Page 44 of We Are the Match
“We need to speak of the alliance,” I tell him. Around Paris I fumble; around everyone else, I command. Even, at my best moments, my father himself.
He does look up now, swirling the scotch idly in his glass. “Is that so?”
“I want to make a deal with you, Father,” I say. “I want more power, and more responsibility. I know you worry about—the impulsiveness. The bombs in the past. But I have grown, I am no longer a girl, and I want in.”
I have never been sure if it was my impulsivity with explosives earlier in life that he did not trust, or my withdrawal from bomb-making entirely after Mama’s death.
My father sets down the scotch. “Paris mentioned you wanted her to report her findings to you,” he says, steepling his fingers together and watching me with a thoughtful expression. It strikes me: my father rarely learns the names of his employees, but Paris must have left her mark on him, if in a subtler way than he left his on her. “I have no issue with you wanting an update, but do not try to go around me, little girl.”
Mama taught me bearing, that when you are afraid, your face remains the same, your spine remains straight. So I fold my hands andnod. “Then I need you to let me in, too,” I tell him. “I want more of a role in the family business.”
“Do you?” he asks. “Is it truly the business you want to be involved in, or do you just want to have this affair before you settle down?”
This rankles more than Tommy’s question did, that my father, too, believes me to have no interest in anything but Paris.
“I am your daughter,” I say. “The only heir to your empire. Milos and Marcus are new blood, and—”
“Have your affair,” my father interrupts. “So long as we dispose of her afterward. That should not be a problem, should it? If you are as ready to return to this work as you say you are, the death of one woman should be nothing.”
“Of course.” I smile at him as serenely as I can manage. “The fixer is nothing to me. I want some idle amusement before I marry someone as dull as Milos.”
At this, my father tips back his head and laughs, the sound warmer with understanding than I would have expected. “Should I have given you his younger brother, then?” he asks me. “I thought you would have preferred the boring one over the violent one.”
“Why choose, when both are mine for the taking?” I say.
At this, my father laughs once again, shaking his head at me.
The truth is far more dangerous: that the only person I wish to choose ismyself.
Not Paris, kiss or no kiss.
“I am pleased to see you are taking an interest in the business,” he says. “But see to it that this affair does not consume you. It is no interest of mine who you see beyond that. You could be fucking the pope for all I—”
“Father.”
“Well? You can have whomever you please. But they must be playthings, Helen. Too many people would use you if your emotions were involved, and you know how much our Family has already lost because of that.”
“If Paris is my lover, it will be easy to get her close to the queens,” I say. “We need to know which of them moved on us, and she could travel with me when I pay them a visit.”
He smiles at me now and nods his head to the other chair.
Mama used to sit here, before the bombs. She and Father planned and worked while I played at their feet. How many nights has my father sat opposite the empty chair, the hollows and dips in the leather reminding him of all he’d lost, letting his grief warp him further and further from anything resembling a man?
I settle into the chair, folding my hands gently. “I am sorry it has taken me so long to choose this, Father,” I say. “The scare the other night—I think it shook me awake. And I am ready to do this, if you are willing to guide me.”
There is a light in his eyes, a warmth to him that I have not seen in years.
“I am pleased to hear it,” he says. “So settle in. Let us discuss the queens, and their old alliances. And.” He offers me—of all things—a wink, a gesture I am sure is intended to be fatherly, or at least familial. “Tell me about this fixer you’ve decided is worth your time.”
The fire dies down to embers before my father returns to his suite, our night spent discussing trade routes and politicians, wars and alliances, money and power.
When he leaves, long after dark, I linger there, in this one place where I can almost feel my mother’s long-missing presence. And I call Hana, one of the few people remaining who once called my mother friend.
She answers my call on the first ring.
“Darling,” she says. “I’m so pleased to hear from you. Are you well, after the unfortunate business at your party?”
“Very,” I tell her. I play my role, my voice soft as silk, polite and measured. “I called to see if you were well, and to see if I might pay you a visit and make my apologies in person.”
