Warning
Enter this tale at your own risk. It’s dark. It’s dirty. It’s the love story of a villain.
I know how villains are made.
I’ve watched their secrets rise from the ashes and emerge from the shadows.
As part of a family tree with roots so twisted, I’m strangled by their vine.
Imprisoned in a world of decadence and sin, I’ve seen Gods among men.
And he is one of them.
He is the villain.
He is the enemy who demands to be the lover.
He is the monster who has shown me pleasure but gives so much pain.
But something has changed…
He’s different.
Darker.
Wildly possessive as his obsession with me grows to an inferno that can’t be controlled.
Yes… he is the villain.
And he is the end of my beginning.
ChapterOne
Apollo Godwin
“You shouldn’t have come,” my brother says as I approach, not trying to hide the sound of my boots mucking their way across the rain-soaked ground.
Ares Godwin stands where I expect to find him. He’s stoically planted with his hands in his pockets on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Salish Sea. Olympus Manor—our family estate—to his left, and the tree of forgiveness to his right.
He doesn’t turn to face me, but keeps his eyes focused on the water crashing into and over the rocks below. “Does the family think I’m going to skip out on bail and leave the country? Is that why they sent you?”
I huff as I stand next to him, mimicking his stance. “Hardly. Andtheydidn’t send me. You should know better than that.”
Through the corner of my eye, I see the side of Ares’s mouth lift in a smirk. “Scared I’d jump to my death then?”
“I wouldn’t blame you.”
“But you knew I wouldn’t.”
He’s right. I know he won’t. He’s a Godwin. Godwins don’t give up.
We are gods who walk the earth. We are the monsters, the beasts, the villains in the story. We are the vipers who strike our enemies when they least expect it. The Godwin family wields the mighty thunderbolt like Zeus, and yet…somehow the powerful have fallen.
There is a chip in our shield. A crack in our protection. We are vulnerable now, and for the first time in my life, I see my family is human. Flawed. Even weak. Everything has changed.
My brother—my identical twin brother—is going to jail for the rest of his life for murder.
“But you were an asshole for taking the helicopter by yourself. I had to travel here by boat like a true savage,” I say, trying to cut through the thickness of our air with jest.