Bellona sneak peek!

So I realized my April is going to be crazy (easter! holidays! Bestie visits!) and decided to put up a pre-order for our most lovely of War Goddesses to make sure she launches into the world the way she should.

My brain needs dopamine so we are sharing chapters today so y’all can get as excited for Bellona and Rafael as I am!

If you are a pre-order person, here is the link.

p.s. If you are on Ream, don’t worry I’ll have the full book up soon, I’m just doing my final proof read x

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Seven Bloody Hills

Depending on the teller, the story of how Rome was founded was different.

There were boy kings being suckled by she-wolves and war-shattered, heart-sore Trojans trying to find a safe place to call home after the Greeks left Ilium in ashes.

Both tales were told, and both could be true. It didn’t matter what came out of the ground to say otherwise; the story of Rome—the dream of it—was what mattered the most.

Before Rome was a city, it had been seven lush, fertile hills that tribal lords had fought over. When the gods of Greece and Egypt were already ancient, the Roman gods were just coming into being in the great squabble for supremacy.

There was no questioning that Rome had begun with bloodshed and that war had been its business and greatest export. In all the smoke, betrayal, and mud, there grew soldiers, an empire, and gods. Amongst the cries of women stolen to populate the growing settlement and the blood sacrificed by their loved ones to try and get them back, something else alsocame into being.

Bellona was born from the lamenting of women, in fields of the slain, and the triumphant cries of victors. 

And she had been hearing them screaming ever since.

Chapter One

Rafael was having a bad night. It had started well, with drinks in a club with the sons of his father’s associates. They were all young and handsome and had plenty of money to slip into the lingerie of the prettiest strippers in Rome.

He had been having a piss when something pierced his neck. He had gone down on the club’s bathroom tiles, his dick still in his hands.

His father was going to be furious about that. That was if he managed to survive whatever was going to happen to him next.

Rafael could fight; he’d had to learn how from a young age, but all the fighting skills in the world weren’t helpful when you were cuffed to a chair.

“Little prince, are you awake yet?” a voice called from the gloom. Only one light was on in the warehouse he was being held in, and it was pointed directly at his face.

“What do you want?” Rafael asked. He fought the childish urge to ask them if they knew who his father was. No one fucked with Michele Asellio, and messing with his son was the biggest mistake these assholes were ever going to make.

A man walked into the light. Big, muscled, meant to intimidate. If Rafael hadn’t been tied up, he could have taken him in a fair fight. It wasn’t going to be fair.

“We have been trying to get your father to let us use the service of his ships occasionally, and he’s refusing to see the bigger picture,” the man said.

Rafael smiled. “And you think taking his only son is going to convince him? All you are going to get is a bullet in your brain.” The blow followed as he expected it.

There is no reasoning with idiots. Rafael wouldn’t let them hear his grunts or cries of pain.

He was pulled out of the chair and hung on a hook like a prized catch. The blows were precise and methodical. They were meant to hurt but not be fatal. Maybe they weren’t as dumb as they appeared.

Blood was pouring from a cut in his head, and his vision was going dark. He tried to memorize each and every face so he could identify them later. If there was a later.

His father wouldn’t get into bed with the mafia like many others. He wouldn’t give them what they wanted.

Rafael didn’t know which family was currently kicking the shit out of him, but he would find out. The Asellios had money and connections too, and they were all legal. His father was as ruthless as any mafia boss.

“I thought a rich boy like you would’ve been begging for mercy by now,” one of his assailants said with begrudging respect. “At least crying for his mama.”

Rafael spat a gob of blood out. “I’d rather cry for yours. She would probably appreciate a good-looking young man because your papa would have to be fuck ugly to father you.”

The man snarled, lifting his fist again, but the hit never came. A small throwing knife was sticking out of his hand.

“What the fuck—” He went to pull the knife out as another lodged into his throat, and he was going down. Guns started firing, and Rafael knew he was going to die in the crossfire. A flash of gold glinted in the shadows, then it was gone again. Screams of dying men echoed all around him.

“There will be more coming, so you better be able to walk,” a voice said, and then the most stunning woman Rafael had ever seen appeared with a bloody dagger in her hand. He had been raised around beauty, but this woman was something else. She was built strong and was almost as tall as he was.

She was an Amazon, dressed in black pants, boots, and a turtleneck. She wasn’t wearing body armor, just a leather back harness holding two swords. Her blonde braid didn’t have a single hair out of place.

“Can you talk, or have they cut out your tongue?” she demanded with a voice that sounded like it belonged somewhere between the bedroom and the battlefield.

“I… I can walk, I think,” he stammered. The woman grabbed him around the waist and lifted him up and off the hook that held his chains. He was a tall guy and wasn’t exactly light. How did she lift him so easily? Rafael caught a perfume of something darkly exotic before she put him on his feet.

“Did my father send you?” he asked, willing his legs to stay upright. He couldn’t appear weak in front of anyone.

“Michele is worried about you, so I’m here to save your ass,” the woman said and patted him down. “No holes in you? Good. Let’s go.”

