Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 107826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
“Do you want to go get a drink, Hephaestus?”
When I took the title from the last fucker who held it, I never thought I’d miss my own name. Hearing his name on everyone’s lips makes me feel invisible. It’s too late to go back, though. I’ve made my devil’s bargain and now I have to live with it.
I nod slowly. “It’s ten in the morning.”
“As if that’s enough to stop us. I know a place.” He rises to his feet. Gods, he’s a handsome fucker. Smooth dark-brown skin, cheekbones sharp enough to cut, and broad palms that speak of strength beneath the polished exterior. He holds out a hand. “What do you say?”
Even knowing this is an opportunity I’d be a fool to pass up, I can’t help eyeing his face for any sign of the pity or derision I’ve come to expect from the people in this cursed city. It’d be hard enough to adjust to my new mobility limits without them seeing my fucked-up knee as an unforgivable flaw. They react more to that than to the fact I’m a proven murderer.
It could be a trap. The Thirteen have promised to leave me alone if I married the witch, but there’s nothing stopping Adonis from taking matters into his own very capable hands. He seems like a genuinely nice guy without a murderous bone in his body, but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth.
Going with him is a risk, but the potential gain is too tempting to ignore.
Adonis merely maintains his smile and waits.
Ultimately, what decides me is the trio of people all but pressed against the glass, watching us. My knee has started to stiffen up, and if I try to get up on my own, I’m going to give them something to laugh about.
I slip my hand into Adonis’s. I’m a good four inches taller and have to weigh quite a bit more since I’m not built lean like him, but he pulls me to my feet with no apparent effort. He keeps my hand for a beat too long and then steps back. “Come on. My car is out front.”
He easily matches his stride to my slower one, and ignores the people snapping pictures of us as we step through the door and out onto the sidewalk. I can’t tell if he’s just that used to being a tiger in a cage or if he’s got a better poker face than I realized. Each click of the cameras make me want to smash them into a thousand pieces. I can’t. I know enough to recognize that, even if I chafe against the constraint.
Adonis presses a hand to the small of my back. Not urging me faster, just angling his body between mine and the press. It shocks me enough that I’m still processing it a few minutes later when we’re safely in the back of his town car.
He…protected me?
I shake my head sharply. No, this is another game. There’s no way this guy is as guileless as he seems. This fucked-up city would have eaten him alive if that were the case.
Not to mention my wife would have chewed him up and spit him out without missing a step.
He gives an address that’s only a few blocks away. When he catches my glare, he shrugs. “I’m not going to make you walk it when you’re obviously in pain. I don’t think I like you very much, but cruelty for cruelty’s sake isn’t how I operate.”
Again, I search his expression for pity or some kind of judgment, and again there’s nothing. He states it as fact and that’s that. I don’t know how to feel about it, so I ignore it completely. “You seem like a nice guy.” He huffs out a laugh, but I continue before he can get a word in edgewise. “What are you doing chasing after that witch?”
“Eris is a lot of things, but she’s hardly a witch.”
My wife’s birth name fits her far better than her title. We did our research before coming here, so I know what the last Aphrodite was like—blond and gorgeous and selling an image of perfection. She’s nothing like the woman I married. My Aphrodite is all too happy to be messy in public and make a spectacle of herself, all to humiliate me. Yeah, Eris fits her a whole lot better than Aphrodite, but I’ll never call her by that name. It feels like a capitulation, though I can’t begin to say why.
I shift on the seat. I can’t stretch out my knee in this position. “She’s doing a damned good impression of being a witch right now.”
“Yeah.” Adonis sighs. “I guess she is.”
The car stops outside a building that looks just like every other building in the center of the upper city. Chrome and glass and concrete. Back home, the buildings have more character. Even the rich like to put their own stamp on their businesses and residences. No one would mistake Minos’s house for any other, not with its copper roof tiles that have aged to a pleasing green or the brilliant coral door that is twice the size a normal door should be.