touch you,” he slammed a pointed finger on the table. “You stay clean.”

Maybe before, she would’ve felt intimidated. But not now. Not after all they’d been through together, the good and the bad and the ugly.

“No,” she shook her head vehemently. “You don’t get to make this decision for me anymore. I want to know. If you don’t tell me, then I never want to see you again.”

But he shook his head, too. Stubborn as ever. “You stay clean. My father always kept my mother out of it. When things got deeper, she had his back, but she only knew the surface.”

“And look how well that turned out for her!”

Hades shot back in his chair as if she’d slapped him. She might as well have.

She cringed and ran a tired hand down her face. She was a horrible person to throw his mother’s death in his face like that. “Hades, I— I’m sorry. I should never have—” She shook her head. “I can’t do this.”

She stood up, her chair shoving back, and ran for the staff bathroom. She couldn’t handle being in the same room as him anymore. It was too hard. This was all too fucking hard.

Burying one’s head in the sand had a bad rap. It was a great plan, really. Coming up for air, now that was the stupidest idea she’d had in a long time.

She slammed the bathroom door shut behind her and let out a deep breath. She walked to the sink and turned the faucets on full blast. She leaned over and splashed her face. Again and again and again.

But she couldn’t get clean. She could never get fucking clean. No matter how many times she scrubbed her body top to bottom. Sometimes she took showers so hot her skin blistered, but still it didn’t come off. Eurydice’s blood had seeped through Persephone’s pores down to her bones. She’d never be clean of it.

She didn’t hear the door open at first, not until it slammed into the wall.

Her eyes lifted to the grimy mirror and there was Hades, shoving the door shut with as much force as he’d opened it with. “Wha?—?”

But she didn’t have time to finish her half-formed question or anything else, because before she could even turn off the water faucets, Hades had crossed the space between him and had her in his arms.

He pushed her up against the wall and cradled her face roughly in his hands.

“I will never let what happened to my mother happen to you. Never.” His hands shook, and in the raw pain in his face she could see it.

Holy gods. He’d been right.

She really had held the power all along.

Oh Hades.

How was he breaking her heart when she didn’t have any left to break? She wanted to wrap her arms around him. He looked so lost.

“I wanted you to be clean,” he whispered.

“Then you don’t want me!” She tried to shove him away but he didn’t let her.

And the next moment, his lips were crashing down on hers. She grabbed his shoulders, not sure if she was trying to tug him closer or shove him away. But by the next moment, she was surging up to tiptoe, moaning into his mouth, and giving as good as she got.

Her hips pushed frantically at his, her right leg hooking around his hips so she could press her pelvis closer. She wanted, needed to be close to him as if he was her second half. When he was inside her, she became whole.

This, finally, wasn’t a dream and she’d never needed it more.

“Persephone,” Hades’s groan was deep and feral, ripped from the depths of his heart. He palmed her head, fingers tangled in her wild hair. “I need...”

His eyes were wide, pupils blown. His chest rose and fell, the bellows of his lungs pumping as he teetered on the edge of control. Persephone nodded frantically, helping him claw up her skirt. She needed, too.

With a jerk, Hades’s large hand tore her stockings to shreds. Somehow she undid the button on his pants and unzipped them enough for Hades to shove them down. And she was up, feet leaving the ground, legs twining around Hades’s lean hips as he drove into her, bracing them both against the wall.

She writhed, adjusting to his great girth, scrabbling at his broad shoulders to pull him closer. He propped her higher, letting gravity slide her further onto his thick length, and she cried out as his cock hit spots inside her she’d forgotten existed.

He filled her beyond limit, invading more than her body. She felt him in every corner of herself, in her very soul.

Her eyes watered with the intimacy. It felt so right. She hated to love this powerful, infuriating man, but she’d never stopped needing him.

“Persephone,” Hades’s brow wrinkled at the sight of her tears.

“More,” she ordered. “I need more.”

With a groan, he thrust hard enough to bang her head on the wall. A shelf above them shuddered. A vase fell and shattered on the floor. Persephone didn’t care. Neither apparently did Hades. Shards of glass crunching under his shoes, Hades’s only reaction was to carry her to the opposite wall. He gripped her bottom, angling her body to slam his cock deeper.

