My wife is drunk. Exceedingly drunk. She leans against me as I try to wrestle her coat on. Psyche is cute even while sloshed, and the irritation I might have felt if she were any other person is nowhere in evidence.
“I like her.”
Psyche rests her face against my chest and smiles at Helen. “I like you, too.”
Helen’s relaxed for the first time since we arrived. Everyone is gone, even Eris, and she’s let her frenetic alter ego dissipate. “You two can crash here if you want to.”
It would be safer, but unfortunately, I have to weigh the small danger of traveling back to my penthouse against the sheer amount of damage staying could cause. I give her a look. “And when we’re photographed leaving in the morning, they’ll run a story about how we were engaged in some sordid threesome because the spark has already gone out of our marriage after only a week.”
She shrugs. “If you were anyone else and she wasn’t shit-housed, I’d consider it.”
“Your compliments leave something to be desired.” I chuckle a little as Psyche weaves away from me, and I have to loop an arm around her waist to keep her upright. “You shouldn’t have played drinking games with my wife, though.”
“She seemed like she was having fun.”
“I was!” Psyche lurches, and I have to take two steps to counterbalance her.
Helen leans forward and grabs Psyche’s hand. “Just so you know, we’re sisters now. No takebacks.”
Which is right around the time I realize that Helen isn’t exactly sober, either. Damn it. “Lock the door behind me.”
“Yes, Eros.” She grins. “Marriage looks good on you. You seem happy. You should keep her.”
I plan on it.
I can’t say that aloud. Not here. Not now. Certainly not like this. “See you later.” I shuffle Psyche out the door, pause long enough to listen to Helen throw the dead bolt, and then head for the elevator. Once we’re closed inside it, I glance at Psyche. “Are you feeling sick?”
“No.” She doesn’t quite manage to open her eyes all the way. “Just goofy.”
We’ll see if that holds once we get into my car, but I can always crack a window and hopefully the cold night air will combat any motion sickness. I carefully adjust my grip on her as she sways. “Did you have fun?”
“Yes?” She shakes her head. “Gods, I’m drunk. I haven’t been this drunk since my twenty-first birthday. And that was only because Persephone and Callisto tricked me.” She frowns. “I’m sorry. I was so nervous and then Helen was so bubbly, my drinks got away from me.”
“They tend to do that at Helen’s parties.”
Psyche’s spilling truth messily around, and there’s a part of me that wants to press her for information. No, not information. I can’t pretend it’s anything but wanting to know what she really thinks of me. To find out if she’s slipping closer and closer to falling for me the same way I’ve tossed myself past the point of no return while I wasn’t paying attention. I manage to resist grilling her, but only barely.
She feels good in my arms, soft and sweet. She looks even better. I study our reflections in the mirrored elevator doors. We look…good together. Not just in the way that two attractive people do when they stand side by side. Psyche lays her head against my shoulder and closes her eyes. As if we’re a real couple. The casual intimacy makes my chest ache with a longing so fierce, I can barely breathe past it.
If we can figure out a way around my mother’s threat, if we can learn to live together… This could be us. All the time.
A real couple.
The ache in my chest gets stronger. I want this, want it so badly, I can’t help pulling Psyche closer to me. Between the two of us, we’ll find a way forward. We’ve already proven we’re an outstanding team when we put our heads together.
My mother doesn’t stand a chance.
Then the elevator doors open into the parking garage and my fledgling hope drains away.
Helen’s building is very similar to mine when it comes to security. There are guards stationed both at the elevator entrances and the parking garage entrance itself. When we arrived, there was a woman in the booth next to the elevator.
It’s empty now.
There might be a reasonable explanation for that, but I’m not willing to bet Psyche’s life on it. I shift her to between me and the elevator, thinking fast. My car is three rows down. I can’t see it from here. I certainly can’t reach it, do a sweep to ensure it’s safe, and get us out of here without letting Psyche out of my sight. If she were sober, maybe, but that ship has long since sailed.
Going back up to Helen’s apartment might work, but it’s a risk in a number of ways. Either I’m bringing trouble right to her or she’s already nose-dived into her bed and she won’t hear us even if I try to kick the damn door down. Neither is a good idea.
That leaves one option.
I muscle Psyche to the guard booth. The door hangs slightly open, yet another sign that something’s gone terribly wrong. I push her inside and cup her face in my hands. “Psyche, I need you to sober up and I need you to do it now.”
She blinks those big eyes at me and nods. “I’ll try.”
It’s a lost cause, but if I can get her to focus for a few minutes, it will all work out. I take the phone and press it into her hands. “I need you to call the security desk and tell them there’s been a breach. We don’t know where the guard is. Can you do that?”
“Yes?”
Shit, I’m not certain, but it will have to do. I release her and move to the door. “Do not open this for anyone but me. Do you understand? Not a guard, not the head of security, not even Zeus himself.”
“I wouldn’t open it for Zeus. He seems like kind of an asshole.”
I nod. “Definitely an asshole.” Then there’s nothing to do but leave her here and hope for the best. I step out of the booth and shut the door behind me. It automatically locks, a small relief. The glass is also bulletproof and the base is solid concrete, so even if someone rammed it with a car, it would do more damage to the vehicle than the booth itself. She’s as safe as I can make her right now.
I knew I should have brought a gun. I rarely go anywhere without one, but hosts tend to frown on that sort of thing. With a few exceptions, Olympus parties like to keep the violence confined to words and power plays. The Thirteen and their inner circles like to pretend they’re the pinnacle of class; they save the dirty work for the shadows in the darkest part of night.
I do have a gun in the car, though.
