Aris: A Sexy Romance Novel (Thief of Hearts Series Book 1) by Elody Knight

There are some people among us that were born into what you would consider a normal world.  Anaya, for example.  She is from a wealthy family.  She had every advantage they could give her.  She is well educated, smart, talented, and beautiful.  Noah met her one day.  He invited her to dinner with me.  She is now our process specialist.  Some of the men refer to her as ‘ Why ’.  It’s always the first question out of her mouth and it’s the one you’ll hear from her a thousand times a day.  It makes them crazy.”  Aris grinned.
    “But if she is from a wealthy family why does she work with you?  Is it the adrenaline rush?”
    Aris burst out laughing.  “I couldn’t send Anaya to do the jobs that we do.  We’d never get through them!  Besides, she is not trained for what we do.  She is here because she saw what we were doing and decided she wanted to help us.”
    “I don’t understand what you mean.”
    “Everything that you see on all the islands we own, there are six in the archipelago, is all ours.  The people are either ours or family members.  The houses are theirs.  The shops are theirs.  The training facilities are ours for our people.  We couldn’t change the world, so we decided to change our piece of it.  All of our people are recruited by our people or related to our people.”
    “You’re not teaching all these people to be master criminals are you?”
    Aris burst out laughing again, “No, Denise.  There are very few people that have it in them to do what we do.  Some of them like Celeste, are good at business, so she owns a shop in the village.  She makes good money running the shop, she buys things in the village she needs from the other shops, suddenly you have a small economy where people can support themselves.  You’ll have to talk to Jerith about the particulars, but we try to take care of all of ours.”
    Saoirse got up from the step where she had been listening to Aris and Denise.  She rolled her eyes as she thought about what Aris said.  ‘Yeah, like that makes it all ok.’
    “You’re up!  Good!  Let’s go!”  Denise really wanted to see the village now.
    Aris looked at her,  “Coffee?”
    “No, I’m good.” Saoirse walked toward the door they came in last night.
    Aris shook his head following them out the door.  “The bungalow right there is Noah’s.  The one next to that is Jerith’s.  The far one up on the hill looks out to the training island, that’s Khar’s.”  Aris pointed them out as he walked out of the cul de sac to the main street.  “The tram should be along any time now.”  he looked down at his watch.
    Almost as if on queue, a small white, cut up bus looking vehicle, appeared.  Saoirse looked around as they rode.  The countryside was pretty.  It was healthy looking.  She had expected an island with the fabulously wealthy served by the miserably poor but she wasn’t seeing that.  Aris was probably carefully controlling what they saw.  Why would he live in a plain house like the one they were staying in if he had ridiculous amounts of wealth at his disposal?  Probably for appearance reasons.
    Aris had the tram stop in front of a little cottage.  The front was a patchwork of cemented together stones.  Mata stood smiling as she opened a wooden screen door.  Aris said something to her in her language as he touched his cheek to hers.  She held her hands out to Denise and Saoirse.  They said good morning as they entered the little cottage. 
    Mata gathered her things.  Aris offered her his arm, leading her out the door to the market in the village.  Denise smiled as she looked around.  Aris walked Mata to the market before he left her to her own devices.
    “We’ll catch up with Mata in a minute.  Saoirse hasn’t eaten yet this morning.  Let’s go get coffee at Celeste’s.”  Aris lead them to one of the shops with a porch running along the front of it.
    Inside, a very big woman was busy behind the