Page 59 of We Are the Match
If he didn’t stop me—if he was no longer in my way—I could be anything.
I could even, perhaps, be queen.
“I think there would be more of this, certainly.” I grin at her. I know I must look a sight, hair falling loose from the style Erin had chosen for me earlier, clothes askew. I must look much like I did after leaving Paris’s apartment.
I expect a smile in return, but Paris’s expression remains hard, her jaw set but her eyes holding an emotion—or many—that I cannot quite untangle.
She nods to me, and I light the charge.
And when the building flames and tilts and finally falls, nothing left but ash and dust, my pulse is thundering like the waves.
We are coated in its remnants, Paris and I, and when we step into the boat, she reaches for my hand. For a moment she opens her mouth as if to say something, and then shakes her head and shuts it again.
“Helen,” she says finally, after Tommy has started the boat and we are leaving the bomb-maker’s island behind us. “I think you’re right. If Lena could see you—she would be proud.”
Chapter 19
Paris
That night, as I toss and turn and lie awake, thinking of the building collapsing, of Zarek’s knife flashing and leaving me bloody, of Helen tied to this bed, of Thea’s warning, of all of it folding in on me so tight it chokes me—
A package slides beneath my door.
Footsteps retreat immediately and are gone by the time I open the door, knife in my hand.
It is a thick file, a note on the front, written in immaculate handwriting:
He wants what belongs to you.
—H
Hana has delivered what I asked of her, then.
I lock my door again and open the file.
It is thick with surveillance pictures; she has held on to this information a long time.
Pictures of Marcus, outside Helen’s window. Pictures of Marcus, eyes fixed on Helen at a dinner with her father. Pictures of Marcus,standing on a yacht, holding a drink, eyes never leaving Helen even while his brother holds her hand.
He wants what belongs to you.
And he will die for it, if I have any say in the matter.
Tonight I will tell Zarek the story I want him to hear. And he will believe me, if only because I do not belong to these Families. I belong to Troy and to the group home and to the sea.
I belong to myself.
I wait to make my call until I have crossed the island. And before I do, I place solidox and sugar in the car that transported Marcus to the engagement party.
Zarek, god of all the Families, answers when I call.
“Name,” he says curtly.
I can picture him in his office, eyes hard and merciless. He is as they all are: broad-shouldered and tall and beautiful and perfectly tailored, but a man nonetheless, and one that can be killed.
Marcus wants what belongs to me.
And I don’t need him to be the bomber to want him out of my way.
