Excerpt: The Art of Wedding a Greek Billionaire

Ruth’s Volvo SUV cruised into Chinatown on the back of a dragon. Or at least that was what the bridge seemed like, with its concrete guard rails transformed into red and gold scales made of plastic and metal. The archway ahead possessed the same bold colors, with dragon heads at each end biting the edges of a white tarpaulin banner.

            It was an unusual sight but, better than that, it gave me the chance to break the silence. “What does that say?” I gestured to the Chinese characters slashed in black ink on the archway’s banner, desperate for distraction.

            After all the paper-signing in the council hall, Ruth had fetched Mae and Jonathan at a nearby mall. Mae welcomed me gladly. Jonathan…did not.

            “Yúlánpén,” she said. “It means Ghost Festival, and today’s the first day of Ghost Month.”Ruth threw me a grateful smile through the rearview mirror. Her normally cheerful round face still showed signs of strain after her earlier quarrel with her son – because of me.

            “Oh.” I wished I hadn’t asked. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would not make me sound stunned and alarmed by their holiday. Ghost Month? Really?

            “If you can’t deal with it, that’s your problem,” Jonathan muttered under his breath. He was glued to his side of the door, as if he couldn’t get far enough away from me. A now-familiar scowl had settled on his face.

            “Jonathan!” His mother’s voice was like whiplash.

            He exhaled an angry breath. “Sorry.” He sounded anything but sincere.

            “It’s okay,” I answered quickly. He was right, anyway. Amnesiacs like me can’t afford to be picky.

            Mae, his year-younger sister, threw me an apologetic glance over her shoulder from the passenger seat in front.I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile as the elephant inside the car only got bigger and angrier. Jonathan had never tried to hide the fact he was against his mother temporarily adopting me. I wished I could reassure him that I didn’t mean any harm, but I couldn’t.

            Traffic congested at the foot of the bridge and I watched the digits on the speedometer display trickle down.

            With our windows rolled down, the sound of something hitting the ground easily reached my ears, like a rainfall of pebbles.

I glanced outside. A throng of people were on the sidewalks, throwing on the ground curved red stones that looked like pairs of Ying and Yang.

            Mae saw where I was looking and explained, “It’s kind of like fortune telling from the Gods. You get ‘yes’ if both stones face the same way and ‘no’ if it’s not.”

            A huge moan drowned the last of her words, and I looked ahead when the moaning didn’t stop. The sound came from gigantic temple gates protesting against the yellow-robed monks pushing them open.

A cold gust of wind blew into the car, stinging my eyes into shutting closed. When I opened them again, a bloodied, half-naked man slammed into my side of the car, mouth gaping wide.

I screamed, backing away and bumping into Jonathan.

“Stop it, you idiot,” Mia hissed at the ghost.

My screams died when I saw Mia put her hand out to push the ghost away, rapping out something angrily in Mandarin.

“It’s just a guy in a costume,” Jonathan said under his breath.

Embarrassment flooded my face and I scrambled away from him, mumbling ‘sorry’. It had been a prank. Just a stupid prank. And I had acted like he was going to kill me. In fact, my heart was racing fast I seriously wondered if the others could hear it. Worse, the frantic tattoo of my heartbeat against my chest was awfully familiar, as if terror had a permanent place in my life – whatever it was.

I caught a glimpse of Jonathan’s face. His cheeks were flushed, and I wished I could disappear, hating how I seemed to keep giving him more reasons to consider me a nutcase.

Mia had finished snarling. The man’s face was white and he had sprung away from Ruth’s car, hands held up like her words had convicted him.

After stabbing the man’s back with one last glare, Ruth checked me through the rearview mirror, her dark eyes seeking mine, her slightly rounded cheeks made pink by her outburst. “You okay, Fiona?”

I watched the man slink away, his shoulders hunched, our roles now reversed, and I was the one haunting him. “Yeah.” But I wasn’t, and we all knew it.

“Ghost Month isn’t anything like Halloween, really, but some of these kids try so hard to Americanize it.” Ruth rolled her eyes.

“It’s okay.” I cleared my throat, hating how my voice croaked.“It’s my fault, too, for being so jumpy.”

            Ruth shook her head so adamantly her short hair bounced. “Don’t think like that. You’re actually doing quite well, considering the circumstances.”

            The circumstances…It sounded better than the proverbial elephant, I supposed, and way much better than the truth of having my memories carved out by an accident.

