Page 1 of Ungodly Rich

Chapter One

Julia

I am going to die,Julia thought, staring at the river far below. From this height, its surface looked as hard and unforgiving as concrete.

The logical part of her brain, the part that had once excelled in law school, reminded her that yes, of course she was going to die: Death was part of being human. She was just more aware of said mortality when standing at the top of a bridge.

Julia had felt this close to death once before, a long time ago.

She drew in a shallow breath, hurrying to push those memories aside. Nothing good came from thinking of that night.

“Come on, Jules,” her boyfriend Harry prompted. “You can do this.”

“Right,” Julia rasped, but didn’t move. She longed to lean back into the safety of Harry’s body, to grab his hand and drag them both off this bungee platform.

“One,” Harry began counting. “Two…”

Before he got to three, Julia closed her eyes and leapt into the void.

For a heart-stopping moment, the air howled around her, rakingdelicate claws over her skin. It almost didn’t feel like falling, but like flying. Up was down and down was up, everything reduced to a chaotic blur of noise and color.

Julia managed to fling her arms up around her ears, elongating into her old diving position from swim team.

Her eyes closed as she sliced through the river’s surface. She’d gone deep, so far that the water closed over her pointed toes. Then the bungee cord yanked her back into the air, dripping wet—and laughing.

When she climbed into the waiting motorboat and unclipped her harness, Julia’s heart was racing. Harry stood on the platform far above her, wearing his yellowKawarau Bridgeemployee shirt. The motorboat driver shouted an all-clear, and Harry took off running.

As he jumped into the air, he curled his body into a somersault and flipped once, twice, a third time, each revolution as perfect as that of an Olympic gymnast.

“Showoff,” Julia muttered once he’d joined her in the motorboat. May in New Zealand was usually the beginning of winter, though it was unseasonably warm today. It felt almost like Harry had conjured up this weather specifically so that they could go bungee jumping. “And why am I the only one who got wet?” she added.

Harry flashed an impish grin. “I loosened the cord so you would have a full dunk. Newbie special. So, how do you feel?”

Electrified, exhilarated, untouchable.“I feel…high,” Julia declared. Unlike some of the other students she’d met at Harvard, she had never experimented with drugs. But she imagined this was how it must feel—like you were somehow morealivethan everyone else.

“Adrenaline, the most powerful drug on earth,” Harry agreed.

“I thought that was desire. You know, pheromones.” Julia’s tone was flippant, a touch flirtatious, yet a cloud passed over Harry’s expression at her words. It was gone in an instant.

“I love you.” He leaned over to brush a kiss on her temple. “Ready to head home?”

Home,the apartment they had rented together after only a few months of dating. It was small, and always smelled like a deep fryer thanksto the fish-and-chips shop on the ground floor below, but Harry was right. It felt like home.

The two of them had met here in Queenstown, at a bar called Lenore: the sort of place with cheap beer and stickers on the walls, with a boisterous jukebox that played everything from K-pop to Elvis. It was one of the many bars catering to the young people who flooded New Zealand each year, drawn by the natural beauty and promise of adventure.

Julia had been working on the Elysian Cruise Line back then. When she started as a tour guide after college, she’d been staffed on the Mediterranean route, shepherding hungover tourists around the Acropolis or the ruins of Pompeii. Her aunt and uncle had urged her not to take the job, exclaiming that a Harvard graduate could find something more stable, more settled. But after everything that happened her senior year, Julia had wanted to get as far from Boston—and Preston—as possible.

The ad for Elysian Cruise Line had popped up when she was scrolling through job boards one afternoon.Escape and forget,it promised, with an image of pristine blue waters glittering in the sun.

Escape and forgetsounded pretty good to Julia. She couldn’t afford totakea cruise, but as it turned out, Elysian Cruise Line was always hiring tour guides. Especially tour guides with an art history background who spoke multiple languages.

After several years in the Mediterranean, Julia had requested a transfer to the Sydney–Auckland–Queenstown route. She wasn’t sure why she felt a sudden itch to see that part of the world, but she figured, why not? She was utterly without strings, as adrift as a loose buoy on the tide.

When Julia wandered into the bar that night, arm in arm with several coworkers, her eyes cut straight to Harry. She simply couldn’t help it. Even among the young, tanned, attractive crowd, he stood out in high relief, like the main figure etched on an ancient urn: as if he’d been drawn in sharp focus and everyone else was just background.

“Oh my god,” one of Julia’s friends had murmured, following her gaze. “Whoisthat?”

Julia had stared at him for one more moment—and then, though it was almost physically painful to tear her eyes from him, she turned away.