Page 100 of Ungodly Rich

“What a surprise, having you come early!” Julia fell into step with Abby as she approached the front desk. “You must be so jet-lagged.”

“Didn’t I tell you? I flew over a couple days ago, to take a few work meetings in DC,” Abby explained. “And you know how I am about weather tracking. When I saw the coming storms, I decided to cancel today’s meetings and hop on an earlier flight. Wanted to make sure I didn’t have any travel issues.”

“Coming storms?” Julia frowned. “It’s perfectly sunny outside.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing! Probably just a little bit of rain that will blow through overnight,” Abby assured her. “It’s definitely not a hurricane. Don’t worry.” She wasn’t wholly convincing.

A concierge waved Abby forward. Julia lingered as Abby put down her credit card, was issued a room key. “By the way,” Abby said softly while the concierge was busy typing, “you’ll never guess what I heard while I was in DC.”

“What?”

“Preston Hayes is completely finished.”

Julia stared at her best friend blankly. “What do you mean, ‘finished’?”

“He was discovered accepting bribes from foreign governments, in exchange for arranging meetings with his father. It’s a federal crime,” Abby said solemnly, “to sell access to a United States senator.”

“How did they…”

“His trial is coming up, but he might go to prison.” Abby shook her head. “I mean, we all knew he was an asshole and idiot after what he did to you, but I never imagined he was an asshole on thisscale,you know?”

Julia glanced across the lobby to where Harry sat with Percy. She couldn’t help thinking of what Harry had said back in London.I need to mess with Preston.Was it possible thatHarryhad a hand in this? That he’d uncovered what Preston was up to and leaked the story to the press?

So what if he had? Preston had spent his entire life acting as if the rules didn’t apply to him. Maybe it was time he paid the consequences.

“Enough about Preston,” Julia declared. “Now hurry and change so we can get this weekend started. I’ve missed you.”

Still, as she and Abby crossed the lobby toward the elevator banks, Julia stole another glance at Harry. She had thought she understood what it meant to be an Ellene, but it kept on surprising her, how truly vast and powerful their influence was.

Chapter Forty

Hermes

For once, Hermes didn’t drink all that much, though the cocktails were spectacular and the wine even better. He needed to keep his head on straight. All of the Olympians were at this so-calledcasual family dinner,their teeth gleaming like predators’ as they laughed and drank and heaped their platters with food: shrimp cocktail and crab cakes and the most sophisticated Southern grits that had probably ever been made, whipped with walnuts and brown butter.

Hermes stared at each of them each in turn, his eyes traveling from Apollo and Artemis—seated together, as always—to Athena, who had arrived this morning from Shanghai. She was clutching an espresso martini (even gods felt the international time difference) and chatting halfheartedly with Julia’s mortal friend about her job at Google. Farther down the table, Dionysus topped off his glass of wine, and Poseidon was deep in conversation with Zeus, though his sea-blue eyes kept flicking distractedly to Hera.

Which of them might have manipulated Julia into meeting Ares? And why?

It was a strange sensation, being in possession of highly valuable information that he had no intention of selling. Normally, Hermes would have been lining up potential buyers in his mind, imagining what he would demand from each of them as payment for learning the truth about Julia’s mother—and what Hera had done to her. But he refused to make any moves until he felt certain that he was helping Julia, not harming her.

Laughter rippled around the table, which was out on a private terrace, surrounded by trees with moss that draped languorously to the ground. Strands of fairy lights hung cheerfully overhead. Hermes could hear the ocean in the distance but couldn’t see it from here. Tonight, its dull roar sounded almost sinister, like the growl of some primordial monster.

“You all right?” Ares asked, sliding a bottle of wine in Hermes’s direction. Hermes’s eyes widened a little when he saw the label: a 1971 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Zeus must have flown it here on his private jet, because even luxury hotels didn’t stock wine that cost as much as the down payment on most people’s homes.

“Of course,” Hermes said cheerfully. He allowed himself a small pour of the wine, because who knew when he would get this vintage again? Then he glanced again to the other end of the table.

Hera rose to her feet and started back inside the hotel’s restaurant, presumably to the ladies’ room.

But her steps were too purposeful, her smile too distracted, for her to simply be going to wash up. No, Hermes thought, she was on a different errand.

He would find out what it was.

Hermes took one last sip of the Burgundy and stood, murmuring something about being right back. As he walked in the same direction as Hera, his footsteps were silent, his movements as insubstantial as those of a ghost. Just as they had been at the Vault.

He followed Hera into the ground floor of the hotel, watching as she bypassed the boutique, where mannequins in oversized sun hats stood sentinel at darkened windows. She turned into a room with a brass placard that readLibrary. Hermes caught a quick glimpse ofleather-bound books, deer heads mounted to the walls, framed antique maps, and vast smoking couches before she shut the door.

He crouched a few feet away behind a heavy wooden credenza, hardly breathing.