            “So,” Mia said brightly, “did you like the clothes I bought for you?”

            “Umm…”

            Everyone – even Jonathan - burst into laughter. “All the stuff you bought for her was either pink or had ruffles. Only someone silly like you would like something like that,” her brother retorted.

            Mia grinned shamelessly. “I just wanted to make sure we could swap clothes. And besides, I knew she’d look good in them.” She chatted nonstop about the things we could do over the summer, keeping the mood lighthearted throughout the ride.

Outside, the lively colors of the festival had gradually disappeared and muddied into bland and ugly shades of brown and gray as Ruth drove deeper and deeper into the throat of Chinatown – Ong Pin, which was the area’s main road.

There were no houses but just one low-rise building after another, nothing that went past five stories. I couldn’t imagine memorizing the ins and outs of Chinatown when everything looked exactly the same. A few more minutes passed and then Ruth was maneuvering the car into an expansive parking lot, waving back to a uniformed guard as she did.

“Jonathan, get Fiona’s stuff,” Ruth said.

Without a word, Jonathan took my suitcase out of the trunk.

“I can do that---” I started but shut up at his look.  Five minutes later, and I was thankful I hadn’t insisted too hard. The Changs lived in the fourth floor, which would have been fine if their apartment building had an elevator. When I reached the fourth landing, I was breathing hard while the others still looked refreshed, like they had just stepped out of the shower.

I glanced down – the narrow, U-shaped stairs prevented me from seeing beyond the last two flights but its sight still made me dizzy. The thought of having to climb them every day made me feel even dizzier.

“Welcome to home sweet home,” Ruth said as she unlocked the door and pushed it open with her shoulder. A tall, dark shadow slipped past her, and the hairs on my nape stood up.

I glanced at Mia and Jonathan, wondering if they had seen it, too.

Jonathan caught me looking. “What?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.” And there was nothing, I told myself, because I didn’t have the ability to see ghosts. I didn’t. I didn’t. 

Her sobs had been heartbreaking to hear, but he had steeled himself against it, knowing that the time had come for her to save herself.

                “Please come here s'il vous plait,” Keanne had begged, her words a jumble of English and French. “Please, please, please---”

                She had begged him over and over, crying her heart out, and he let her. But when she fell silent, Jason said flatly, “No.”

                Her moan was full of betrayal, and everything in him wanted to go to her – his little dove, the one thing in his world who was right. He had fucked up so many times with all the people he had loved, but with Keanne he had made sure he would do everything right – and he would be damned if he would let pity sway him to doing otherwise.

                “Listen to me.” Those were the very first words he had used to command her when he was young, to train her to be as strong and as ruthless as he was in clawing her way back to the top.

                Her sobs quieted, and his chest constricted at the way Keanne was doing her best to follow him.

                “Later, when you come home, I will be waiting for you, ma petite. In my arms, you can cry – I want you to cry, I want to comfort you. I want to be there for you. With me, you can be weak – but not with anyone else.”

                “Oui,” she whispered, but her voice still shook.

                It made Jason bite out sharply, “No more tears!”

                He heard her swallowing hard, and when she spoke her voice was still hoarse but firmer. “Yes.”

                Good. She was speaking in English now. Her shield was up, and that was exactly how it should be.

                “Only with me, Keanne. Never forget that. You cannot be weak with anyone else. All these years that I have helped you become strong will be for nothing if you give up now.”

                She did not answer.

                He did not allow it. “Do you understand, Keanne?”

                An eternity passed. “Yes.”

                “Then go. Remember that you are stronger and better than what everyone may say. They do not deserve your tears – do not deserve to see you flinch even the smallest way.”

                This time, her answer was stronger, colder. “Yes.”

                “Make me proud, ma petite. And when you come home, only then you can cry.”

The museum was crowded with faces both familiar and unfamiliar, but no one bothered to speak with her and she was happy it was so. She could spend hours looking at these paintings, could lose herself in imagining that she would be in one of its paint-brushed worlds. There, she would be a beautiful girl, one with friends and suitors aplenty---
“Milady,” a voice suddenly whispered devilishly from somewhere behind her.
---and certainly she would not be pursued by a duke whose motives she still could not comprehend.
Could she pretend she had not heard him?
“If you do not look at me, my darling girl, you will regret it.” But the way the duke said the words, it was as if he was not delivering a threat but the most tempting of promises.
She muttered crossly, “I am not your darling girl.” But even so, she was already turning, her heart started beating madly, knowing once again she would be gazing upon the duke’s coldly beautiful face.

