Page 86 of Hades

Hades didn’t look at him. His eyes stayed on me as he growled, “Move your goddamn hand.”

“No.”

The air in the room thickened. The kind of thickness that made men reach for weapons they weren’t supposed to have in church. The kind that ended with someone bleeding on the floor and everyone pretending it was justified.

Atlas leaned forward, ready to move if he had to. Ares watched with bored interest, like he was curious which one of them would bleed first.

“Because she looked at you, you think she’s your fucking sister?”

I took a deep breath. My father’s hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. Hard. Grounding. Reminding me he was there. That I wasn’t alone in this. That whatever happened next, we’d face it together.

I understood Hades’ anger. He wanted Lettie to be his old lady. That was why we were here this morning—to vote. To make it official. To claim her in front of the club so no one could touch her. So she’d be protected under club law.

And I was about to blow that all to hell.

I looked at Hades. “I’m not trying to take her from you.”

His upper lip curled. “Good. Because you fucking can’t.”

“I don’t want to.”

That seemed to hit him harder than any argument would have. Because it was true. Whatever Lettie was to me, whatever she might be, she was already his. I’d seen it in the way she looked at him. In the way she fought the pull and leaned toward him anyway. In the way he watched her, like she was the only piece of light left in a world that had gone black.

Like she was oxygen and he’d been drowning.

Hades sat back down slowly.

Zeus released his arm.

“Continue,” Zeus ordered.

I rubbed a hand over my mouth, buying myself a second. My throat felt too tight, like someone had wrapped barbed wire around it and pulled. The scar that didn’t exist still burned. The old wound of losing Colette tearing open like it had never healed. Like the missing years meant nothing. Like grief had a fucking expiration date and mine had just reset to zero.

“She looked familiar,” I said.

“Lots of women look familiar,” Hermes muttered.

Hades’ head snapped toward him. Hermes lifted both hands. “Just saying.”

“Don’t,” Hades warned.

I shook my head. “He’s not wrong. Familiar doesn’t mean shit by itself. I know that.”

I’d been chasing familiar my whole life. Looking for my sister in every blonde woman who passed me on the street. In every grocery store. Every gas station. Every fucking place I went. I knew how desperate I was. Knew how easy it was to see what I wanted to see instead of what was actually there.

“Then what?” Zeus asked.

I looked at my father again. His face was pale beneath the beard; eyes fixed on the table like if he stared hard enough the wood might give him a different truth. A better one. One where his daughter wasn’t stolen and raised by someone else. One where his wife didn’t take her own life because she couldn’t handle the pain of losing a child. A child we prayed was alive but never knew. A child who now might be living two miles away.

Two fucking miles.

“She has my mother’s eyes,” I said.

Dad closed his eyes.

The room stayed silent.

Hades didn’t move. Neither did Zeus.