I move slowly down the middle of the parking aisle, doing my best to keep Psyche in sight. She’s on the phone, her face a mask of drunken concentration, so I hope there will be reinforcements soon. I can’t exactly trust the security in this building, not with her safety, but I can trust that Helen will skin them all alive if something happens to me. They know it and they won’t risk any overt moves against me and mine.
But they might take their sweet time getting up here if my mother’s gotten to them.
The parking garage is as well lit as a parking garage is capable of, which means it’s got plenty of shadows. Every car I pass is exceedingly expensive and shines in the low light. The only sound is the scuff of my shoes against the concrete.
It’s so tempting to assume I’m being paranoid. It’s possible the security guard ran to the bathroom or something, but in all the years I’ve been visiting Helen, I’ve never seen that booth unmanned. I can’t take the risk with Psyche’s life.
I reach my car. It doesn’t appear to be fucked with, but I glance around and then duck down to turn on my phone light and check the undercarriage. I don’t honestly believe my mother is so angry she’ll hurt me, but she’s volatile enough that I can’t take anything for granted. Five minutes later, I’m satisfied that no one has messed with my car.
Which is when I hear the first shot. It’s barely a whisper of sound, a little whistle of a bullet passing through a silencer. A crack of glass. Psyche screams.
I’m up and moving in an instant. Sprinting down the main space is so fucking tempting, but it would paint a giant target on me. If I were the shooter, I’d wing me and use that to draw Psyche out of the booth. My mother might not want me dead, but I doubt she’d be furious over a flesh wound if it removed my wife from the picture.
I duck between the cars, moving as quickly as possible and keeping low to avoid being seen. Another shot. A third. Psyche’s stopped screaming, but the glass hasn’t shattered. She’s still safe.
The shooter comes into view as I reach the end of the row. He’s a short white guy wearing a nondescript pair of black jeans, black T-shirt, and black baseball hat. He glances around, obviously knowing I’m in the area, and I jerk back into the shadows between two cars. The man sweeps a slow circle as he reloads the gun before turning back to point it at the booth. He pulls the trigger, enlarging the spiderwebbed glass directly in front of Psyche’s face.
Rage and fear short out my brain. I stop thinking, stop worrying about next steps. I charge him. He starts to turn, but I’m too fast. I take him down in a flying tackle that sends the gun skittering over the floor. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need it.
I don’t give him a chance to flip me. I simply slam his face into the ground once, twice, a third time, and then once more for good measure. He goes limp. My hands are shaking. Why the fuck are my hands shaking? I kneel on his back, torn between ensuring he never gets up again and not wanting to show exactly how monstrous I am while I can feel Psyche watching me. Knowing what I’m capable of is one thing. Seeing it is entirely another.
“Eros!” Her voice is a little muffled by the glass, but there’s no mistaking the fear there. I don’t want to look, don’t want to ever see that fear directed at me again. No matter how much I deserve it—and I do. I’m a fucking mess.
The sound of the booth door opening does what nothing else can; it gets me moving. I shove off the man and move to stand between him and Psyche.
But she’s not looking at him. She stumbles into my arms and clings to me with a strength that takes my breath away. “You idiot. What were you thinking? He could have killed you.”
Shock has my feet growing roots. “He was shooting at you.”
She fists the front of my shirt and looks up at me with shining eyes. “Never do that again. If he shot you, I—”
The elevator doors open, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say. Security personnel spill out into the area. Things happen quickly after that. Once they realize this is a Thirteen-on-Thirteen incident, they take the assassin into custody to await the arrival of Ares’s people to sort things out. I leave my information and hustle Psyche into my car.
She slumps back against the seat, huddling in my coat. She’s sobering up fast, and I hate how scared she looks, but I don’t reach out for fear that she’ll flinch away from me. I turn onto the street and head for my building. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She’s got a white-knuckled grip on my coat. “Did you miss the part where I was worried about you?”
“I had things under control.” When she still looks unconvinced, I try to elaborate. “Even if I didn’t, my mother doesn’t want me dead.”
“All it takes is one bullet and it doesn’t matter what Aphrodite wants.” She closes her eyes but immediately opens them again and rolls down the window a bit. “I’m not sober enough to talk through this. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I’m sorry, but only that my mother managed to ruin what was a really good night. We were having fun before this, had carved out a tiny little escape in what was supposed to be a safe space. Psyche met some of my people, let her guard down a tiny bit, and all she got for her trouble was an attempt on her life. “This city is fucking poison.”
“There will be consequences for tonight.” Her eyes are sliding closed again, and this time she doesn’t open them.
“There will,” I say quietly.
Murder isn’t legal in Olympus. Far from it. That doesn’t stop the Thirteen from having people like me who do their dirty work in the shadows, but it’s an unspoken thing. By attacking Psyche in Helen’s building, as she was leaving Helen’s party, my mother has put our shit out in the open—or she will if the attack can even remotely be linked back to her. That’s the big what-if right now. Zeus will get involved because his sister is tangentially involved. Ares will launch an investigation. No doubt Demeter and Persephone will be showing up on my doorstep the second they hear the news, which means Hades is involved as well.
Things were already messy, and they’re only going to get messier.
I should be happy about this, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s going to blow back on me somehow. My mother can be impulsive in the extreme, but she’s not a fool. She’ll have made sure none of this links directly to her—or at least doesn’t directly link only to her.
No, someone else will pay the price for the night’s events. I’m sure of it.
It doesn’t matter how effectively Psyche argued for attending the party tonight. I knew the risk, knew my mother wouldn’t stop. I just foolishly thought I could protect her. I didn’t wager on Aphrodite being so bold as to attack us in Zeus’s sister’s parking garage, and Psyche could have been hurt as a result of my arrogance.
I’ve fucked up.
