Even the pain as her heart broke into tiny pieces.
DRAGAN REACHED back to pull Maeve to his side and slide his arm around her shoulders. “Mae, this is my brother Gabriel. You did it, sweet. You found them!” He hugged her tightly, his heart so full of love and joy that he thought he might explode. “The others?” he asked, meeting Gabriel’s gold-touched gaze, almost afraid to ask the question.
But Gabriel grabbed his shoulder in a comforting grip. “All free, brother. You’re the last one. Nico called us here tonight, because he was certain you’d been freed, too, but didn’t know where. We were setting out to look for you.”
Dragan kissed the top of Maeve’s head. “Maeve did it. She broke the curse and got me away from that bastard. And she found you, too.”
Gabriel froze, head tilted in question. “What bastard?”
“Sotiris,” he hissed. “He’s had me for decades.”
“Fuck me. Why?”
Dragan gave a bitter laugh. “Why does he do anything?”
“You’re right. Stupid question.”
“Gabriel, we should go inside,” Hana interrupted, scanning the street with increasing nervousness.
“Right. Why are we standing out here? Come on.” Taking Hana’s hand, he put the other arm around Dragan’s neck to steer him toward the door, but Maeve held back.
“I didn’t lock the SUV. I didn’t even close the door. You go ahead,” she told him. “I’ll catch up.” Dragan gave her an uneasy look and started to say something, but Gabriel spoke first.
“Move your car inside,” he said, gesturing at the spacious courtyard, which despite the five vehicles already parked there, had plenty of space for more. “We can lock the gates after you, now that everyone’s here.” He slapped Dragan’s shoulder with a grin.
Everyone, Dragan thought to himself. Was it possible, after all this time, that they truly were together again? He kept thinking he’d wake up any minute, that this was all a nightmare masquerading as a dream. But he’d no sooner thought it than Gabriel was pulling him into his embrace, full of exuberance as he pounded his back all over again. Dragan returned the gesture, in self-defense if nothing else, but he was grinning like an idiot. There was no longer any doubt this was real. He’d have the bruises tomorrow to prove it.
“I’ll be right back,” Maeve said from behind him.
Dragan would have twisted out of Gabriel’s grip to go with her, but then Hana said, “I’ll go with you.”
“Let them go,” Gabriel said easily. “It’s safe here, and if not, Hana can handle it.”
“So can Mae,” Dragan added quickly. “I wouldn’t be here without her.”
“So we’re both lucky then. Come on, let’s—”
“No, I’ll wait until they’re back.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it? All right, we’ll wait together then. Though they might take our waiting as a sign we doubt their skills.”
Dragan smiled. “I’ll take that risk.” But his gaze never left Maeve as she walked through the gates and down the street to the SUV, whose doors were, in fact, standing open. There’d been something in her eyes when he’d turned to find her watching him greet Gabriel. A sadness that she’d quickly covered up. He needed to time alone with her to find out what was going on in that brilliant head. Time that they weren’t going to get any time soon. But for now, he’d keep an eye on her, because she might not think so, but he understood his Mae.
MAEVE WALKED slightly ahead of Hana as they passed through the gates and down the quiet street to where the SUV stood, looking as if it had been abandoned in the middle of a car chase. It was lucky that this was an expensive neighborhood, where no one would bother with her economical vehicle. Or maybe the neighbors knew about Nick Katsaros’s penchant for hanging around men with guns. This was, after all, Florida, and Katsaros’s house fronted the Intracoastal Waterway which fed into the Atlantic. Maybe they thought he was a drug kingpin and didn’t want to mess with him.
“Is this yours?” Hana asked, pointing at the SUV.
“Yes. It was a graduation gift from my parents.” She could have kicked herself for adding that last bit. It made her sound as if she’d just graduated from high school, damn it. “Let me move some things,” she muttered, and leaned in to snag the few empty cans and plastic bottles that were the inevitable result of a long road trip. Tossing them in the back seat to be dealt with later, she slid behind the wheel and closed her door, just as Hana did the same on the other side.
“I broke Gabriel’s curse, too,” Hana said, as casually as if she’d been talking about picking him up from work. “It’s kind of a thing with these guys.”
“A thing?” Maeve asked weakly.
“The others—Kato and Damian—are with the women who freed them, too. The way Sotiris wrote the curses . . . he wanted them to be as difficult to break as possible, so each curse demanded not only a woman who would act in a way completely contrary to what he knew about women at the time, but also contrary to what he knew about the guys. Fortunately, not even he could have foreseen how long they’d be imprisoned, or how much women would have changed in the meantime. Fucker.”
“Do you . . . know anything about him? Sotiris. Have you met him?”
“Hell, yeah. I’m unlucky enough to have something he wants. He kidnapped me a while back.”
Maeve shot her an appalled look. “That’s terrible!”
“It wasn’t fun, that’s for sure. But Gabriel saved me.” She smiled. “With some help from the guys and Nico, among others.”
“I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Me, too. Don’t think I’m some fainting violet, though. I got in my licks before Gabriel arrived, and Sotiris took off.”
“Wow. What about, you know, the others? The women, I mean.”
“Well, Damian’s with Casey. She already worked for Nico, which is how they met. She was on a hunt for some big magical thing—you’d have to get the details from her—when she came across Damian’s statue. And then there’s Grace, who freed Kato. She’s an expert in ancient manuscripts and such. Speaks a bunch of weird languages, which is how she broke the curse. And then there’s me. Gabriel’s statue was hidden behind a magical hedge in my grandfather’s garden. I used to visit him all the time, because I was the only grandchild the hedge would let through. Fortunately, I grew up eventually and the rest is history.” She grinned and pointed. “Just park over there, next to our behemoth.”