Page 21 of We Are the Match

Helen

I had been so lost in pleasure, Paris’s ringed fingers slipping just inside me, teasing at my entrance, that I had not seen the tide turn, or felt it until it was far too late.

And I am humiliated now, bound and spread in a bed that smells of the woman who left me here: cedar and eucalyptus and worn leather, with the faintest hint of TNT.

It is hard to imagine a woman in motion like she is at rest, but there is a dent in her pillow proving me otherwise, and it is so unbearably Paris: the sheets are a soft gray; the bedspread a worn, woven thing; the pillow compressed as if she has tossed and turned upon it every night.

She will die, now, of course.

Not because my father will dispose of her when this supposed affair is done—though can it be called an affair if I have not even been allowed to come ?

But no, Paris will die because I will kill her myself, the second she unties these fucking ropes.

I strain at them now, pleasantly firm against my wrists.

Damn Paris and her expertly crafted knots.

I maneuver myself toward the side of the bed. Perhaps I can get some purchase on the edge, use the bedstead post to break the loop over my wrists.

Tommy is still outside the door, and he will come if I call. But the thought of Tommy seeing me like this is unthinkable.

I twist, pushing myself up to reach the bedstead, only to lose my balance, bound as I am, and fall, face down now, into Paris’s pillow.

I struggle again, biting my lip to keep from making noise, and then slump over in defeat, embarrassment only heightening my arousal. I will kill her—whenever she finally returns.

It feels like ages before I hear Paris again—an hour, maybe more.

Finally, footsteps sound in the hallway just as I am trying to push myself back up off the pillow.

I only succeed in getting my knees under me when Paris’s footsteps are outside the door, her old black boots sharp against the thin carpet of the apartment hallway.

And then Tommy’s voice—

“Where the fuck is she, Paris?”

He shoves through the door so hard it slams against the wall.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

It is a small mercy that I cannot see Tommy’s face.

“Goddamn it, kid,” Tommy continues.

“Get out!” I yell at Tommy. “Get out .”

Paris, damn her, laughs. I am turned so that I cannot see her face, but I can feel her gaze singe me all the same.

The door shuts, almost as loudly as it was opened, Tommy safely retreating from the horror he witnessed.

“I’m going to kill you,” I snarl at Paris.

I am without the grace and dignity and mask I have worn my whole life. I am snarling and desperate and still slick between my legs.

“Oh, Princess.” Paris is beside me suddenly, her footsteps silent when she wants them to be.

Then her fingernails trail down my spine, my ass, one finger reigniting the sensitive place between my thighs.

“Have you been good for me while I was away?” she asks, her wandering fingers stilling at my entrance.

The words make me twist against her, shoving myself backward to grind against the firm pressure of her hand.

“Fuck you,” I gasp, but my writhing belies my words. “I’ll kill you, Paris.”

Her fingers disappear, leaving me aching at the sudden absence.

Then she slaps my ass, hard.

I gasp. “ Paris. ”

“Shall I update you on what I’ve learned?” Paris asks, a laugh in her voice.

She is vicious. Cruel.

And I want her to be worse .

Disappointment overshadows relief, and all of it mixed with embarrassment, when the ropes around my wrists loosen.

“Get up, then,” Paris says. She settles into a chair at the end of the bed, leaning back, both arms lazily resting on the armrests on either side.

She sits with her knees spread, head tipped back slightly as she watches me with cool disinterest, as if none of this meant anything to her.

As if she felt nothing while she was taking me apart.

I stagger to my feet, knees wobbling so hard I have to steady myself with the bedpost. “Paris.”

“Stop your whimpering, Princess,” she says. “Do you want to hear what I learned?”

“That was my meeting,” I snap at her. “What about the gift I was going to bring to her? How will I get an invite back now ?”

“Oh, I told her you were otherwise occupied.” Paris smirks.

She nudges the gift basket toward her with her foot.

It is a beautiful assortment I brought—imported cheeses from France, expensive chocolate from Switzerland and Germany, among other things.

“Here,” she says with a slight sneer. “Aftercare.”

