Page 4 of We Are the Match
And tonight, if all goes as planned, that veil becomes permanent. My father and fiancé-to-be left grieving. A hole left in the Greek crime families once more.
And I—I will be away from here, free, while they fruitlessly search the waters below for my body.
“Helen?” Erin’s voice is more insistent now, but still pleasant, mellow, compliant.
Perhaps it is this—the easy compliance, the deference—that made my father select her all those years ago. Every woman around my father had to fit the mold that this woman seems to have been born for. Every woman, except perhaps my mother.
I shake loose, move Erin’s hand away. “I’m ready.”
“Is there anything I can get you?”
I stare at her numbly.
Erin is a few years older than me, tall, dark-haired, attractive. In another world, we would be friends, or, at the very least, tangled up in bed together.
In this one, she does not meet my eyes.
In this one, very few people do.
But no matter. If I am successful in my plan to fake my death and escape tonight, I will never see her again.
“Nothing,” I manage. My voice sounds hoarse. My tongue must be dry, my throat parched. “Perhaps some water?”
She pours a glass as shame worms through the edge of my consciousness. If I could feel my body right now, I know how it would feel, a squirming, cruel thing riling my stomach. This is a task I could—should—do myself.
Erin places the glass of water into my hands.
I suck in a breath.
Cold.
The cold of the glass against my palms,thatI can feel. My palms are suddenly sweaty, slippery with nerves, and I bite down the panic, force it away before it bursts out of me in ways I have never been able to control. Before the glass in my hand shatters from the strength of my own fear, manifested in tightly clenched fingers.
Dangerous as we all are on this island, from the heads of crime families all the way down to the newest fixer, I am among the most dangerous. Few can turn the tide of power with just an appearance. Fewer still have the knowledge and skill to build bombs by hand that can lay waste to whole buildings. I am something unheard of, even here.
A heavy knock on the door nearly sends the glass I am holding to the ground. I cling to it, hands shaking.
“Are you ready, ma’am?”
Just Tommy.
My Tommy.
He has been my guard since before I can remember—by my mother’s account, has been my guard since I was minutes old and she placed me in his arms.
My shoulders relax of their own accord.
Tommy is here, so all will be well. He promised me that.
“Ready,” I call.
I glance back again at Erin. My father chose my dress for tonight, the accessories, all of it. Another strategic move, another move in a game that has lasted longer than I have been alive. But it is Erin who made the dress bearable, who added padding in the strapless bra, who chose the flowers she knew I loved. Erin who did not question when Iset aside the bracelet laid out for me and chose, instead, the bracelet my mother gave to me before—before.
If I am to be a set piece, I will at least carry her with me. And when I jump from the cliffs tonight to fake my own death, this will be the only piece of the past to remain with me.
Erin folds her hands and drops her eyes to the ground respectfully.
“Erin,” I say. “Are you happy here?”
