AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER ONE
ALASSUMEDSHE’Donce had a real name and a last name, but she didn’t know it. And never would. She had vague memories as a small child of being called Alexandra and being taught how to survive by various people on the streets. Some were kind, some were cruel, some were indifferent, but she had survived.
That was all that mattered most days.
She did not remember anything before being on the streets, so like most of the others she’d met, she assumed her parents were dead or indifferent. Neither mattered. They were gone and she was here.
One of the best methods of survival on the dangerous streets of Athens was to pass herself off as a boy. Even now, at twenty-four, her short stature and small frame meant she could be believed as a teenage boy rather than a grown woman if she dressed and held herself accordingly.
As she did now. She wore tattered baggy pants that hid the shape of her hips. Over her shirts, she wore an oversized coat that gave bulk to her shoulders. Add threadbare boots and shaggy hair pulled back with a small tie, and no one ever questioned her.
She leaned against the corner of a building on a tourist-laden street and surveyed the crowd.
She had a meeting, and she always preferred to meet in the bustling streets for a quick escape should things getcomplicated. Trading in information had a tendency to have tempers flaring, particularly in those men who fancied themselves powerful...then threw tantrums like children when they did not get their way...or could not hide their misdeeds.
Al usually didn’t take jobs from people she hadn’t been referred to and hadn’t checked out carefully. She tended to be very careful about people who approachedher. She made sure she knew everything about aclientbefore she even spoke to them. But this particular afternoon, she didn’ttrulyknow who she was meeting. Only that the payout she had been promised was far too much to resist.
It was enough to possibly get her out of the spy game forever. In the beginning, it had been exciting. To realize that, since no one paid much attention to a little beggar on the street, she could hear things and see things that other people found useful.
And would pay for.
But as she’d gone from offering up information shehappenedto witness or overhear to people coming to herforinformation, spying had gotten more complicated, more dangerous. Like today.
It was possible this whole meeting was a trap. Things were getting a little...hot. She’d uncovered the misdeeds of a few too many powerful men who were now on the lookout for a boy spy roaming the streets of Athens. Who wanted Al dead.
She could shake that identity, of course. Live life as she truly was: a young woman. She could find a new city to live in as a boy. But those options seemed just as dangerous as the men after her.
At least they were the enemy sheknew.
Her life had been the streets and survival for as long as she could remember, but she was tired of subterfuge and lies and mystery and danger. She wanted something...pleasant. Relaxing.
Safe, most of all.
This payout could buy her all of that. She only had to bend a few of her rules to get it and hope the mysterious man who’d sent his men to approach her was on the up-and-up.
So she waited for a man. That was all she knew about her client. His employee—a taciturn mountain of a man—had told her to stand exactly here and wait for his boss to approach.
She watched the crowd carefully. A few people looked her way, usually nervously. Women clutching their purses a little tighter, especially if Al arranged her face to look particularly surly. But most people just looked right past her short frame and out-of-the-way stance, more focused on their daily routines or the sights they wished to see.
Al did not see much point staring at ruins, vestiges of a life so long ago no one alive today would even recognize it. She much preferred watching the living people. How they reacted, what they did, the words they spoke in a variety of languages as they passed.
She was beginning to grow antsy as the agreed-upon time came and went. Frowning, she scanned the crowd around her one more time. That was when she caught the glimpse of a tall man in white. He seemed to cut through the crowd like some kind of archangel. Or apparition. Or just a deadly sweep of a sword.
People moved out of his way—some without seeming to realize it, some watching him move in awe. He did not ask anyone to. He did not excuse himself. It was just...done.
He was stunning—it was the only word she could think of. Like some gladiator brought to life, polished up perhaps for a portrait, because even though he looked like he couldhandlea fight, his expensive suit and bright white clothes didn’t suggest he’d seen one recently. His dark hair was swept back, his face sculpted and bronzed as if perfectly created to draw attention to his eyes. Sharp, gold.Obviouslydangerous.
And he was walking straight for her.
Al ordered herself to maintain her lazy posture, her combative expression, but it was more and more difficult to hold the closer he got. He walked right up to her, practically towering above her so that he blocked out the sun in the little alcove she’d agreed to meet him in.
Because this had to be thehimwho wanted to meet her—well, Al. She hadn’t been given a name when his employee had talked to her, but she knew who he was now. It was nearly impossible to spend any time in Athens and not knowhisface.
Lysias Balaskas.Billionaire. Self-made, at that. One of those stories people trotted out to proveanyonecould achieveanything, because Lysias himself had, allegedly, been a product of the streets. According to the people who spoke of it, Lysias had gotten himself a job above his station as a young man and then worked his way up until he’d owned...just about everything there was to own. People said it was because he was brilliant and charming and determined and hardworking.
Al knew that success, especially success of Lysias’s magnitude, required all those things but also a great deal of luck. Orshewould be CEO of some conglomeration of companies that did something with...something. Because she could be all those things, if given the chance.
She had decidedly not been given the chance.