Chapter One

Luka & Caylie

6 Months Ago

 

Her eighteenth birthday was going to suck. She meant it in a literal sense, knowing she was only a few seconds away of having her throat sucked by a horribly aroused Caro male.

She leaned back against the club’s cold granite wall, indifferent to the hot, jerky breaths against her throat. Her sensitive ears picked up the second the sound of fangs flashed out, her skin prickling as the guy’s body over hers trembled in ill-suppressed excitement.

He was incredibly aroused and getting more so with each second that she let pass without moving away. Any moment now, he would be able to taste her in the most primal sense for all Caros, something similar to having public sex.

The other guests in the bar weren’t bothering to hide the fascination in their gazes. Caylie could feel their eyes feasting on her and this – this nameless guy – over her body. She knew what they were thinking. The Caylie Sonora everyone knew, once as untouchable as the sun, was no more. This Caylie was different and darker, the embodiment of all their forbidden desires.

Almost every guy in the club were panting, their fangs threatening to burst out the longer Caylie did nothing to prevent a nobody from mauling her in full view of everyone.  

Luka Georgiades.

Her eyes shot wide open at the sound of that terribly beautiful name, her attention immediately drawn to the 3D TV screen mounted in one corner of the bar. As this was a Caro establishment, there was no need to pretend they were humans. They served drinks with blood, played music so loud human ears would have long started to bleed, and the TV tuned in to a Caro-owned network that required special wiring and coding to access.

“Officially endorsed by the Lyccan Council…strong contender for the Advisor position...maybe no longer an eligible bachelor by the end of the year?”

Something inside Caylie snapped as she heard the last juicy bit of rumor the reporter was delivering with relish.

The scene with the reporter faded, but he continued with a voiceover as the screen revealed a politely smiling Luka stepping out of his limousine. Young, dashing, powerful, and with a fucking overly made-up bitch at his side.

Caylie hissed in contempt. A nouveau riche upstart. Was that what he was into these days? Maybe this cheap bitch was so kinky that she made Caylie look boring?

Her heart shuddered with rage as the woman at his side tiptoed to blow into his ear, like it needed a tornado to get clean. Really? That was what he wanted? A cougar who liked to play porn-style janitor in public?

She waited for Luka to move away at the disgusting display of intimacy, but he did not. If anything, his smile actually widened.

Caylie’s blood went cold – an indication of fear for humans but for Caros it was a warning – a sign of the most devastating fury.

Why?

Even after so many months of crying, of going through a thousand what-if situations in her mind, Caylie still could not understand why he had left her, why Luka had to throw her away in such a publicly humiliating manner when normally even the thought of sneezing in public would have been loathsome for him.

And he had done it at her come-out ball no less, as if Luka wanted to give her every reason to hate him.

She pushed the guy away, no longer uncaring, no longer dead to the world.

Her eyes, glowing midnight black, flicked back to the screen, where Luka had started answering questions, his arm wrapped casually around the woman’s waist.

Her fingers curled, sharp nails almost slicing into the flesh of her palms.

Luka Georgiades was going to pay.

