I looked out the window at the falling snow. “Yep. Somewhere between trying to decide if I should shoot him or stab him, it happened.”

“Then you need to stop looking at everything you gave up to be here and accept this is your life now.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Good. Now I need you to do me a favor for keeping all your secrets from Papa and Mama.”

“What’s that?”

“Keep to tradition and play the hellion Mykos heiress one more time before you become the respectable Drakos wife.”

I smiled, loving my big brother for always accepting me and all of my antics. “Consider it an early Christmas present.”

Chapter Four

I entered the palatial ballroom in the heart of the Morelli mansion and immediately felt my heartbeat accelerate. Not because I was worried about returning to the fold, as Tyler had put it, but because I was going to have to face Simon.

“This place is impressive,” I whispered to Tyler.

“The Morellis know how to throw a party.”

A beautiful mix of silver and gold with pops of red, blue, and green decor filled the room, giving it an enchanted feel. Everything was elegant and screamed wealth and affluence. Exactly what a Hamptons Christmas affair would entail.

And with a gathering like this, there was a purpose. For some to make connections, others to be seen, and for the majority, it was business.

The Mykos and Drakos families fell into the latter category.

Simon and I were business.

We represented a merger worth nearly one hundred million dollars.

Not a literal merger but a familial one.

A union that many hoped would never take place.

The unanticipated benefit of my great aunt breaking her engagement and causing a rift between the Mykos and Drakos families was the profitability of territory wars and rivalries, specifically to the extended family and business partners who carried out the tasks involved in maintaining the feud.

With my marriage, enemies had to become allies, and opportunities to undercut each other decreased. The money everyone would receive from the trust wouldn’t match the benefits or the power they’d lose as soldiers and generals in the conflict between the families.

I had no doubt countless Mykoses and Drakoses were hoping with every fiber of their beings for the Mykos hellion to make some sort of stand against the wedding she’d refused to accept since she was a teen. What would they say if I told them I’d fallen for the groom and the marriage was a done deal?

I scanned the crowd of elegantly dressed couples and searched for my parents.

“Come on. The family is over there.” Tyler hooked my hand around his elbow. “And for the record, no one knows about you and Drakos but me, Nico, Damon, and Evan.”

“I figured.”

If one of my brothers knew something, more than likely the others did as well. It was how they operated.