Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

P ersephone

The universe clearly has a sense of humor, and I'm the obvious butt of the joke.

I don't know what possessed me to agree to meet the man for an interview to a job I have no business entertaining taking. My work experience includes growing plants, arranging bouquets, and punching orders into a tablet connected to a register. Oh, and if pressed, I can bump along in a tractor.

It absolutely does not include the experience one would need to work as the personal assistant to a man such as Hades Pluton. A man who inherited millions and transformed it to billions. A complex man who mostly keeps to himself. Rumored to be tortured, arrogant, distantly cold, and sometimes cruel. Not unlike the God of ancient myth, his namesake.

Of course, I'd Googled him deep into the night while Willa snored in the bed next to mine.

Now, I'm sleep-deprived on my day off from digging, and I'm about to sit for an interview with a man named Hades. Hence being the butt of a universal joke. Because what are the odds?

The walk from the house I'm currently staying in with some of the other students of the program, to the Tower of Pluto takes longer than I'd like. For the first time since meeting her, I wish I was Claire. With her private apartment in the city and car paid for by wealthy and supportive parents to get her where she needs to be, her life in comparison to mine feels pretty cushy. If I had my own place—or at the very least, my own room, I might get a full night's sleep.

Really, as much as I like Willa, it would be nice if I didn't have to listen to her snore. Also, if I get this job, it would be nice to live a little closer to the Tower.

We'd taken a taxi the night before, and it's not like I haven't walked by the club before in my explorations. But walking in this heat while panicking isn't fun, even though I'd thought I could use the exercise to burn off a layer of nerves.

All I've really done is sweat through my clothes.

This is a waste of time. The man is not going to hire me .

I really don't know what I'm thinking. Hell, what had he been thinking, offering me the interview?

I'd told him I was insane. That I heard a voice in my mind and followed it to another country, for goodness' sake. And he thought, hey, let's hire the wack job to manage my personal affairs. Honestly!

Maybe he's the crazy one. The loopy-loo. One straw short of total insanity.

I mean, he'd have to be to hire a self-confessed crazy girl, right?

As instructed, I enter through the main doors of the Tower, where a gigantic man with bulging muscles peeking out from short sleeves gives me a curious once-over. He's sitting at a table close to the door, and I get the sense his purpose there had been to wait for me.

That sense is confirmed when he rises from his seat to lumber to the door, flipping a heavy bolt. He turns to me. "Persephone?"

I point to the door. "I think you should have asked me that before you locked me inside."

He smirks, a wide and confident grin. "Hades is waiting for you. Leuce will take you to him." He gestures behind me, and only then do I hear the clicking of heels on marble.

I turn to find the woman from outside the club walking toward me. Again, she's in a bright white outfit. But unlike last night, she's showing more skin today in a white pantsuit and a sheer white camisole .

Again, I'm hit by her beauty. Next to her, sweaty like I am, I feel notably inferior.

"It's good to see you again, Persephone," Leuce greets me in her smooth voice.

"You too. And, please, call me Annie."

Leuce gives me a curious smile and an even more curious shake of her head. I can't tell if she's laughing at me or refusing to call me by my preferred name.

"This way." With a hand on the small of my back, she guides me from the entrance toward a wall I hadn't noticed the night before. It opens into an elevator. I step inside with her before shimmying out from under her touch.

She clearly notices, and I am left explaining shyly, "It's hot out, and I walked from my apartment." I cringe. "I'm sweaty."

Leuce straightens her shoulders, and the result has her braless breasts pushing against her translucent shirt. I'm shocked as I catch a glimpse of dark nipples, and force my burning gaze to the cool floor.

I think she is amused, as a low and breathy sound falls from perfectly painted lips. "Sweat is normal, Persephone. As is admiring a beautiful body."

Heaven help me. I'm so hot, I think I might melt.

I'm shaking with nerves. Clearly, I don't know what to do with this confident woman.

"You can look," she tells me gently. "I will like it."

I do look at her, meeting her bold gaze. The overwhelming confidence has envy spiking like a spear inside me. What I would give to be so sure within the skin I wear.

She pushes away from the wall to close the distance between us. As she towers over me, I swear I catch the scent of a crisp mountain breeze. Hear the rustle of leaves on the wind.

With a small shake of my head, I refocus on her face. Watching her as she studies me. She murmurs, "You are going to change everything."

I have no idea what she means, and am unable to ask as the doors roll open into a private lobby. My steps stutter as she enters the very clearly private space with the same confidence she owns in every move she makes. Noticing that I don't follow, she pauses to spin on one dagger-like silver heel.

"Come, Persephone. Hades waits."

Swallowing my nerves, I do as she requests. I follow her into what kind of feels, terrifyingly, like my own damnation.

Hades sits in front of an easel, perched on a black stool with both feet flat on the floor. There's a tension in the way that he moves, the brush sweeping blood red paint across a canvas colored in deeper, countless shades of red. The painting isn't near complete, and yet I get the terrifying sense that the very canvas is oozing blood .

His long, loose waves are pulled into a bun at the back of his head, but more than a couple strands have fallen free. Although he's wearing black suit pants, he's shucked his shirt to display a ripple of muscle stacked on muscle.

