Prologue
THE HUNGER IN his belly was not a new sensation.
He’d known it, on and off, for almost every one of his thirteen years.
It was the kind of hunger that gnawed at a person from the inside out, so extreme one couldn’t even faint from it, because the agony of being so utterly empty and depleted refused to allow any reprieve.
From where Theo sat, back pressed to the wall of an Athens street, he watched some of Europe’s wealthiest and most elite pass him by, none so much as glancing at the grimy, skin-and-bones boy huddled on the ground—as though he were invisible.
His clothes were tattered, his skin covered in soot and his eyes were sunken.
But oh, those dark grey eyes. They could still see. And his mind, though malnourished, could understand.
The inequities of this world. The imbalance. The unfairness.
He watched Europe’s elite, as they moved like a relentless tide, undulating in and out of the revolving glass doors of one of Athens’s most exclusive hotels, and inwardly, he cursed them all. How could there be such wealth in the world, when he had to live like this?
Still, it was better, in Theodoros Leonidas’s opinion, than the alternative.
He’d known many temporary homes, and had hated each and every one.
It wasn’t always the fault of the foster parents with whom he was placed.
Theo appreciated that he was difficult—he’d been told it often enough, but he recognised the truth of it.
He was angry and defensive, and given the choice between being thrown into the home of a stranger, or living on the streets with his own wits, he would always choose the latter.
Even when it meant a hunger such as this.
He closed his eyes. Not to sleep—his hunger wouldn’t allow it—but to wait, and blot the world from his mind. As night fell, he would move, driven to take what no one would give him. Just a little food, to keep him going. Just a little food, for a young teenager with no one else to get it for him.