She would damn make sure of it.

~~~

Violet eyes turned to midnight black as he pictured his fingers encircling her slender neck before squeezing, punishing her for daring to let another man soil her skin with his touch. When he saw the guy’s mouth open, fangs glistening with saliva as they start to stretch out, his own fangs extended as a snarl rapidly made its way out of his throat.

“ LUKA.”

Claws bit into his shoulders, the pain snatching him back from his murderous hallucinations just before he snapped and killed someone for good. He crashed back to reality with a gasp, the blackness in his eyes taking more than a moment to recede.

“Breathe,” Domenico Moretti urged him quietly. The werewolf prince’s gaze was concerned when he met Luka’s turbulent violet eyes.

“I told you,” Luka said in an uncharacteristically revealing tone as bitterness twisted his perfectly shaped lips into a grim smile. “I can’t handle being this close to her anymore.”

Domenico shook his head sharply. “That’s not true. You can and you will. I won’t lose one of my best allies to vampires just because you’re too fucking---”

“NO.” Luka’s head snapped back to the club, his eyes unerringly finding Caylie amidst the glittering backdrop. He had heard his name on the TV screen, knew what the report would be---

The sight of Caylie pushing off the guy panting above her should have relieved Luka, but it didn't. He could sense her hurt, welling inside her like it came from a bottomless pit. So much pain – was he the one who caused her all that?

That kind of pain didn’t kill, he reminded himself. But if he came back into her life, if he gave in to the temptation of claiming her, the kind of pain it could cause would be irrevocable. If he came back to her, sooner or later Caylie would die – in his own hands and there was no going back after that.

  

The Brethren

Present Time

 

A uniformed guard suddenly blocked the way of my parents, heels clicking hard against the ground when they were about to open the doors leading into the Discipline Hall. The sound echoed in the enormous marbled hallway, and I tried not to shiver. Only this part of the Brethren was free from the gay and busy crowds that filled its magnificently vast and opulently decorated ballrooms every day. This was also the part that all the Caros painstakingly avoided. Once you crossed this hall, there was a chance you’d never come out alive of it.

The guard’s gaze lingered on me. I had a feeling he thought I deserved to be here, with how disgraceful I looked. My hair was a mess, my makeup ruined, and one strap of my sparkly flapper dress was torn, leaving it to rest limply against my bare arm.

Image to Caros was everything, and yet here I was---a living blasphemy of everything our race stood for.

“Our apologies, sir, madam, but only violators may enter.” The guard’s face was expressionless when he spoke.

Violators were just a misdeed away from traitors. Violators could be punished, reprimanded, or tortured but for traitors there was no hope, no stay for execution.

All eyes were suddenly on me – the violator.

Panic eclipsed every emotion I felt for one fraction of a second, but I managed to hold it back. I forced a smile. Caros were never supposed to show their real feelings – and especially not the kind that put us at a disadvantage.

“I’ll go alone.” This was what I wanted. This was what I told myself I would die trying to have – and now was the time to prove it.

I didn’t turn to catch one last look at my parents when the ten-foot-tall steel doors closed behind me, not even when I heard Catherine Sonora’s sharp intake of breath as I gently extricated my hand from her tight grasp. My mom might seem frail, a tiny society blonde who only knew how to spend money – but she was more than that. She was a fighter, but I had a feeling she’d break down if she knew how terrified I was at this moment.

The Discipline Hall was glaringly bright and intensely humid. Sunlight burned my skin here and there, with golden rays managing to sneak past the mosaic art that made up the hall’s ceiling, the rainbow shades of glass leaving stinging spots on my flesh.

The mosaic portrait was like something straight out of an urban fantasy book cover – an Armageddon scene depicted in the most elegant selection of colors. It was but a taste of how violators could be punished, of how Caros still insisted on finding grace and beauty even in the way they inflicted pain.

Our ancient artists had vividly painted with glass vampires dying in a pool of blood in one corner, a murder of vidanges nesting on top of pine trees as they feasted on human flesh, werewolves howling on a full moon atop scraggly mountains while Souris with their pastel-colored wings, the mortal kindred of angels, soared into the midnight sky.

And behind it all was our race, infamous for our standoffish stance in wars between non-human lines. Or at least that was so before it became obvious to everyone that an alliance was all that stood between our race and eventual annihilation.

My eyes were stinging by the time I stopped a small respectful distance away from the judge’s bench, which was twice as large as what you’d normally see in human courtrooms. I had to crane my neck all the way up just to meet the eyes of the reviewer.

Here was yet another expressionless Caro, dressed in Brethren’s judicial robes, hood down to reveal sleek black hair and piercing silver eyes. She was young, probably not more than a few years older, but that wasn’t what shocked me.

Age wasn’t a factor in our society. What made me stumble was the red rim around her left eye. I couldn’t believe someone like her existed and that she was one of our reviewers. I glanced at her eyes again, but the blood rim around her left eye was gone, making me wonder if the Discipline Hall was rigged to make its defendants hallucinate into telling the truth.

“State your case.”