It was coming, oh, oh! It was coming. Every muscle in Persephone’s body spasmed as her orgasm shot through her. Her hand flung out, smacking the hand towel dispenser. With a whirring sound, the dispenser started spitting paper wipes in a long line.

“Fuck, Persephone, fuck,” Hades shouted over the dispenser’s whine. She was moaning, her body drawn taut as a bow. Before she snapped, she buried her hands in his dark, silky hair, hanging on for dear life as her orgasm crashed around her.

More paper towels poured out of the dispenser in a white flood, filling the sink. They triggered the soap dispenser, which squirted into the sink, causing the water faucet to start pouring.

Hades slapped his hand on the wall beside Persephone’s head, growling through his climax. “Fuck me. That was?—”

“Yeah,” Persephone panted. Her body trembled in the wake of pleasure. The world was spinning too fast.

Her husband rested his head beside hers, his eyes closed. Beyond him, water gushed into the sink, soaking the paper towels, threatening to overflow onto the floor. The dispenser was still whirring. Soap squirted again and again, coating the glass shards with scented bubbles.

Hades and Persephone raised their heads at the same time to take in the destruction of the small room.

“Fuck,” Hades swore again, resigned. He carried her to the far corner, away from the broken glass.

“Typical,” Persephone muttered, wriggling away as soon as her feet touched the floor. She wrenched down her skirt. The stockings were a lost cause. She tore the remains off. She sighed. Being with him like this again… It felt good, she couldn’t deny it. Great even. And after everything that had happened with Poseidon...she’d been so afraid when those gangsters had kidnapped her. She’d needed the reassurance of Hades’s touch.

But it didn’t change anything. She looked around them and shook her head. “This is why we shouldn’t be together. We’re like...fire and dynamite. We destroy everything we touch.”

“We’re certainly explosive,” Hades said mildly. He tore off a clean sheet of paper, offering it to her. “But Persephone, we belong together. I’d lock you in this room, if I could.”

Couldn’t he see? “That’s not going to work for me, Hades. If I have your back, I need to know who I’m backing. And I need to know what monsters are out in the darkness, so I can help defend us. So I can help fight.”

His deep eyes stared into hers, pulling her into unfathomable darkness.

“You think that when your enemies come for me they’re going to spare me because you never told me about them? I’m the weak link, Hades. I don’t want to be anymore.”

“Fine.” He sighed. “You want to know my enemies. I’ll give you the list.”

Her eyes widened; he was actually going to share?

“I don’t need to know everything, Hades. Maybe start with the major players and work down from there,” she suggested.

His mouth twitched, and for a moment he looked like he would laugh. “Gods, I forgot,” he said.

“What?”

“How cute you are.”

“Hades. The list.”

“You know Poseidon. Started in shipping, now owns the largest privately held fleet in the world. Ships oil and goods all over the world. My father helped him get his start, financed some of his first shipments, back when New Olympus was a major port.”

“So what’s the shipment?” She already knew what it was, but she wanted to know if Hades would tell her the truth finally.

“Drugs. Something new. Supposed to be more benign than coke.”

“Didn’t they say that about heroin?” She pushed out of the bathroom, needing to be out of the small space.

The back room was as empty as they’d left it, their food untouched.

Hades watched her pace. “You see why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“I know the business you’re in. Better I find out from you than someone else, or worse, just catch a stray bullet.”

He came after her, caught her in his arms. “Never, ever joke about that.” He gave her a little shake.

She put her hands on his arms. “You made your bed. I married you. We both lie in it.”

“I live by a Code. And if I didn’t control the drug market, someone else would. We sell to adults, not kids. The Shades are disciplined; if anyone else moves in, things would get worse. It’d be war.”

“The Titans,” she said, searching his face. “My mother and uncles. They want to move in.”

Hades swore. He let her go, but she cupped his face with both hands. “Tell me.”

“If we don’t deliver Poseidon’s shipment and his cut of our take, he’ll bring his business to the Titans.”

“Can you stop them?”

“Not if they ally with Poseidon. If that happens, things get ugly.”

“What’s ugly?” Persephone asked, even though she could guess.

“War,” Hades confirmed.

