Page 3 of Hupotasso
“My scar?”
I hold up my arm and push it towards his face. “He knew about this months ago. I told him exactly how I got it. What has my scar got to do with being a spy?”
“You’re under the influence of Spider. Perhaps you don’t know it,” he shakes his head, moving back to the seat opposite me, “that is possible. But it’s true.”
“I’m under no fucking vampire’s influence,” I snap. “My scar is from a motorbike accident. Look! See for yourself.”
I move to sit beside him, my over-the-top gown enveloping his thighs and knees as I try to get closer to push my arm to his surprised face.
After a long, long stare into my eyes he takes my arm in both of his hands, surprisingly gently, and studies it closely in minute detail for what seems like forever, before looking back up at me, his eyes thoughtful.
“I see no obedience mark,” he sighs. “But it would be nigh on impossible to do so given your foul disfigurement.”
“Thanks,” I snort, withdrawing my arm from his hands and pulling the lace back down over it. “I love being told I’m disgusting.”
He shrugs.
“It’s of no matter. Falcon knows you were placed in The Games deliberately — he confirmed it with the mole. Spider visiting you simply helped peel back the layers of the deception he’s been labouring under all these months.”
“Hang on,” I hold up my hand. “Are you saying someone told him I was deliberately chosen for The Games?”
He nods.
“Who?”
“That’s not for me to reveal.”
I begin to laugh, hard this time, and the tears rolling anew down my cheeks are due wholly to relief and mirth.
“Why do you laugh so? Are you hysterical?”
He scowls as my giggles turn into hiccups and I reach for a bottle of water from the limo bar to my right, changing my mind at the last minute and exchanging it for whisky.
“I laugh,” I shake my head as I take a deep swig from the bottle, “because I don’t know anyone, and I meananyone, who inhabits the same world you do. I’m a fucking home economics teacher, Jag, in a shitty school in the middle of nowhere who works pay-cheque to pay-cheque and whose highlight of the week is spring cleaning my apartment before taking a bubble bath and scrolling TikTok. My idea of being bad is to eat more carbs than I should. I have zero survival skills, as evidenced in The Games, zero self-defence skills, zero ability to lie convincingly, unruly hair, a mouth that often gets me into trouble, trust issues, and a quick temper. No one in their right mind would pay someone to plant me in this game. If you think otherwise you’re as deluded as Falcon.”
He takes the bottle from my hand and takes a deep, long, drink before returning the liquor to me and leaning back in his seat, meeting my eyes.
“Then we have a problem,” he sighs.
2
“Yes?”
I grip the phone tightly and listen reluctantly as Jag outlines his discussion with my wife.
It’s too little, too late.
She’s dead to me. At least she soon will be. The pain of her betrayal might take a while to smother. But I will.
When I’d learned she was the spy I’d felt as though I’d been punched in the guts. Every vile, cruel torture imaginable had crossed my mind, smothered by a crushing despondency the like of which I don’t recall ever feeling.
I’d left Tom’s corpse and returned immediately to the castle to drink myself into oblivion until the evening of the wedding.
A wedding I had no possible way of getting out of.
If it hadn’t been for Wolf hauling me up, forcing me into the shower and helping me dress, I probably would have run the risk of keeping The Families and public waiting, which would have undone all the work I’d put in to maintain the façade of being invested in The Games, of looking for a wife. While Wolf ensuredIappeared on time, Jag was tasked with getting the bitch there on time too.
Standing at the altar next to her I’d been torn between fucking her there and then, and wringing her neck.Drawn and repelled at the same time I’d spat out my disgust, expecting triumph in her eyes. But instead her expression had radiated hurt and confusion — the consummate actress, even then. I’d wanted to crush her to me then and squeeze out the truth, to hurt her as she’d hurt me.
