Page 2 of We Are the Match
If I deserved it.
“I just want to celebrate my friends,” I tell Thea. “And maybe flirt with a pretty little crime princess while I’m at it.”
“Excellent,” Thea says, nudging me with her knee as she moves past me. “Now let’s get a move on, Troy. I’ve got gowns to try on and guns to sell to some pesky off-island motherfuckers before I have to be at Zarek’s tonight.”
Troy, she calls me, as if we are not both shit from the same place. “Wear a gown,” she tells me, and I laugh at her.
The mansion on the north end of the island will be everything I am not: glamorous, stunning, shrouded in wealth and privilege and unimaginable power. I intend to show up the way I always do—with a scowl on my face and a knife in my boot.
“I’m serious,” Thea says, but the humor is still there beneath. “And you’re sure you don’t want introductions tonight, Troy?” She pauses after she pulls her tank top down over her head, the look on her face shifting into something I cannot quite read.
“You know there is no force on this planet that could make me want to be part of them.” I look past her on purpose, because if there’s anyone left alive who knows me at all, it’s Thea, even if she sees less than she used to. She’ll see this, though, written in my face, the fury that hasn’t ever quite stilled.
Thea tilts her head at me, leaning closer. “Why do you stay?” she asks. “Why do you stay on this island at all, if you don’t want any part of the Families who control it?”
My heart thuds harder in my chest. Why do Istay?
How can Ileave, after what they did to my family?
“Doyou?” I ask her. “Really want to be part of this?”
“Wantis only a small part of the choices I make, Troy,” she says after a beat of silence.
Thea has been in the game longer than I have. She’s a few years older than me and left the group home before it was destroyed. Since then, Thea has leveraged her innate ability to sell guns to assholes all over the world, bringing in money from corners of the market Zarek had never played in before. If I was ambitious like Thea, I would ask for introductions to some of the players. They’ll all be there tonight, not just Zarek and Helen. The queens—Hana and Altea and Frona, three powerful women who were once allied with the Family on Troy and now run different pieces of Zarek’s Family—would not be left out of an event like this one.
“What about you?” Thea prods again.
“Just here for the sex,” I say.
Thea barks out a laugh, her expression sharpening. “Well, if that’s the case, I’d recommend Hana. For all Frona’s reputation, Hana’s got more spice. Unless you’re angling for the big man himself?”
Oh, I am, Iam, I always have been, if not in the way Thea means, because Zarek’s pursuit of power cost me every person I cared about. But I, too, can play long games.
“I’ll settle for Helen,” I tell Thea. It’s true in more ways than one, of course.
The three queens don’t matter, not compared to Helen.Zarekdoesn’t matter, not compared to Helen.
“That’s a stupid idea, Troy.”
Thea is always warning me, and I am rarely listening.
“Yeah, but it’ll be fun while it lasts.”
Thea’s gaze shifts to fury, but only briefly, and then she is still and placid, smooth waters covering the storm I know is beneath, the storm I have seen unleashed back in the group home on Troy. She put her fist through the drywall, broke noses, threw the first punch, always,always. The control she has now is new, and learned, and hard-won.
If I were honest with her, I would tell her I miss the brutality.
“All right, Paris,” she says. “I’ll get you an introduction, if that’s what you want. But be careful. Helen plays a game more dangerous than you.”
“She never leaves the castle,” I say. “How dangerous can she be?”
Perce, who is pulling his boots on, pauses. “Paris,” he says.
There is warning in his tone.
Thea is standing utterly still again, poised to slide her engagement ring back onto her finger. “You thinkHelenisn’t dangerous?”
I reach past Thea for my shoes, but her hand closes over mine, her dark-brown skin stark in contrast to my white skin.
