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    Stone Heart
    Stone Heart
    Stone Heart
    Ebook92 pages56 minutes

    Stone Heart

    By Katee Robert

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    In the city of Olympus, people only speak about Medusa in whispers. She's Athena's knife hand, the one sent when Athena wants someone to disappear. No one asks Medusa what she wants, but she owes Athena her life, and if staining her hands with blood is the only way to repay the debt, it's a small price to pay.

    Until Athena sends her after Calypso, the mistress of the rich politician Odysseus. Calypso is beautiful and cunning and she'll do anything to keep her life—including seducing her would-be assassin.

    What starts as a ploy to escape quickly spirals into genuine interest. But it doesn't matter that they've finally found something special together. Athena will have her blood, and this time not even crossing the River Styx will save them…

    Please check author website for all CWs.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKatee Robert
    Release dateFeb 17, 2023
    ISBN9798215126288
    Stone Heart
    Author

    Katee Robert

    New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Katee Robert learned to tell her stories at her grandfather's knee. Her 2015 title, The Marriage Contract, was a RITA finalist, and RT Book Reviews named it "a compulsively readable book." When not writing sexy contemporary or romantic suspense, she spends her time playing imaginary games with her children, driving her husband batty with what-if questions, and planning for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

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    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Good little short story. If you love the Dark Olympus series you will enjoy this.
    • 5/5
      Good to the point spicy little novela... I honestly loved it!

    Book preview

    Stone Heart - Katee Robert

    CHAPTER 1

    MEDUSA

    I need you to do something for me.

    I fall into an easy stance, feet shoulder-width apart and hands clasped behind me out of sheer instinct. Athena doesn’t require as much formality as my old instructors, but old habits die hard. She sits behind her desk, as regal as a queen and seven times as deadly. She’s a beautiful Black woman with warm brown skin and an undercut, her dark curls perfectly styled. Today her customary suit is a lovely cream color that would make me look like a child playing dress-up.

    On Athena, it’s perfect.

    If she wasn’t my commander, her beauty and perfection would make me trip over my feet and act like a bumbling teenager, but Athena doesn’t suffer fools lightly and I am not foolish enough to harbor a schoolyard crush on one of the thirteen most powerful people in Olympus. Most days.

    Whatever you need.

    She leans forward and arches a brow at me. We’ve known each other long enough, that her gaze doesn’t linger on the scars that mar my face. Sit, Medusa. This isn’t a dressing down. I have a mission for you, and I require the utmost secrecy.

    Disappointment sours my stomach, and I fight to keep my expression even. I don’t know what I expected. That Athena would call me in here one day and just want to chat? Ask me how my day’s going? That’s not who she is. That’s not the role I play for her. There are times when I wish it were different, especially lately, but I owe Athena everything. She says jump, I ask how high.

    I gingerly sink into the chair across from her desk. It’s sturdy and not what I would consider doll furniture, but my body still feels too big, too gangly, to occupy this space. What if I crush it? That would be just how my luck goes. Shift wrong, flex a little, and now I’ve broken Athena’s favorite chair.

    It takes a whole lot of effort to drag my thoughts back into order. What are the details? I can guess the parameters. I’m not like the normal squads she has running the valiant tasks to keep Olympus safe. Achilles and Patroclus and Bellerophon are all practically heroes as far as the city is concerned. The only time people talk about me, it’s with fear. Like I’m the boogeyman hiding under their beds, ready to kill them with a single attack. Still, at least they only talk about me in whispers, instead of saying it to my face. I prefer it that way, even if being called a monster hurts.

    No matter how true it is.

    The limelight has only shone in my direction once, and that was more than enough. The fear from that time still has me waking in a cold sweat some nights. I dodged a bullet, and Athena is the only reason I didn’t spend years holed up in an apartment in the shipping district, unwilling mistress to the last Poseidon. He’s dead and gone now, his son having inherited the title, but the fear remains.

    Better to be feared than desired. Better for me. Better for everyone.

    She sighs and leans back. The situation is not ideal. Two of the legacy families are at each other’s throats over a marital matter. Normally, this would be outside our jurisdiction and I’d be inclined to let them figure it out for themselves, but Zeus has requested I take care of things. Her expression twists at that last bit, leaving me no illusions over the nature of the request. More like an order. Athena might be one of the Thirteen, the ruling body of Olympus, but Zeus is…Zeus.

    Okay, I say slowly. I can guess where this is going, and the twisting in my stomach gets worse. My hands are hardly clean, and not likely to get cleaner as time goes on, but I don’t have the nifty ability to click off my emotions like some of Athena’s other people do. Instead, I add to my nightmare fuel and call it a fair deal.

    Better than the other option.

    The husband, Odysseus, has a mistress and he’s not being subtle about her existence. His wife is furious, both the families are embarrassed and sniping at each other, and it’s only a matter of time before she poisons his soup or her mother tries to run him over with a car.

    I blink. I have never understood the upper tier families who all scramble for whatever powerful cast-offs they can grab from their proximity to the Thirteen. What’s the point of all that effort with no payoff? There’s only a changeover of title once a generation, give or take, so it all seems so pointless. Why doesn’t he just dump the mistress?

    His pride is all riled up and so he won’t end the relationship even though he doesn’t want to deal with the consequences. You’d understand if you met him. Athena sighs. Zeus wants her gone in the permanent sense, and quickly. She slides a manila folder across the desk to me.

    Nausea surges as I pick it up, but I swallow down the feeling. Inside the folder, I find a piece of paper with a name and address on it; a key; and a picture. I put the picture back into the folder without looking at it. I don’t want to see the face of the person I’m being asked to remove, at least not while I have an audience. The address is close, a fancy apartment building right in the center of the Olympian upper city. Odysseus really is bold to have set her up here, right under his wife’s nose.

    My gaze lingers on the name above the address. Calypso. Pretty name, no doubt for a pretty woman. She doesn’t deserve what’s about to happen to her, but sometimes the price of grabbing for power in Olympus is that you get violence and blood instead of prestige and jewels. It doesn’t seem worth the risk from where I’m sitting, but when I’m the one they send to cut down people who have reached too far, too fast, I guess I’m not the best person to make that call.

    I toss the keys lightly in my hand. Zeus moves fast to get keys to her place.

    He didn’t provide them. Odysseus did.

    I almost drop the keys. Excuse me?

    "Like I

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