“I would like to know the name of my rescuer,” Rafael replied, following her into the darkness.

“I’m sure you would, ragazzo. Keep behind me. Don’t try to be brave.” The woman had her dagger free again. She bent down to pick up one of the batons from a body and passed it to him. “Here, take this.”

“You don’t want to give me one of those nice swords?”

She huffed out a sound that was almost a laugh. “I wouldn’t want you to cut yourself. Baby boys use sticks only. There’s more of those assholes out there, and I promised Michele you wouldn’t get shot. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

Rafael took the baton with a grin. “You’re so mean.”

“Try to pretend you don’t like it,” she said, her returning smirk lighting up his blood. Maybe he did like it.

Rafael followed his strange savior out of the building and into the shadows between shipping containers.

“Where are we?” he whispered. He thought they were still in Rome. How long had he been knocked out for?

“Sicily. All the airports are being watched. We are taking you out a different way so they can’t get you,” she whispered. She held up a hand to stop him from going further and peered around the side of the shipping container. Rafael glanced over her shoulder, getting another lungful of her perfume. It smelled expensive. He tried to focus and counted at least ten men with guns, all guarding a container loaded with wooden crates.

“I’m only going to say this once. Stay here until I come back for you.” The mercenary stared him down. “I mean it. No heroics. I’m trained for this, and you aren’t.”

“I can help. I can fight,” he protested.

“I’m sure you can, but you’re not going to.” She pinched his cheek. “Be a good boy and do as you’re told.”

“What will I get in return?” he asked because he never could keep his mouth shut.

“You will get to live with all your favorite parts still intact.” She didn’t wait for him to respond; she melted into the shadows, leaving him holding a baton with a sweaty hand and an awkward tightness in his pants.

Angela della morte. That was what he was going to call her. His angel of death.

Rafael peeked his head out only enough to watch whatever happened next. He saw men pulled into the shadows, disappearing with a gloved hand over their mouths and a blade sinking in their throats.

Bile rose in Rafael’s throat. He had seen violence but not on this scale. His angela appeared atop the shipping container before leaping off, swords drawn. She twisted mid-air and took the heads off two men with machine guns before landing.

Who the fuck was this woman? Rafael hadn’t known his father was acquainted with anyone like her. More than a simple mercenary, that was for sure. She cut through the remaining men, bullets flying around her but never making contact. Rafael’s brain screamed for oxygen and drew in a shaky breath, his broken ribs aching. His angela gestured to hurry up, and he scrambled from his hiding place.

“You obey orders well for a man. That’s good,” she said, taking a crowbar off a corpse. She wedged it under the lid of one of the wooden crates. She poked around the stuffing, pulling out bricks of cocaine until only the shredded newspaper was left. She looked up at Rafael. “Get in.”

“Absolutely not,” he said. He hated small spaces.

She raised one brow. “I said, get in. This is how I’m going to get you out of here. Now, you can go willingly, or I can break both of your legs and toss you in there. Your father said he didn’t want you shot. He didn’t say anything about other injuries.”

He knew she would do exactly what she was promising without batting her long lashes.

“You are charm itself,” Rafael muttered, climbing into the crate.

She grabbed the top of the lid to pull it back down.

“Wait!” he said. Rafael grabbed her by the face and quickly kissed her. She made a surprised sound that he swallowed down. After a moment, her lips moved against him, and everything in his world was suddenly okay. Rafael finally pulled back and stroked her cheek lightly.

“Thank you for the rescue, angela della morte.”

She smiled once, dazzling him before her head crashed into his face, and his world darkened.

When Rafael woke again, he was back in Rome with a busted face. He never saw the golden hair of his angel again.

* * *

Twenty-two years later, Rafael Asellio would sometimes wake from dreaming of that night with the smell of her perfume in his nose. He could smell it again now as he stared at the simple white card in his hand. It was worn around the edges, with only an embossed head of a female statue wearing a helmet and a phone number on the back. He could still feel Michele’s shaking fingers as he pressed it into Rafael’s hand.

“Only call this number when you have…no other choice,” Michele whispered, his voice a deathbed rasp. Rafael had thought the pain of the cancer had finally broken his father. He had put the card in the back of his desk drawer and forgotten about it for the past ten years.

It wasn’t until the evening that Rafael learned his two business partners were funding a hit on him that he really felt he had no other choice left. The carabinieri couldn’t help; the Costas owned them too.

Like his father, Rafael had done everything he could to not have mafia connections in their business. When he had taken over the company, he had slowly weeded out anyone who looked slightly suspicious, but by inheriting the company, he also became a part of an unbreakable agreement with his father’s two business partners. The company was owned by all three of them and could only be inherited by their male heirs. Michele had been the first to die, and Rafael had taken his place.

The problem was that Rafael was forty-six years old and had no heir or wife to give him one. The other two partners couldn’t get into bed with the Costa family unless Rafael agreed or they killed him. So they had put a bounty on his head in the hope it would either put enough stress on him to give in, or he would die, and his third would be split between them. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, but he didn’t know who he could trust, even amongst his own men.

