Page 17 of We Are the Match

Paris

Zarek is seated in his office when Tommy and I arrive, his hands steepled, his eyes distant as if he is deep in thought.

He raises an eyebrow when I enter. “You’re late,” he says.

I have to hold back the growl in my throat. Something woke in me on the roof as I kissed Helen, something rough and raw and ambitious. She will be mine, wrapped in silk and vengeance. I want to win . I want this whole goddamn house.

He slams a hand down onto the table when I say nothing.

I do not flinch. The crash of his palm against the solid wood is a practiced move, the power, the violence, the noise. I will not let the power slide back into his hands. I will not.

“Do you have a name for me?”

Behind me, Tommy stands squarely between Zarek’s personal guards. None of them move.

“I have a theory,” I answer. “Helen and—”

“You come into my office with no leads to share,” Zarek cuts me off. “Speaking of my daughter by her first name? Who gave you the right ?”

“Helen did,” I answer.

There is silence, stark, white, measureless silence, the kind before a storm strikes the rock, the kind of silence you find in the burned-out husk of what was once a home. A violent, living kind of silence.

“She has asked to work with you,” Zarek says, his voice quiet, measured, endlessly cold.

More specifically, she asked me to answer to her , not to her father. But Zarek doesn’t need to know that.

“She did.” Zarek sits back in his chair, eyes never leaving mine. “Give me the information you have gathered, and you will be paid and sent on your way. I have no further use of you.”

“If you have no further use of me, you will throw my body out with your guard from last night,” I say.

“And I have already agreed to see this investigation to its completion. I’ll keep any location or lead I might have until I finish my investigation.

You will have your results, Zarek. But I will not die for it. ”

Zarek’s pupils expand until black nearly fills his eyes. “Everyone else out,” he says softly. “Not you, Tommy. You stay. You, Kaleb—send for my daughter. I want her to see this.”

Tommy makes a noise, low in his throat. “Sir,” he says quietly.

Zarek’s gaze locks on Tommy. “Is there something you want to say to me?”

Tommy clears his throat. “She may be ... upset.”

His voice is weighted with meaning, with something I cannot quite suss out. Upset seems to say more than either Zarek or Tommy is willing to articulate.

Thea hinted at it, too: that there is more danger to Helen than meets the eye, that there is a reason she remains locked away, rarely making appearances even at small gatherings of the Families.

What unstable, violent tendencies mar that perfect facade?

And why does this hint only heighten my desire to make Helen mine ?

“Very well,” Zarek says. “But I want Helen informed after.” His gaze snaps back to me. “And you.”

“I am doing the job you hired me for,” I tell him firmly. Whether I answer to him first or his daughter should not be relevant.

I will not fear. I will not waver. I will not break, or fall, or die, not today, not after everything I clawed my way through to survive.

Because what else is there to take from me?

Zarek reaches forward and snatches my hand, pulling me forward, just off-balance enough to matter. He meets my eyes as he twists my fingers in his viselike grip. “This is what happens,” he says. “To people who forget their place. ” In a flash, there is a blade in his free hand.

Behind me, I hear no noise from Tommy, no surprise.

“You do not speak to me as if you own me,” he says. He leans forward, his face so close to mine I can smell high-end cologne and cigar smoke.

I am not afraid.

The thought beats in my chest.

“If you do not have a name for me within a week, you lose something that matters to you,” Zarek says.

His voice is still soft, but rage flickers all the same, barely controlled.

“If you attempt to give me an order ever again, if you speak to me again the way you have today, you lose a hand. Are we clear?”

Fury thunders against my rib cage.

You will not make me afraid.

“Very,” I breathe, and then he cuts my pinkie finger off at the knuckle.

A sound rips from my throat, half growl, half guttural scream.

There is a knife in my boot, and it takes everything I have, every ounce of bleeding strength, not to draw it and put it through his fucking throat.

There is a longer game to play, I know there is, but I can hardly see it through the haze of blood.

I stare down at the bloody stub remaining at the end of my left hand. At the knife in Zarek’s hand, covered in my blood.

My finger is on the table between us.

Zarek smiles.

And then the pain arrives, wave upon wave, and my stomach heaves violently.

Blood is running down my arm, but there is something there, amid pain, amid adrenaline, amid fear.

Fury.

Raw and animal and overtaking every part of me.

“Will you question me again?” he asks softly.

Yes, I want to say to the knife, to the man, to the silent, watching guards. Always, over and over again. I will always question those who think they rule.

“No,” I say through gritted teeth.

And beneath it all I make myself a silent promise: I will not always be the one powerless in this room. One day, I will be the one to take your whole fucking hand.

I eye the fingers on his left hand, covered in my blood. Mine. His fingers are well manicured. He wears his wedding ring and a ring with the Family symbol on it, covered in my blood.

Kill him. The thing inside me roars. Kill him here.

Not yet, the whisper that follows, the logic, the thing that has helped me survive. Take her first.

I straighten my shoulders.

I bleed.

I have felt pain worse than this before, pain unimaginable to a man like him. I have felt worse, and I have survived .

I press my free hand around the bloody stump of my finger to stanch the bleeding. Spine straight. Bloody, unbowed.

He leans back in his chair, his expression calmer. No, more than calm. Sated, as if he has just eaten a meal, as if I was the feast.

I bleed.

I lean forward, closing the gap between us again, closer. Closer.

I bleed.

How do you rip power from the hands of a god?

“You will have a name,” I say, closing my hand over my severed finger. You will bleed.

You will lose all of this.

And then you will bleed.

And then I stand, bleeding, unwavering, and stalk out of the room without waiting for a dismissal.

I take my severed finger with me.

Tommy follows, catching my good arm without speaking. He helps me into the elevator and then down to the doctor, the same silent man who checked me over for injuries after the party.

I clench my free hand into a fist, and I do not scream when the doctor begins his work.

I let pain roll over me in waves, and I plan until the pain—or whatever pain meds the doctor gave me—takes me under, until blackness opens up and swallows me whole.

Zarek cut off my finger.

Before I end him, I will take his whole fucking hand.