PROLOGUE

      Ten years ago...

      ARES’S TIRES SPUN gravel as he tore from the access road into the parking lot at Mythelios’s only airport, but they couldn’t compete with the churning of his stomach.

      At the edge of the tarmac, he slammed into Park and launched himself from the car.

       Please don’t let me be too late.

      His heart, still beating hard enough to bruise, hadn’t slowed for a single second since his best friend, Theo, had called him twenty minutes earlier in a blind panic—Theo’s parents were sending his little sister away. Today. Right now. Or maybe a few minutes ago if time wasn’t on his side.

      He’d thought he would have more time to spend with her before they took that step—the step he now couldn’t even imagine why he’d agreed to. Her father had said nothing about Erianthe leaving the next morning...

      He burst through the chain-link gate along the back of the hangar where all the partners of Mopaxeni Shipping kept their private planes. Gravel became tarmac as he pounded through the baking waves rising from black pavement. Even as fast as he could move, he might as well have been running through quicksand; every yard of effort seemed to return an inch of sluggish distance.

      The same threat had been lobbed at Erianthe by her parents when they’d reacted just to the myriad ways she had rebelled. The new millennium might be well underway, but they were still firmly rooted in the past—strict, traditional, image-obsessed Greek Orthodox billionaires, who’d decided that the best place to hide the shameful pregnancy of their teenage daughter was in a convent.

      Theo had never believed they’d actually send her away, but Ares had known for nearly eighteen hours. He’d just thought there would be more time before she left. She wasn’t even showing yet.

      It was something else Theo didn’t know about—like the yearlong secret relationship they’d carried out to protect the dynamic of their group, their real family—the neglected children of Mopaxeni. A fail-safe in case things went haywire between them.

      Theo didn’t know it was Ares’s fault his little sister was basically being exiled to another country, hidden away, with the adoption of her child forced on her by their “loving” parents. He thought his parents were sending Eri away to boarding school, so she would avoid distractions and concentrate on her studies.

      He rounded the hangar and saw the plane already pulled out, door open, stairs still attached. The long black sedan her father often drove sat between him and the plane, but the darkened windows on the car blocked him from seeing whether they were still inside or already onboard.

      How had Dimitri Nikolaides talked him into agreeing to give her up? To give up his child?

      It had seemed like the responsible decision when Ares had gone to her father, but now all he could feel was panic.

      He pushed harder, his lungs burning, unable to keep up with the demands he was putting on them in the already sweltering morning sunshine.

       “You’re both too young to be parents.”

       “You’ll hurt her worse if you’re married by the time you get bored with her.”

       “She’s only sixteen.”

      Now, seeing it all so rapidly come to pass, it couldn’t be clearer that he’d been wrong. So wrong...so many mistakes. He was losing her—he was losing them both. And then he’d lose the rest of them too.

      The door stood open—there was still time. He’d tell her father he wouldn’t give up his rights to his own child. And if that didn’t work, he’d knock Dimitri out and they’d run. They’d run away, just like she’d begged him to. There had to be somewhere they could go.

      Rounding the sedan, he’d reached out for the stair rails when a blur of movement in his peripheral vision caused him to slow down. Something impacted on him before he could turn to look back, and sent him sprawling onto the sizzling pavement. Weight and heat.

      The air blasted from his burning lungs. Large hands—more than one set—grabbed his upper arms and hauled him up before he could get enough air sucked in to say anything, to do anything. To shout for her.

      Guards. Dimitri had brought guards.

      Digging in his heels, Ares tried to twist free, but air was still an issue. They began dragging him roughly back around the car, away from her. She must be on the plane.

      So close. He was so close.

      The adrenaline that had kept him going could hold up for only so long. Eventually all he had left to keep fighting, to let the girl he loved know he was there, was his voice.

      “Erianthe!” he shouted, over and over, his eyes locked on the darkened portal into the private jet.

      They didn’t stop dragging him toward the rear of the car. They pulled, and he staggered backward still, toward the hangar.

      He shouted again. He screamed for her. His vision wobbled from the forced locomotion, but it always returned to the only place of hope he could fixate on.

      His heart stopped, then surged into the stratosphere as he finally saw her, there in the doorway. She’d heard him.

      Shrugging out of her father’s hands, she launched herself down the stairs and ran straight for him. The shining curtain of her dark hair flew out behind her, and as she got closer he could see how pale she was but for the redness around her midnight eyes.

       Closer.

      The men stopped dragging him.

       Closer.

      They let go.

      With newfound strength he lunged forward, running to meet her, arms outstretched. If he could just hold her...

      With all these people, even the hope he’d clung to couldn’t convince him now that there was any chance they could get away today.

      If he could apologize, he’d have that to hold in his heart until he could find a way to get to her.

      As he neared, ready to grab her, her face contorted. The tears he’d guessed would be there became rivers down her cheeks and she skidded to a stop, drawing her right arm back in a full swing.

      A sharp blast of pain radiated from his left cheek and his head snapped to the side, sending him back a step to maintain his balance.

      She’d hit him?

      It took a few seconds for the situation to make sense through the expanding hollow filling his chest.

      “Eri...” He said her name, the words he’d practiced in the car evaporating in the heat of her stare.

      “I trusted you!” She half sobbed, half screamed, smacking away his hand as he instinctively reached for her. “I thought you were different, but you’re just like him.”

      “No...” The word came out because it was the only one he could wrestle through his closing throat. He wasn’t like Dimitri Nikolaides, but he’d been tricked by him, his fears