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CHAPTER 1
Aurora
BEFORE
A soft breezerustled through the trees as I meandered home from school, taking my time along the winding path through the park. I loved being surrounded by nature, no matter the season. In fall I enjoyed the vibrant reds and oranges of the changing leaves, the earthy scent of the soil. In summer, the sun was a warm caress when I lifted my face up to it. Even in winter, the gentle crunch of icy grass under my boots made me feel at peace.
But something felt different about this spring day. Not even the most gorgeously bright red geraniums in the flower boxes of the diner down the road could lift my strange sense of foreboding. And by the time I reached home, the sun had been veiled by clouds, casting a hazy late-afternoon glow across the sky that threatened to die into darkness soon.
I always made the walk home last as long as possible. Home wasn't really a home for me.
I slipped in quietly through the back door, not wanting to draw attention to my late arrival. But as I crept down the hall, headingfor the stairs that would take me up to my bedroom, I heard tense voices drifting from the living room.
"Please, just give me a few more days!" My father's voice, usually so aggressive, sounded small and afraid.
I'd never heard him like that before.
"Hades has given you enough time." The answering voice was female, low and smooth like honey, but with an edge sharp as a knife. "Today is the day you pay your debts, Verderosa."
I peeked around the corner, curiosity winning over caution. My father cowered on the couch, wringing his hands. Opposite him, in the armchair usually reserved for him, sat a woman with hair black as night and eyes like chips of silvery ice. She couldn't have been much more than thirty, but she radiated power and authority.
And she didn't sit like a woman. She sat like a predator tensed before springing, legs wide as she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, those mesmerizing eyes locked with my father's.
"Take the girl!"
The girl?Me? He was offering me up to this strange woman?
"No, please! Not my daughter! She's only seventeen!" I heard my mother cry out. She had hurried in to the room from the kitchen, and I could hear the desperation in her voice. "Take this instead. My grandmother's tiara. It's worth far more than Aurora."
There was an agonizing pause.
"Is that what you really think?" came the strange voice at last—so cool and low. "No. I see in your eyes you value your daughter much more than that trinket." I stood frozen in the hallway,heart thudding in my ears as the conversation paused. "But as you say, your daughter is a child," came the smooth voice of the stranger at last. "Hades has no use for children."
"She's old enough to work to pay off my debt!" My father still sounded desperate. "And when she comes of age, Hades can have her in his bed. Just look at her mother—the girl is a rare beauty, too."
Revulsion rose in my throat at his words. He was bargaining me away like chattel, offering up my body…my future. I trembled with fury, nails digging into my palms.
But still I stayed quiet. My throat tightened, strangling my voice.
"The Styx Syndicate does not deal in sex trafficking," the woman responded. "Especially not of children."
My father sputtered protests, but she cut him off.
"I will take your wife's tiara as collateral for now. But Iwillreturn to collect the full amount you owe Hades. Cowering behind your connections will not save you, Verderosa."
And I stood frozen in the hallway as the dangerous woman rose from her seat and strode to the doorway in heavy leather biker boots, the kind I'd never be allowed to wear myself. Not ladylike, both my fatherandmother would say. There seemed nothing so important in this world than being a lady.
I scurried back from the corner, but not fast enough, so that I was still standing in full view as the woman rounded it. But she ignored me completely, heading for the front door instead, the faint scent of her leathers both foreign and exciting to me—and a spicy perfume under that, the kind that suggested adventure.
Danger.
I breathed in deep through my nose, trying to memorize that scent, and just as she passed by me her odd, pale eyes met mine for a split second that seemed to stretch on…and on.
I was pinned in place by her intense gaze—a butterfly stabbed through, something to be studied. Admired.
I was used to people admiring me. My father always dragged me out in front of company, even company that made my insides churn with the way they looked at me, bragging about my beauty.
The gray-eyed woman was staring at me now, and my insides churned…but not the way they did when all those male friends of my father's looked at me.