I got the sense the man was massive the night before, but I hadn't expected him to be this big.

Really, if the man so wished, I'm confident he could crush me like a bug.

"Hades," Leuce calls after a moment, startling me.

I don't know how I'd forgotten her presence, but I feel my face turn pink with the realization that she definitely caught me checking out her boss. My potential boss.

Frick, frick, frick.

This day just keeps getting worse. I'm clearly sleep deprived.

Hades' entire form stiffens. His shoulders and back expand in a way that makes me think he's inhaled a big breath, before he places the brush into a holder and slides smoothly from the stool. For a man so large, he moves with a kind of lethal grace that feels just a little unnerving.

His eyes find and lock on me, never shifting as he dismisses in his deep voice, "Thank you, Leuce."

Leuce gives him a small nod, flashing me a knowing smile. I wish I knew what she knew, I think, as she turns on her spiked heels and exits. The door clicks closed behind her, leaving me entirely alone with Hades. I can't help my flinch.

He lifts a rag, wiping at the paint that clings to his skin as he takes a step closer. Nerves shoot through my body, spraying buckshot into every corner of me. My body trembles.

One of two things happen when I'm extremely nervous or extremely uncomfortable. I babble or I shut down.

Today, as it would have it, I babble. A lot. "Don't you think this is a little odd?" I don't wait for him to reply before my tongue is wagging again. "I'm Persephone and you're Hades." I laugh nervously. "That's just—it's—well, what are the odds?" Again, I give no pause. "I mean, of course, I know we're not the Persephone and Hades, because that would just be ludicrous. I'm insane, but not that insane." Oh, God, I'm so not getting this job. "I mean, I obviously know that we're not them. We aren't going to?—"

I snap my mouth closed when he comes close enough to smell before he stops moving. His dark eyes are fixed on me, and only me. It's like he's drinking me in, devouring me without even touching me. Trepidation runs a cool finger over my soul. I swear to all that is holy, I feel a pull in a place so deep inside of me, as though the very core of my being is threaded to this man, and he's just given it a single firm tug.

He dips his head only slightly, his hands still twisting in the rag between us. "What is it we're not going to do, Persephone?"

Holy crap—I can't think when he's this close. Forming words is a struggle, so I don't think about what I say before I say it. "Fall in love. Escape to the Underworld together."

I'm blowing this interview.

"Is that what they did?"

I blink. "What?"

"Did Hades and Persephone escape together into the Underworld?"

"I don't know." His eyes lift from mine to the frown between my brows. "I—he—he abducted her."

"He did." His voice is a low, rough purr. "He saw her in a field of flowers, playing with her little friends."

"She was a child."

"Not quite a child. Not entirely a woman," he corrects. I shiver under the sweep of intense eyes. "Times were different."

Something about his final statement has a laugh bubbling between us. I slap my hand over my mouth to sever the sound before saying with confidence, "It's myth. None of it ever happened."

He's not dissuaded. "Do you think she loved him?"

"I don't know. Can a woman love a man who abducts her from all that she knows?" I'm lying. I've been obsessed with the love between Hades and Persephone since I learned of their existence. But I don't want him to know that. Not yet .

He's so still, I'm not even sure he's breathing. "Do you think he loved her?"

I shrug. It's a small lift and fall of my shoulders, but his eyes catch the movement. I think he catches all my movements, every breath, every flutter of my pulse. No one has ever looked at me the way he looks at me.

Or maybe my infatuation with my potential boss, who happens to be way too old for me, is putting hopeful things into my mind. Things that don't exist.

I need to put an end to this. So, squaring my shoulders, I say, "I don't think they were real. I think ancient people were desperate to make sense of things, of their life and their death, and they created elaborate stories to explain away these unexplainable things. There is no Underworld or Hades. There is no Persephone or pomegranate or abduction or love. There is only myth."

Hades wets his lips, tosses his rag now streaked with blood red paint to the table next to his easel, and moves to put space between us.

I should be relieved, but I'm not. The space feels somehow wrong. Gaping.

With the heat that clings to him now gone, I'm enveloped in a bone-deep cold. Hugging myself, I wait for him to speak again, watching, as he lifts the black dress shirt from an obsidian topped desk. He dons it slowly, long, thick fingers working deftly at the buttons until he's appropriately dressed for an interview with a potential employee.

As for my part, I feel entirely undressed and stripped raw.

No man has ever affected me quite like Hades affects me. Maybe it's the dark romance of our ancient names, and the myth of the couple before us. The legend of their love. Maybe I really do have a thing for older men, and I'm only just now realizing it. Whatever it is, I endeavor to find a way to cut the head off this snake of infatuation before I am bitten and consumed by the venom of it.

I lift my chin. "I want to thank you for this opportunity, Hades, but I don't think I am suited to this job." Whatever the job is.

His black eyes lift to pin me in place. I couldn't move even if I wanted to. And sadly, I don't particularly want to.

Even though I know I should.

Working for this man—spending time with him—it would be dangerous.

And yet, even though I sense deep inside I should flee him, I can't make myself do it.

"I disagree," he says softly, but there is an edge of warning to his tone that suggests I don't tempt him. I want to tempt him. "I think you are exactly the thing that I need, Persephone."