Page 9 of We Are the Match
Helen is watching me, mesmerized, and the other partygoers must be, too, though she is the only one I can see. She is the only one here with me.
“Tommy, please,” Helen says gently. “She won’t hurt me.”
Oh, but I would. I intend to. Iwill. Now it is not just ash I smell. No, the rest of it burning, the bodies, their flesh. That smell,thatsmell is the one that haunts and haunts and haunts.
I grin at Tommy, raise Helen’s now-empty glass in a salute. “I was just thirsty,” I say.
His eyes narrow. “I will kill you,” he says softly. “Do you understand?” He is not an average guard. He is not doing this because Zarek pays him to.
He is doing this because hecares, because he cares abouther. I can see it in his eyes, and that thought nearly makes me gag. Because this guard—he is one of us, one of the pawns. And pawns should never love the queens they die for. If you can’t help the dying, you can at least help loving the thing that kills you.
I set down the glass slowly, raise my hands. “Of course,” I say.
He takes a step back, but his hand remains on his sidearm.
“Anyway.” My voice is louder, sharper now. The risk, the danger, has only made me bolder. “Who are they marrying you off to?”
Helen’s gaze drifts to the dais where Zarek stands next to his new favorite business partners, a pair of brothers.
They were not part of Zarek’s Family when he bombed Troy, so they could not matter less to me. Still, they matter if they end up in my way. After Zarek consolidated smaller crime families—like the ones belonging to Altea, Frona, and Hana—he reached further to find new allies.
“Really?” I ask. “You could have anyone in the world, and you’re choosing the new blood?”
It is no secret that the Families traditionally have allied only with people they’ve known for generations. Men like Marcus and Milos, heirs to a shipping empire, have probably found that some doors remained closed to them despite their wealth, new money never reaching quite as far as the connections of old money could.
“You think I could have anyone in the world?” Helen asks a little dryly, her gaze flicking between the two brothers.
Milos is the elder brother, the calm one, the face of their family. Rumors abound that he doesn’t like the Family’s brutality, that he prefers a subtler angle.
Marcus, his younger brother, is handsy and volatile and has a violent reputation. They are new blood, new in a world that leans heavily on its traditions, but Marcus makes up for that with the amount of money—bloody goddamn money—he has brought to invest in the Family’s work. Or pay for much-needed cover-ups.
“Marcus is the pretty one,” I say, mostly because he’s less likely of the two and the suggestion is more likely to get under her skin. And more than anything, I want something real out of Helen tonight.
Helen’s perfect lip curls, ever so slightly, and I can see it again: her fury barely contained.
“So not Marcus, then.” I grin at her.
“As if I would let a man like Marcus lay a hand on me.”
“Milos, then,” I say. “He’ll shift the power into your father’s court the way your mother did years ago. When Zarek owns all the ships, he’ll own the whole Mediterranean.” I slam my hand, palm open, on the bar. In my other hand, I flick the lighter open again. “And you are happy with that?”
She meets my eyes, her gaze level. “I was always going to be sacrificed for this Family,” she says.
“If you don’t want to do something,” I say slowly. “You snap your fingers. You wave your hand. The world bends for you. The bartender leaves before pouring my fucking drink.”
Something flashes in her eyes. “Hedoesn’t bend,” she says. She glances across the room. Her father is still on the dais, though hiseyes are on us. “And waving my hands at my employees doesn’t meanIam free.”
We’ve reached the point of the evening Helen mentioned. The surrounding people are full but not quite sated, happy but not quite ecstatic.
They are restless, waiting for the moment they were promised.Themoment. The moment that should be Thea and Perce’s, but will instead belong to Helen and her waiting, watching father.
“You could change that,” I tell her.
“Do you want to know something?” Her voice is quiet, so quiet I have to lean in closer.
“Do you want to tell me?” I shoot back.
“I am going to die tonight.” She says it with a smile on her face, something desperate and dark but somethingreal.
