Page 125 of Ungodly Rich

Hades smiled slowly. “That’s the best part: I don’t have to do anything. I’m going to let the prophecy unfold, let it wreak your downfall, without any interference from me. All I have to do is sit back and watch.”

“You don’t know—” Zeus spluttered, and Hades cut him off.

“You’re right, there are many things I don’t know. I’m not certainhowany of it will happen, but one thing is certain. When it’s all over, I’ll be waiting to pick up the pieces. You should take heed, Zeus,” Hades warned, almost cheerfully. “You know as well as I do thatprophecies always come to pass. Even if they come to pass in ways we never expected.”

As he walked off the roof, he saw that Zeus still stood at the metal railing, staring out over the streets of New York like a monarch surveying his kingdom.

But now he looked like a king whose days were numbered.

Chapter Fifty

Julia

“Claire, I’m going ahead to check the east fences,” Camila called out in Spanish, a dozen yards down the trail. “Do you mind getting a look at the river? We could take the tour group for a swim tomorrow if the current isn’t too strong.”

“Of course!” Julia tugged at the reins of her horse, a sturdy gelding named JB. Though she suspected the JB stood for something in Spanish, she liked to think it was short for James Barrie. There was something Peter Pan-ish about this horse, the way his ears pricked forward, the bounce in his step.

She had only been on the estância for a few months, but already it felt strange to remember her life in New York. The things she had worried about—the money she’d spent on Alaïa dresses and coordinated heels, the effort and worry she had poured into looking the part, into proving she was worthy—it all felt distant now, like a faded memory. Or a bad dream. Here, she was expected to be nothing but herself.

Or more accurately, to be Claire Smith, an American trying to find her footing after a bad relationship.

That terrible night in the storm, when Julia had found Harry in bed with his sister-in-law, she’d asked Percy to get her off the island. To her relief, he’d found a way.

When he’d hugged her outside the Atlanta airport and handed her a small bag, Julia had been startled to find that it included a new passport, with a credit card under the same name. Did she really have to travel under a false identity? She’d figured she couldn’t use the credit card linked to her joint account, because it would be easy for Harry to track the charges, but did the Ellenes have access to TSA flight records, too? She’d held her breath when border control scanned the passport, but the machine had beeped green, and the bored-looking agent had waved her through.

Julia was touched that Percy had remembered her mother’s name. Touched—and slightly alarmed that he had a guy for last-minute falsified documents. Rich people really were different in all ways. Perhaps it was a good thing that she hadn’t become one of them.

The sky overhead was a brilliant robin’s-egg blue, the air crisp and bracing. Julia had seen some beautiful places during her years working at Elysian Cruise Line: the Blue Grotto of Capri, the islands of Bali. But Patagonia was something else. Sun-drenched valleys of swishing golden grass swept into jagged cliffs, then up to snow-topped mountains. She felt like she could wander the estância for weeks without seeing a fraction of it.

She hadn’t had much of a plan when she’d marched up to the ticket counter in the Atlanta airport, carrying nothing but a tote bag with a single change of clothes and her new travel documents. None of the domestic flights were making it out, not that she had any desire to go to New York, anyway. The only planes taking off in this weather were the big international jets. She scanned the departures board, her eyes traveling over Madrid, Montreal, London—and then she paused.

There was a nonstop Delta flight leaving for Santiago in one hour.

Her Spanish was rusty, and she knew next to nothing about Chile,but that felt like a bonus. The Ellenes would never think to look for her there.

Thirty minutes later, she was in an economy-class seat, ordering a double bloody Mary and taking a long sip.

“You traveling on business or pleasure?” the woman next to her had asked conversationally. “I’m guessing business, and one you aren’t looking forward to, from the way you’re drinking that on a six a.m. flight.”

“Traveling to escape,” Julia confessed, surprised by her own honesty. “I just went through a bad breakup with my fiancé and need to get away.” It was as much of the truth as she was willing to give.

It turned out that Lorena, a middle-aged woman with crinkly laugh lines around her eyes, managed a ranch along the Argentinian cordillera, near the Chilean border. “You can come escape at my ranch,” Lorena had offered. “It’s a great place to get your head on straight.”

“That sounds lovely, but I need to find work.” Julia wasn’t sure what the limit was on the credit card Percy had given her, but she didn’t want to push it.

“Then come work for me. I have so many American tourists who visit, some for a few days, others for longer,” Lorena explained. “I’m in dire need of a translator. Do you speak Spanish? Do you ride?”

“Some Spanish, no riding experience.”

“Perfect,” Lorena had declared. “We’ll teach you.”

And they did. Julia settled gratefully into her new routine: waking up early to tend to the horses, brushing their coats, coaxing pebbles from their hooves.You’re a natural!exclaimed the ranch hands, bright-eyed young men and women who spoke to her in rapid Spanish. But Julia knew all credit was due to the horses. They were patient with her, because they had grown up here—safe, surrounded by love. They trusted her because no one had ever given them a reasonnotto trust. It made Julia want to cry, thinking of how she had once been that blindly trusting.

And sometimes when she was mucking out stalls in the dawn light, raking horse shit into neat little piles, she thought of what Tara Ellenewould say if she saw her now. It gave her the strangest urge to burst out laughing.

Tara was easy to think about. Harry, not so much.

Julia felt like she was walking around with a bullet wound in her chest, a hole so great that she didn’t dare look at it too closely. She had loved Harry so much. And though she hated to admit it, a part of herstillloved him. All these weeks later, her anger at his betrayal roared up like a fire—yet she still woke in the middle of the night touching herself, flushed from dreams of him.