Page 34 of We Are the Match
“As if my father would allow me,” I say.
“You know,” Tommy says thoughtfully. “Outside of this island—and the mainland, I suppose—your father isn’t all-powerful. You’re twenty-eight. You could just leave.”
But my father can shut down airports and harbors with a single command. He sells weapons all over this part of Europe, and he has expanded to buying political leaders where he can, too. The Mediterranean may be his primary playground, but there is nowhere in the world I could be free of him. Maybe not even in hell itself.
Still, the words light something in me. Something in me I cannot quite face.
You are the power,Paris told me, lip curling.
She sees me like she saw him, cruel and powerful and complicit.
And maybe I am.
I shake my head at him. “I wish it was that simple.”
He folds his arms across his chest. “And what about this fixer?” he asks.
“When this is over,” I say, the face of last night’s guard appearing at the edge of my memory, his dark eyes wide with fear. “Will it be you he sends to kill her?”
Grief flickers in Tommy’s eyes. “Pray that it would be me,” he says heavily. “That would be the most merciful outcome.”
“Bring her in quietly today, please,” I tell him, as if that will be enough to save her.
The look Tommy gives me says he knows it as well as I do: it is already too late for Paris of Troy.
Chapter 11
Paris
The summons comes in the form of heavy footsteps and then a sharp knock at my apartment door just before 9:00 a.m. “Paris?”
The voice is vaguely recognizable.
“Who are you?” I shrug on my tank top and scramble into jeans.
“My name’s Tommy,” he says. “Can I come in?”
Helen’s guard.
I pull open the door, knife in my hand.
He raises a single eyebrow, amusement flickering in his eyes. “You’re about as friendly as I expected,” he says, holding up his keys. “You ready to go?”
I shove my knife back into my boot.
“I can’t let you bring that into the same room as Helen,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
I roll my eyes. “If you can’t trust her in the same room as one little knife, you should have taught her self-defense,” I tell him.
He barks out a laugh, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I can see why she likes you. Doesn’t change the rules, though.”
I am not surelikeis the word either Helen or I would use, but she at least finds me interesting—or useful. She will hate me soon enough, though.
I straighten. “Let’s go,” I tell him. “Gods don’t like waiting.”
“No one on that hill is a god,” Tommy says. “No matter how much they like to believe they are. No matter how much money and weapons they possess. Though I have never heard someone say the wordgodwith so much disdain before.”
I stare at him.