Nails digging deep into my flesh in an effort to keep my voice from shaking, I recited from memory the lines that we were taught as children if we were ever taken as violators of our code. “My name is Caylie Sonora. I am eighteen years old, and I have been sent here in violation of Order #4 under Act 5.”

A minute pause before the reviewer glanced down at the documents she held in one hand. “Five counts of violation listed here – academic failure, inappropriate public behavior in human presence, irresponsible behavior in Caro society, invalid absence from Brethren general assemblies, and lastly – public intake of blood.”

The memory of that one last violation blanketed my gaze, with Brethren guards coming out of nowhere at the club. One second, I was striving hard not to move away, to let a stranger’s fangs sink into my neck, but the next thing I knew I was being arrested, so discreetly that no one – not even all the Caros who had been lost in the throes of liquor-induced pleasure – had known what was taking place under the loud throbbing beat of music.

The reviewer’s gaze met mine. “Plea or bargain, Ms. Sonora?”

“Guilty.” I was probably the only Caro to stand before the reviewer’s bench to say that. To plead guilty was to virtually sign away my life, to let the Brethren do as it will with me.

And yet the reviewer didn’t even bat an eyelash. She asked calmly, “Do you understand the consequences of your actions?”

I bowed my head. “Yes, Invisa.” That was a reviewer’s title in our language, and it was the only way to refer to them. We were prohibited from using their first names the moment they were appointed, a reminder that all their personal ties had to cease the moment they donned a reviewer’s robes.

“I apologize sincerely for it and I would gladly pay for whatever harm I had done our society.” I meant every word. My vendetta was exactly that – mine. If someone had been hurt other than him because of my actions, then so be it. It only meant I had to wait another lifetime to extract vengeance.

The reviewer murmured slowly, “There was no negative result of your actions that had been reported – but there could have been.” Her long nails, painted deep purple, tapped the desk. “I assume you know the standard corrective response for this would be rehabilitation under direct supervision of a Brethren official.”

“Yes, Invisa.” I tried not to hold my breath but couldn’t. This was what I had gambled my entire future for.

Her gaze went back to the documents she held in her hands. “But I have a feeling that if I do that then I would be playing right into your hands.”

Shit.

I hastily tried to school my expression back into blandness, but it was too late. I had already betrayed myself. I could see it in the way her gaze narrowed.

She leaned back against her seat. “I’m going to ask you three questions – and if you were to answer me untruthfully I would know and there will be no bargain, no hope, no anything to save you from being thrown into the dungeons for fifty years.”

“I will speak the truth, Invisa.” My voice thankfully didn’t shake even as my knees started to feel weak. The weight of her stare was oppressive, as if she was already carving the truth out of my soul. She made me feel small, the way I was so scantily dressed, the way I had led my life for the past sixt months---so terribly unfit to bear our race’s name.

“Will you die for the Brethren?”

I didn’t hesitate to answer. “Yes.”

“Do you believe the Brethren’s decisions are always right?”

This time I paused before saying finally, “No.”

The reviewer smiled. It made her beautiful, but it also made her appear deadlier and I was starting to understand why someone so young had been chosen to hold one of the highest positions in our society.

“And if I were to let you choose who among the Brethren would be your rehabilitators---”

A gasp escaped. Never in my blackest dreams had I thought I would have a chance to choose.

Her smile became a mixture of sweetness and poison. “Who would you choose, Caylie Sonora?”

My eyes turned black as I answered very softly, “Luka Georgiades.”

Our gazes met, and that was when I saw it again, the red rim shining so brightly it was turned the iris of her left eye into a blood moon set in a silvery lake.

“So be it,” the reviewer said just as softly. “I shall order Luka Georgiades to be your rehabilitator, with orders not to leave your side until you have been set back in the right path. He is also to be informed that you have argued strongly against his endorsement---”

My head shot up.

“---but this review has overrode your preferences.”

One blink and she was gone.

Another blink and she stood right in front of me, her speed and the power that was coiled inside her causing me to stumble back in stunned realization. Dark. So, so dark. How could this be?

“Yes.” Her voice was a vicious caress in itself. “I am half-vampire, the only one in this world and I see things that nobody else sees. Your life and his life are forever entwined, but the bonds are twisted and tainted by my kind.”

This close, the red rim was disturbingly mesmerizing, tempting me to stare into it forever. It took all of my power to wrench my gaze away from the reviewer’s. “I don’t understand---”

“You’re not meant to just yet, but soon you will.” Another blink and she was back behind the judge’s bench.

I tried not to gasp again but failed. Just being that close to a half-vampire was enough to have me stagger back dizzily, like I had been strangled without knowing it.

“You are dismissed.” She stood in the center of the hall, more vampire than Caro even in her dauntingly sober reviewer’s robes.

Questions raced in my mind, but I knew that they wouldn’t be answered. I curtsied again before turning away on unsteady legs. As I reached for the door, the reviewer’s candy-coated voice once again reached me.

Call when there is no one to trust.

I froze, never expecting the reviewer to offer her help but when I looked back she was gone.