Page 4 of We Are the Match

Her cheeks are a soft pink, maybe from the whiskey, or maybe the opiate intoxicating her is something more—something strange and tenuous and unexpected.

I lean close to her. Take the drink from her hand, tip it back, and down it, grinning at her as I do. I can imagine, instead, Helen of the gods on her knees for me . Throat tipped up, eyes trained on me. Begging.

This time, Tommy ignores her hand wave and steps forward.

His hand is on his sidearm, the warning clear.

Helen is watching me, mesmerized, and the other partygoers must be, too, though she is the only one I can see. She is the only one here with me.

“Tommy, please,” Helen says gently. “She won’t hurt me.”

Oh, but I would. I intend to. I will . Now it is not just ash I smell. No, the rest of it burning, the bodies, their flesh. That smell, that smell is the one that haunts and haunts and haunts.

I grin at Tommy, raise Helen’s now-empty glass in a salute. “I was just thirsty,” I say.

His eyes narrow. “I will kill you,” he says softly. “Do you understand?” He is not an average guard. He is not doing this because Zarek pays him to.

He is doing this because he cares , because he cares about her .

I can see it in his eyes, and that thought nearly makes me gag.

Because this guard—he is one of us, one of the pawns.

And pawns should never love the queens they die for.

If you can’t help the dying, you can at least help loving the thing that kills you.

I set down the glass slowly, raise my hands. “Of course,” I say.

He takes a step back, but his hand remains on his sidearm.

“Anyway.” My voice is louder, sharper now. The risk, the danger, has only made me bolder. “Who are they marrying you off to?”

Helen’s gaze drifts to the dais where Zarek stands next to his new favorite business partners, a pair of brothers.

They were not part of Zarek’s Family when he bombed Troy, so they could not matter less to me. Still, they matter if they end up in my way. After Zarek consolidated smaller crime families—like the ones belonging to Altea, Frona, and Hana—he reached further to find new allies.

“Really?” I ask. “You could have anyone in the world, and you’re choosing the new blood?”

It is no secret that the Families traditionally have allied only with people they’ve known for generations.

Men like Marcus and Milos, heirs to a shipping empire, have probably found that some doors remained closed to them despite their wealth, new money never reaching quite as far as the connections of old money could.

“You think I could have anyone in the world?” Helen asks a little dryly, her gaze flicking between the two brothers.

Milos is the elder brother, the calm one, the face of their family. Rumors abound that he doesn’t like the Family’s brutality, that he prefers a subtler angle.

Marcus, his younger brother, is handsy and volatile and has a violent reputation.

They are new blood, new in a world that leans heavily on its traditions, but Marcus makes up for that with the amount of money—bloody goddamn money—he has brought to invest in the Family’s work. Or pay for much-needed cover-ups.

“Marcus is the pretty one,” I say, mostly because he’s less likely of the two and the suggestion is more likely to get under her skin. And more than anything, I want something real out of Helen tonight.

Helen’s perfect lip curls, ever so slightly, and I can see it again: her fury barely contained.

“So not Marcus, then.” I grin at her.

“As if I would let a man like Marcus lay a hand on me.”

“Milos, then,” I say. “He’ll shift the power into your father’s court the way your mother did years ago. When Zarek owns all the ships, he’ll own the whole Mediterranean.” I slam my hand, palm open, on the bar. In my other hand, I flick the lighter open again. “And you are happy with that?”

She meets my eyes, her gaze level. “I was always going to be sacrificed for this Family,” she says.

“If you don’t want to do something,” I say slowly. “You snap your fingers. You wave your hand. The world bends for you. The bartender leaves before pouring my fucking drink.”

Something flashes in her eyes. “ He doesn’t bend,” she says. She glances across the room. Her father is still on the dais, though his eyes are on us. “And waving my hands at my employees doesn’t mean I am free.”

We’ve reached the point of the evening Helen mentioned. The surrounding people are full but not quite sated, happy but not quite ecstatic.

They are restless, waiting for the moment they were promised. The moment. The moment that should be Thea and Perce’s, but will instead belong to Helen and her waiting, watching father.

“You could change that,” I tell her.

“Do you want to know something?” Her voice is quiet, so quiet I have to lean in closer.

“Do you want to tell me?” I shoot back.

“I am going to die tonight.” She says it with a smile on her face, something desperate and dark but something real .

My own heart thunders against my rib cage, so hard it is almost painful.

“And who would dare kill the princess?” I ask.

Because she can’t know.

Can she?

Helen is still smiling, but the look in her eyes is distant now. She is far away from me, far out over the stormy blue sea beyond the windows.

“What is it you want, Paris?” she asks.

You, I almost answer. At my mercy.

“An introduction,” I tell her after a beat. “To your father.”

Disappointment flashes in her face, sharp and clear before her expression smooths over, and then she steps back toward the great windows looking out over the sea, alone on the symbol carved into the marble floor, a Z and an L, tilted and interwoven.

Zarek and Lena. Their family, their godship, their love for each other, immortalized in marble.

How fitting that Helen will die on the anniversary of the bomb that started it all.

They will crowd Helen soon, but now, just briefly, she stands alone, framed by windows that open to the yawning mouth of sea and storm. She looks almost wistful.

I am going to die tonight.

What is it you are planning, Helen of the gods, or what is it you have learned? What bloody nightmare will these families unleash tonight?

It is the right moment for something, though.

The moment Zarek will call for everyone’s attention, when Milos will descend the steps and kneel in front of Helen, ring in hand.

When she will pretend to be surprised, ecstatic, perhaps a little teary but still somehow perfectly composed.

She will smile for the first time tonight—other than the smile she sneaked me when I stole the whiskey from her soft, perfect hand—and the guests in the room will fall even more in love with her than they already are.

It is Zarek’s moment.

Except it is also Helen’s .

Except Helen is alone for a breath of time that lasts too long, and I smell something faint, something out of place, something devastatingly familiar.

I flick my lighter open out of habit, but the soft comfort of its click cannot calm me. Because this smell, it is an acrid smell, like flame, like—

bomb.

I am moving before I can call it out; I am moving on instinct and instinct alone; I am faster than guard and god alike. Because Helen is mine .

I am hurtling straight into Helen of the mansion, Helen of the island, Helen of the gods, my body colliding with hers, just as the windows behind us explode in a shower of glass.