by Cat Mann
****
The more time I spent with the Alexanders, the more I learned about myself and where I and the other Greeks of Dana Point had come from; I learned that when anyone is suspected of being a descendant of the Greeks, he or she is asked, “Who are you?” Earlier, after Rory and Ari had both asked me who I was and I hadn’t responded with a breakdown of family history, they both assumed I was a watered-down version of a forgotten-about deity. I know now that I am Ava Zae Baio, a Moirai from Atropos and Lachesis. In English, I am known as a Fate. I determine destiny, I measure and cut the thread of life. I have the ability to focus on any person, find his or her thread and cut it. If I want, I can tell the exact second that someone is destined to die, and, if I feel so inclined, I can spare them and allot more time.
My dad, Adrian Moirai, was the most powerful Greek of our time. His mother had been a direct descendant of Lachesis and his father had come from Atropos. Together they had made a very valuable and prized commodity. My father was proud of his abilities and boasted about them – and the Kakos hunted him down when he was still very young.
When the Kakos found my father, he was living with Andy and Thais’ family in California. My father’s parents had worried that their son would be mixed up with the Kakos and had sent him to live with the Alexanders when he was still a small child. I learned that my father’s parents had stayed behind in Greece. They had been killed three days after they sent their son to America. My father had had to cut his own parents’ threads. Andy told me that being so connected to his parents’ deaths had made my father bitter and that he had never forgiven himself for it.
Andy and my dad had been extremely close. My dad was the one who actually introduced Aggie to Andrew when they were just sixteen. Aggie told me that she had been taking photographs in a park one day and had asked my dad to pose for her. He declined, saying that he knew someone far better looking than himself and that she would be much happier with Andy as a subject.
My dad started working right out of high school. He graduated from DPI in the spring and started his own company that summer. He started buying failing companies and turning them into profitable enterprises. He had made several millions before he turned twenty-five. The Kakos came to him one dark day and offered him more. He was power hungry and couldn’t resist. All he had to do was spare their lives and promise not to continue his own bloodline. If he agreed, he would have all the wealth and power he ever wanted and the Kakos would be free to live forever unharmed. My dad hated who he was. He hated ending lives and had no plans of falling in love or having babies. The darkness that surrounded him kept the expectation of happiness from him.
My dad had known that what he was doing was wrong. Making a deal with the Kakos was what his parents had hoped he would manage to avoid and was the very reason they had sent him to America. Their decision to send their son away also led to their own deaths. Once Adrian made his promise to the Kakos, he fell into a downward spiral and finally hit rock bottom. He was treated for depression in a hospital for some time before being taught by the attending physician how to turn his life back around again. My mother had just finished med school and had taken a job at White Memorial Medical Center. They fell in love immediately and they were married secretly by a justice of the peace.
My father was terrified that the Kakos would find my mom, Lucy, and kill her, so he kept their lives a secret from everyone he knew and loved.
Andy, meanwhile, suspected that my dad had gotten involved with the Kakos and convinced him to come clean one night. My father told Andy what he had done and how devastating the regret he felt was. He told Andy of his love for my mother, the secret marriage, and the unplanned baby on the way. But more than anything, he said, he was terrified that since he had broken his promise to the Kakos, the entire family would be hunted down and murdered.
Andy arranged to keep my father safe for as long as possible. My dad was told never to speak to my mother again if he wanted to keep her alive. He tried to stay away but when he found out that she had gone into labor, he couldn’t resist trying to see her once more. He went to the hospital with the intention of seeing her again, with their baby in her arms, but the Kakos were waiting for him and he never made it through the front doors.
Andy searched for my mother and me but didn’t know her name or anything about her. Nor did he know my name or even if I had been born a boy or a girl. He felt that I would be the key to ending the war with the Kakos, but he also knew that as hard as he was looking, the Kakos were looking even harder. It was only a matter of time before they found and killed me.