She unwraps one of the chocolates and tosses it to me, taking another for herself.

I sit on her bed, for lack of a better place to sit, and eat the chocolate despite myself.

“I hired her,” Paris tells me.

“You— what ?”

“Well, I asked her for help with a delicate matter,” Paris says. “Which, in Hana terms, is the same fucking thing. I asked her to find dirt on Marcus.”

Oh, no.

No, no, no .

This game requires a subtler hand than this, but Paris is burning her way through with all the tact of a grenade. Which, I suppose, should not surprise me for a woman who insulted my father enough to lose a finger only days into working for the Family.

“Why Marcus?” I manage. “And why would you not consult my father to see what he already knows about Marcus?”

Paris waggles her injured hand at me, one sharp brown eyebrow arched in my direction. “What do you think, Princess?”

“I could at least have gotten you the dossier my father compiled,” I tell her wearily.

“But Hana needed to trust me,” Paris says. “Or at least trust that she knows what I want. And we already know Marcus is obsessed with you.”

My head snaps up.

Obsessed with me?

Only Tommy knew that Marcus had visited my room. That I had sent for him.

“What is it you think you know?” I ask her.

She shrugs one shoulder. “Everyone looks at you like you’re this untouchable god,” she answers. “I saw it at the party. Milos looks at you like you’re a pretty toy he’s excited to have. But Marcus is the unstable one. The dangerous one. And he looks at you like—”

She stops abruptly, shaking her head.

“Marcus doesn’t trust me,” I tell Paris, debating for a moment if I should tell her about the visit I had with him. “He loves his brother. That’s all.”

“He wants you,” Paris repeats with unarguable assurance. “And besides all that, he’s a good target. Milos wouldn’t be reckless with your alliance—but Marcus? He’d be reckless if it meant protecting his brother.”

She sounds so confident, almost as if she can relate to that particular kind of recklessness. That particular kind of violence.

“So you’re trying to frame him?”

“I’m trying to learn about him,” Paris corrects. She pulls a small golden locket from her pocket, holds it out for me to look at. “How well do you know Hana?”

Not well, if I am truthful.

She was my mother’s friend, once, and then she was my father’s.

But she has never been mine. I am held at a polite but immense distance, a smile and a kiss on my cheek when she sees me, but questions directed to my father, to others in the room, and never to me.

“She has been in this world since before the fall of Troy,” I tell Paris carefully.

If Paris really knows this world she is trying to belong to, she will understand what I am seeing: the loyalty of new blood, like Marcus and Milos, is easy to determine. There is only one power, now, to ally oneself with.

But old blood, like Hana? Anyone who worked in the smaller satellite organizations like Hana’s has loyalty that is muddy at best, mostly allied to Troy before its fall, now exclusively allied to my father. If you believe them, that is.

Paris holds the locket out to me. “I took this from her,” she says. “I did my research on her—on all of them. She’s always wearing it; it means something to her.”

“You . . . you took it?”

“While she was kissing me,” Paris says, so casually I am not sure, at first, if I have heard her correctly.

And why does that make me want to kill her more than tying me up and leaving me did?

I snatch the locket from her hand. “It doesn’t say anything.”

Heat has climbed my face, giving me away.

Paris grins and jumps to her feet, crossing the apartment in a few strides. She grabs a hammer from a drawer, then stalks back over, snatches the locket, and sets it on the floor. She hits it once with the hammer, warping the metal, and then peels the locket open.

“That mean anything to you?”

She slides the warped metal toward me.

Inside it is—not a picture, like I would have assumed.

No, engraved on the inside is a symbol I recognize.

It’s not Hana’s symbol—her house has a peacock on a white backdrop, Altea’s an A in red ink, Frona’s a pomegranate, my father’s an intertwined symbol of Z & L , still representing his love for my mother.

But no, Hana’s locket has something else entirely, an old symbol that no longer represents any house in the Families.

It is simple, an L with a snake curling itself around the letter.

When I look back at Paris, there is a darkness to her eyes that I cannot read, but recognition that tells me she knows, too:

This was my mother’s symbol.