Page 83 of Ungodly Rich

“Your whole name.”

“I was Julia Alexandra Henningsen when I was a child.” Julia’s voice was flat, hypnotized. “After my mother died, my aunt Jess and uncle Daniel legally adopted me. I started using their last name.”

Henningsen. That sounded familiar.

“What was your mother’s name?” Hera asked, a chill tracing over her skin.

Julia’s gaze began to refocus. Hera hurried to hand her the Water of Truth, and the mortal took another greedy sip. She then sighed in delight and answered, “My mother was Claire Henningsen.”

Hera remembered that name now, even if she hadn’t heard it in eighteen years. “Was she married?”

“My father was never in the picture.”

“But your mother was seeing someone before she died,” Hera guessed. Julia nodded without answering, and Hera realized her mistake. She hadn’t asked a direct question.

“What do you know about that man?” Hera asked. “Can you remember his name?”

“I don’t think I ever knew it in the first place.” Julia frowned, her eyes focused eerily in the distance, as if she was casting her mind back.

Hera was terrified to hear the answer to this next question. “What happened to your mother?”

“Our house caught on fire. My mother didn’t make it, but I survived. No one knew how. The EMTs said it was a miracle.” The water still held her in its thrall; Julia was speaking matter-of-factly, without emotion.

Fear shot through Hera’s veins, finding form in little blue flames that crackled at each of her fingertips. It was supposed to be the fire of domesticity, of a woman contentedly cooking soup for her husband and children, of a candelabra presiding over a well-set dinner table.

She stared down at her fingers, watching the flames that licked there like blue fingernails. She hadn’t lost control like this in decades.

Since the night she’d killed Claire Henningsen. Julia’s mother.

• • •

When she returned to the Upper East Side, Hera was surprised to find Zeus in the living room, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee as he scrolled through emails. She resented how good he looked like this. He had shrugged out of his jacket, a beautiful custom piece in a steel blue that would have looked ridiculous on another man but somehow emphasized Zeus’s casual, effortless sexiness.

At her arrival, he looked up. “You weren’t at the TWL luncheon this afternoon.”

Hera stood in the doorway. “I told your new assistant I wasn’t joining. No one wants the wife of the CEO at those things anyway. I always feel sorry for whoever gets seated near me, asking polite questions about the Hamptons when I know they would rather be next to you.”

“Really? Because I, for one, would like to be next to you. Or on top of you.” Zeus said it so mildly, the way he would announce a new hire in a company meeting. Only a flash in his blue eyes revealed his boyish sense of humor.

Hera chose not to acknowledge the innuendo. “Well, I’m sorry to have missed the luncheon. I was out.”

She didn’t mean to snap, but she was still rattled by what she’d discovered at the spa. Her mind kept turning back to that time of their lives, to what she had done.

Zeus had been having an affair, which was nothing unusual. Hera always learned of his indiscretions eventually. That was one of the curses of marriage: If you knew your spouse well enough, you could sense when they were hiding something from you. When they were hurting you.

At first she hadn’t worried overmuch. Claire was just another mortal woman, and it would end as soon as he grew bored or the woman showed signs of aging.

Except…this one didn’t end. Months passed, and Zeus seemed more infatuated with Claire than ever. So Hera intervened.

All she’d meant to do was confront Claire, intimidate her into leaving Zeus. It wasn’t her fault that the woman was foolish enough to defy her. Claire had been so brazen, so unapologetic—insisting, just as Olivia had done earlier this year, that Zeus would leave Hera. That helovedher.

Hera had shot a few sparks at the woman.

She’d meant only to frighten her, to show this foolish mortal just what she was up against. How could Hera have known that the house was highly flammable—that it would light up like a pile of kindling, eager to burn? Certainly she’d never intended tokillClaire or her nine-year-old daughter.

Later, when she learned of the carnage she’d wrought, Hera had known that the mortals were dead. No one could have survived a conflagration like that.

But Julia had been wearing that ring.