Page 65 of Ungodly Rich

It was his father.

In that moment, all Aphrodite’s youthful illusions were brutally shattered. Obviously, her beloved had never cared about her at all. She had been nothing to him but an object of lust, something to be used and discarded. Why else would he have told his father about their arrangement?

Aphrodite tried to say no. When the master kept walking toward her, she said it again, louder—No,she screamed, shouting at him to stop.

No one came to her rescue. The other servants in this wing of the house clearly knew better than to interfere.

She tried to duck around him and run, but he was faster and stronger than she’d expected. He knocked her to the ground, pulling up her skirts, pressing his weight atop her. Aphrodite tried to resist, shouting, scratching at his face with her fingernails. But he just grabbed her golden hair and knocked her head against the floor, hard.

As he began to move methodically atop her, Aphrodite stopped shouting. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks, her body growing numb. She felt crushed by his body, by the knowledge that she was helpless. Unable to fight back.

• • •

Now, pressed against the wall in that back alley, Aphrodite felt it all again: the suffocating fear, the knowledge that she was at the mercy of someone stronger and more powerful.

No,a voice deep within her protested. She was no longer a mere mortal, she was an Olympian goddess.

Once again, Aphrodite reached for her magic, not really expecting to uncover much, but she was suddenly motivated by something she hadn’t felt in centuries: desperate fury. Outrage, that this man thought he could hurt her, that he could hurtanywoman.

A wave of incinerating magic surged out of her.

The man flew violently backward, landing in the middle of the alley.

Aphrodite stood there, trembling from the sudden surge of power. Where had it come from? She must have unlocked a reservoir of magic she didn’t even know she had.

She fixed her eyes on the man who’d tried to hurt her, reaching for those last vestiges of power. The magic didn’t want to answer her call. Maybe it was only meant for self-defense.

Aphrodite frowned, summoning the magic with her last iota of strength. Slowly, as if it felt reluctant to leave her, the power streamed from her body in invisible threads, snaking toward the man on the ground.

Except that he wasn’t much of a man anymore. His bones began to shrink, his fingers becoming little claws, his eyes turning small and beady. The unshaven scruff of his beard stretched into whiskers.

From beneath the pile of expensive clothing crawled a rat.

“Serves you right,” Aphrodite muttered, well aware that he could hear her. “You act like vermin, you deserve tobevermin.”

She managed to keep her head high as she walked out of the alley, though it took every last ounce of her willpower not to stumble. Her vision was blurred, her limbs heavy and brittle. She ran her tongue over her lips, which felt as cracked and dry as if they’d been sunburned.Aphrodite had pushed her magic far past its limits, farther than she’d even thought possible.

Swaying as if drunk, she made it to the intersection. A taxi pulled up minutes later and she poured herself into the backseat, closing her eyes. When they pulled up to the Mayfair house, Aphrodite flung a wad of bills toward the driver without counting them, then walked with agonizing steps to the house. Hermes and Julia might be back, and the last thing she wanted was for anyone to see her like this.

Once she was safely in her room, Aphrodite hurried to the en suite bath, where she peeled off her clothes and stumbled into the shower. She turned the water as hot as it would go, then sank onto the marble tile floor and wrapped her arms around her legs, shivering.

Until tonight, she’d forgotten how it felt before she became an Olympian—the sensation of utter helplessness, of being without the protection of her magic. If Aphrodite were demoted from the Council of Twelve to make room for Julia, most of her powers would be stripped away. She’d be no better off than Persephone or Hestia or any other of the lesser goddesses. Able to do some minor illusion magic but nothing real.

Nothing that would keep her safe.

One thing was abundantly clear: Aphrodite could never again find herself as defenseless and powerless as she’d been tonight.

Which meant she had to get rid of Julia, once and for all.

When she emerged from the shower and wrapped a fluffy white robe around herself, Aphrodite reached for her phone. She sent Hephaestus a single message:Really wishing I had gone to Paris with you.

She did a quick Google search then. In a matter of minutes, she’d found Senator Preston Hayes III, whose son Preston Hayes IV had attended Harvard with Julia.

Aphrodite checked the time. It was only eight p.m. on the East Coast; a staff member was probably still in the senator’s office.

She looked up the phone number and dialed.

Chapter Twenty-Six