They knew how to come by clothes, books and other necessities through interesting if not necessarily legal methods. For two men who had grown up in an orphanage and then the streets when they ran away, that had been a lot. They had saved every drachma possible of their earnings. Six years of a hell of a lot of hard work and sacrifice. It may have taken six years, but we have the money to take the next step in our new lives. Anything was better than scavenging to eke out an existence that still required living by someone else’s rules. Though some would not consider our bunks here on the Hera much of an improvement.' We haven’t lived in the streets for six years.

Neo nodded, his gaze set on the port growing closer by the minute. You ready for the next step? Zephyr asked in English. Neo and Zephyr had been Athens street thugs that found a common desire-that of making something more of their lives than rising to the top ranks in their gang.Īnd they were going to do it, twenty-year-old Neo vowed as the sun broke the eastern horizon. He and his friend Zephyr Nikos had had to lie about their ages to join the Hera’s crew six years ago, but that had been a small price to pay in order to leave behind the life they’d known in Greece. This is where he would walk off the Hera and never walk back onto it.

And yet it was unique from all the others because this is where his life changed. THE port of Seattle didn’t look so different from some of the hundreds of other ports Neo Stamos had been in since joining the crew of the cargo ship Hera at the age of fourteen.

The Shy Bride by Lucy Monroe