Page 73 of We Are the Match
I wake early the next morning, the sun still new in the sky. Erin wakes when I do, fetches a tray for breakfast. When she returns, she is pale, quiet.
“Any word from Paris?” I ask her.
I was wrong last night—to bring up Troy. But so was Paris, to dismiss my concerns about Altea. To dismiss me the way I have always been dismissed.
“Would you like some water?” Erin holds out a glass to me, ignoring my question. Her face, her voice, her mannerism, as pleasant and distant and calm as ever, but her eyes betray her.
I take the water, my hands trembling. “Can you send for Tommy?”
Tommy.
Tommy will know.
He will know if my father has already taken his vengeance swiftly.
Erin does not meet my eyes. “Your father has responded to Altea’s attack. And Tommy ... Tommy was assigned to work with your fiancé’s brother this morning. A special project for your father.”
The cup slips from my hand, water spilling across my legs, the glass shattering on the floor. “What special project?” My voice is splinters and sandpaper.
Erin turns away from me. “I do not know more than that,” she says. “I apologize, ma’am. I could ask your father—”
“No,” I tell her.
Because wedoknow. We both know what kind of special projects my father sends men on. What kind of bloodshed Marcus has been known for ever since he was a boy.
My father’s response to Altea was always going to be personal, his violence scorching—and Marcus is just the man to lead it.
And I know, IknowTommy has been sent along as a punishment for me.
It has always been this way: since I was very small, Tommy willingly killed to keep me safe. But the rest of the violence? He never had the heart for it.
So this, then, is what my father meant about Marcus restoring his loyalty. It is how Marcus made a name for himself, how he solidified a place for himself and his family amongtheFamilies.
I reach down to pick up the glass, and Erin brushes my hands away.
“You’ll cut yourself, ma’am,” she says.
But perhaps I want to feel. Perhaps I want to bleed for my own mistakes, just this once.
“Leave it,” I tell her, but she does not stop, and she does not let me help, and I sit there at the edge of a luxurious bed in a mansion I did not earn.
The only thing I have ever caused is bloodshed.
I push myself to my feet, avoiding the glass.
Erin is humming under her breath as she finishes cleaning.
“I need a motorcycle,” I tell her. “And I need to go unnoticed.”
And I need a handgun, though I am not sure whether or not I should tell Erin that part.
She freezes, her shoulders still hunched over the mess I made, but the song she was humming disappears into nothing against shattered glass and marble.
She stands finally, her mouth just slightly ajar as if she is about to ask what ill-advised plan I’ve concocted this time.
“And send a car for Paris,” I say. “Someone you trust. Tell no one else.”
But do I damn her with this? Working behind my father’s back, asking her to do the same? When I am afforded protection and she has none?