Persephone blew out a long breath. The Titans aligning with someone like Poseidon would give them enough power to make a move on New Olympus.

“We’ve been preparing. I wanted to make peace with Poseidon, but the missing shipment is a sticking point. This drug is his baby, and he wants it back.”

For a moment they sat in silence while Hades poured a glass of wine and tasted it. He offered it to Persephone but didn’t release it. Instead, he tipped the glass until the red liquid washed her lips.

“What about the death threats?” Persephone asked.

“What about them?”

“You said you were getting them, going to go into hiding.”

“I’m certain that either the Titans or Poseidon are behind them. I can’t retreat now, not with things heating up.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “At some point this shit is going to blow over, and we’re going to talk about us.”

She let out a sigh and leaned her head against his chest. She liked hearing his heartbeat and it meant she didn’t have to look him in the face. “Maybe once the death threats let up.”

He ran his fingers through her hair. “You’re going to have nightmares after all this.” He muttered, sounding unhappy.

“I already do,” she said before she thought it through, and wanted to kick herself when his entire body tensed.

“When we work things out, I‘ll help you get over them.”

His words let loose a flood of desire. She couldn’t stop the shiver that started at the core of her and radiated out into the rest of her body. Hades’s face got intense and she knew he saw it.

“Come on.” She smoothed down her hair. “They’ll be missing us.”

“Later,” he promised. “Soon.”

At his words, she felt another shiver, but fortunately he didn’t see this one. He was busy pulling open the door, no doubt to signal Charon it was safe to return. Soon after, Charon reappeared.

“We good?” Charon rumbled.

Hades raised his eyebrows at her.

“For now,” Persephone didn’t take her eyes off her husband.

“Good. Because we got a situation.”

Hades straightened, waved a hand to Charon to continue talking in front of Persephone. She sat quietly, feeling oddly pleased.

“Got word from my contacts inside the force. The shipment was large so they put it in a warehouse for confiscated evidence. One box was opened in his sight, dusted for prints.”

“No way only one box was opened.”

Charon confirmed. “They opened the rest of them after checking them. Only Ajax’s prints on them; our guys wore gloves. But now the boxes are empty. Contents removed. My guy checked.”

“How’d he miss it before?”

“Because he’s fucking stupid. Checked one box, didn’t think to check the others.”

Hades cocked his head, and Persephone could tell he was supremely annoyed. “So someone got to the boxes when they were in evidence.”

“Not unlike what we were planning.”

“Who would do that?” Persephone asked. “Who had access?”

Hades leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. “I think it’s time we revisited our friend the Mayor.”

Persephone bit her lip. She’d been there the night the mayor’s man had promised that the shipment would be returned to Hades within the week. Obviously that hadn’t happened.

“You won’t get anywhere near him.” Charon said. “He hasn’t returned our messages for two months—what makes you think you can do it now?”

Hades glanced at Persephone. “A little persistence will wear anyone down.”

Persephone resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Hades was already counting himself the victor.

“Send Persephone,” Charon said. “I bet we can get a meet with the mayor, if she’s the front.”

Persephone’s body tightened.

“Absolutely not,” Hades lost his cool and growled at his second in command.

“What choice do we have?” Charon shot back. “We’ve tried every channel. She could walk right in, no problem.”

“I don’t want her involved,” Hades said.

“Like it or not, Poseidon made the right play,” Charon said and the room turned arctic.

“What?” Hades breathed, facing his underboss with enough rancor that Persephone put her hand on his arm.

“Don’t like that he took her, but it got you to sit down and chat. Maybe we’ve been going around the wrong way. Someone like her can walk right in—no one sees her as a threat.”

“She’s not—” Hades started.

“Is it safe?” Persephone interrupted.

The two men stared at her.

“You’d be covered. It’s the mayor’s office. No one will touch you,” Charon said, but her husband spun his chair around and pulled hers closer.

“No, babe,” Hades cupped her face. “You don’t have to do this.”

It was her fault the cops grabbed the shipment in the first place. Maybe if she could make it right, Hades would forgive her once he found out what she’d done.

“I want to. I want to help.” She looked into his deep brown eyes, drawing strength from them. “What do I have to do?”