Page 24 of We Are the Match
“I don’t know what his angle is,” I say. “And I need to. He’s volatile, and he might pose a problem.”
My father used to say that to my mother—but about me. Volatile, he called me, because I was emotional where they were both controlled. Once, when a girl I had been dating had been killed in an attack by a small rival Family, I had laid charges at the Family’s marina and blown it all to hell. There was more along the way, of course. More volatility. More death. More loss.
My parents were only annoyed that my recklessness cost them trade partnerships.
Tommywas the only one who seemed to care about the humanity of it—who cared to teach me any different.
“I’ll do my best,” Tommy tells me now. “But we should talk about your investigator.” The warmth returns to his voice as he talks about Paris.
My cheeks are strangely hot. “What about her?”
“Are you going to have her chase after Marcus, too?” he asks. “Or are you just going to keep giving her flowers?”
I choke and then cough. “That was—Paris saved my—Tommy.” I shake my head even though he cannot see it. “I’ll tell her. I think.”
“Don’t trust her too fast,” he says, his voice heavy again. “She is dangerous. You know I’m not wrong about that, Hel. So give her flowers all you like, but don’t trust her until I find out more about her, you hear me? She’s too young to really have connections to the old cartels, but let me make certain before you get in too deep.”
If he had given orders to me like this in front of my father, my father would have made him bleed for the insubordination.
But Tommy is right.
And Parisisdangerous. She looked at me with violence in her eyes when she stole my whiskey, with fury when I pressed the poppy into her hand. Even when she saved my life, she stared down at me with fire in her gaze.
So no, I do not trust Paris. Even if she mesmerizes me.
“I trust no one,” I tell Tommy. “Except for you.”
“All right,” he says finally. “Are you going to be okay tonight? Do you want me to come up?”
“No,” I say, a little quickly. “No, no, get some sleep.”
“Night, kid,” he says. “You call me if you need anything.”
Soon after I hang up, the young guard returns.
“There’s a car downstairs, ma’am,” he says, ducking his head. “Where to?”
Everything blurs, pain pounding at the edges of my temples like a drum. Mama died today. Paris tried to shield her from the blast with her body, and the glass got stuck in her dark hair. Father started a war. I am eighteen, cowering in fright as bombs go off throughout my home. I am twenty-eight and Paris is saving my life. I am then and I am now. I am Helen and the memory of her. I am Helen and the idea of her.
I am no one at all.
The glass shatters.
I give the poppy to—
“Paris,” I tell him. “Find me Paris of Troy.”
Chapter 7
Paris
The storm is raging now, thick sheets of rain and rapid flashes of lightning across the sky. No one would be leaving the island in this fury, even if Zarek had not closed the harbor and airfield.
But me?
I have work to do.
Thea’s house is not far from mine. The city is a cramped little thing, crawling up the south side of the island and clinging to the unforgiving rock. The wealthy members of the Families—like Zarek and his queens—have vast properties and mansions on the north side, but Thea has chosen to live closer to the rest of us, her house on the southwestern shore.