Rafael stared at the card again. He wondered if this was the mysterious organization that his angela della morte had worked for all those years ago. Was she still alive? And would they know how to track her down? Rafael laughed softly at the thought of trying to find her for a date. She would probably break his face again. He rubbed at the scar across the bridge of his nose, his only reminder that she had existed at all.

Rafael drained his wine. He had no one else to turn to but whoever the white card belonged to. Rafael pulled out his phone and dialed the number.

Chapter Two

The building in Tangier used to be a church, and now it was the headquarters of one of the most notorious sex traffickers in Morocco. Bellona was sweating in places she didn’t like to sweat, and the more she looked at the girls in the cages, the more furious she became. Sad-looking saints and angels looked down from the painted cracked ceiling like they weren’t too happy about it either.

There was one painting of Mary Magdalene bathing Jesus’s feet in perfume. Bellona scowled at her. The last time she had seen Magdalena, she had given her a hard time about the reckless boy who had kissed Bellona so long ago. Rafael.

Bellona tended to forget the past as much as possible. It was the only way gods like her had a chance to survive. Stay in the present, keep moving forward. She hadn’t forgotten him, no matter how much time passed.

“Please, please, help,” a woman begged, her skinny arm reaching through the bars of her cage.

“I will, but I need you to be quiet until it’s over. You will be safer where you are,” Bellona whispered back. She clasped the woman’s filthy hand to reassure her. Bellona saw the needle marks on her arm, and her hatred grew.

There was something about traffickers that made Bellona particularly furious. Set knew this about her, and that was why he had sent this job to her. He was now trying to use his war god skills to help protect those who needed it instead of those who had paid for it.

Bellona thought Ayla had made her old friend soft, though she still did any job Set sent her way. This one was going to be a true pleasure.

Bellona moved past the cages and through a door where the old altar had been pulled down. Doesn’t feel so good, does it? she said to the faded apostles that were half falling from the plastered walls. Not that Bellona had many temples to her, but her priests, the Bellonari, were loyal until the end.

Bellona scanned the hallways, her pugio already in her hand. The traffickers had been using the old priests’ quarters, and while she didn’t like so many small places to get pinned down, she was going to make the exception.

The first room had a girl cuffed to a bed. A man was in a small bathroom adjoining it. Bellona held a finger up to her lips to keep her silent. The man’s neck broke with a satisfying snap, and he dropped to the dirty tiles. Bellona pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the girl.

“Take these and wait ten minutes. Then go into the church and help the others, understand?” Bellona said.

The girl responded in Berber, so Bellona switched dialects and repeated herself. The girl told her that she knew of five other men wandering about the building, and Bellona crept back out into the hallway.

“What the fuck?” a man said, coming through a side door. Bellona was on him in a heartbeat. A powerful kick to the balls had him falling with a yelp.

“If I had time, I’d cut all your dicks off and make you swallow them,” she hissed. She crouched beside him and cut his throat. “You are lucky that I’m busy.”

Bellona picked up the phone he had dropped, and her heart stopped. On the screen was a bounty notification and a photo. He had gray in his hair, and the soft youth from his face was gone, but there was no mistaking that smile. Rafael Asellio had two million euros on his head.

“This can’t be happening,” Bellona muttered. It had been a long time since she felt her strings of fate being pulled by the Parcae, and she didn’t like it one fucking bit.

Bellona was so distracted by the picture that she didn’t hear the man until something heavy smashed into her side. She really didn’t have time now. She had to get back to Rome. Bellona caught the crowbar before it hit her again, and her divinity ripped free of her. Her usual black uniform transformed into a gold and leather breastplate, her armguards and pauldrons fitting around her skin.

“W-What the fuck are you?” the man blabbed.

“I’m the one you should run from,” Bellona purred then cut off his head with her gladius. She shot through the rest of the building with divine speed, leaving trails of blood and bodies in her wake. She took one of the laptops she found in case Set could get anything useful off it and stuffed anything of value into a large duffel bag. Bellona returned to the church where women were crawling out of cages.

“Take this and start a new life somewhere,” Bellona said and tossed the bag at the center of them. “Don’t go out through the back. There are things there you don’t need to see.”

The women were all staring at her with wide eyes, and Bellona knew they were seeing a shining goddess in Roman armor with blood on her hands.

“Are you an angel?” a small girl whispered.

Bellona laughed, the sound alien in the awful place. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so much worse.”

***

You guys aren’t ready for the amount of chaotic fun this book is. It can be read as a standalone, but there are sooo many easter eggs for long-time readers. Expect Set content. Expect Hermes because we all know he’s my favorite.

Hope you all enjoyed this sneaky look, BELLONA is out on April 19th! You might get another chapter by then, because I’m so frickin in love with these guys.

In other Gods news, if you are into audio, ANUBIS is out next Tuesday, but don’t worry, I will send a reminder,

Alessa xx