Page 66 of We Are the Match
I will burn them all to the ground.
Helen included. No matter how she may sometimes surprise me. And no matter how she looks in my bed.
I swipe the key card and shove open the door to Altea’s office, pushing aside the tangled thoughts of Helen.
Altea’s office is wide, the walls rounded, with windows opening toward the sea on one side and north toward the island and Zarek’s mansion—Helen’s mansion—on the other.
The office is strangely bare.
It does not seem like much for a woman who is attempting to expand across eastern Europe with a range of automatic weapons.
I pull open each drawer. None are locked.
I run my fingers just beneath the desk—I find the handgun first, and then a second handgun, stowed where she could access them in an emergency. And then, just past that, a small lever.
I push the lever, and the ceiling above me opens. The boards move back, and, slowly, a narrow spiral staircase extends downward.
I climb the spiral stairs. When I round the corner at the top, I find myself in a tiny round room with a desk, a laptop, and a row of rifles hanging behind the desk chair.
A shiver snakes down my spine.
Was the assault on Troy planned from a room like this? Did Zarek sit in a room like this one when the bombs melted the metal doors shut so we could not escape? Was he safely hidden in a room like this when I left behind Cass, her familiar green eyes staring, unseeing, as our world ended?
And Lena—did she know when she faked her death that the price would be so steep? Did she try to stop it, try to warn anyone? How could we mean so little to her that she let us all die?
I breathe deep and exhale. From here, I can see what Altea sees. From here, I stand in her shoes. Through one window, she could see her home island on a clear day. Altea’s longing is palpable in every inchof this home. I know the vastness of that kind of emotion. I have felt it myself. I have seen it in the way her eyes stray beyond the horizon.
I knew it when she stared at her old Family symbol and had to turn away to mask her feeling. She may have been only a satellite of Troy’s in the heyday of its power, but Troy was always better than Zarek at one thing: building loyalty.
And it seems Altea’s has never left her, something I knew when her eyes lit as I offered her a chance at going home.
The other window faces north toward Zarek’s mansion, visible in all its impenetrable marble glory.
In front of the north-facing window is a large object hidden beneath a blanket. My pulse is racing as I draw the blanket back. It is thunder beneath my rib cage as I see, for the first time, a weapon made to kill a god.
It is a gun, a big one, something long range. No, not a gun.
A rocket launcher, and Zarek’s mansion sits squarely in its scope. More than that: the scope rests directly on the level of the home and the side of the mansion where I know Zarek’s office to be.
Has she pored over copies of the floor plan as I have, deep into the night, hoping and scheming for something impossible?
Altea, queen of weapons, queen of war, has her sights on Zarek.
Helen is a few floors below me, and I am steps away from her, imagining blowing her home off the face of this island.
Instead, I record a video on my phone—the weapons, the secret room, the sights trained on the mansion. I send it to Helen, first.
She responds immediately.Dear god.
Just me, I text back.No gods here.
We’re headed to her office. Where are you?
Shit.
The sound of voices stops me, seconds too late to make my escape.
She must have entertained Zarek in the office below many times, the ceiling closed, the spiral staircase retracted. Did he stand beneath this room, never dreaming she had her weapons trained on him, just waiting to fire?
