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“You’ve got a better plan, lay it on me,” he said. “I can get upstairs but prefer to work without witnesses… Collateral damage doesn’t bother me, but only an idiot would murder One and think it would go unnoticed.”
Yeah, the death of a former president, in suspicious circumstances, surrounded by other dead bodies, that would be international news. Styx could be exposed, sure, but so could Olympus.
“You can’t kill him.”
“I know,” Styx said. “I just said that. We can’t wait for intelligence that he’s moving on, that could be months of waiting.”
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Not Byron. Z. You can’t kill Z.”
His frown was quick. The anger behind was tinged with confusion and maybe more than a little frustration too. “Shit. He turned you already? You been working with him all along? No way my brother—”
“I’m not on Z’s side. I don’t want you to spare him because he’s my boss or I care about him.”
“Then why?”
Styx may have decided to trust her. Tess wasn’t sure if she could trust him. His plan was to murder Zeus, which worked for her on a selfish level. Except she’d promised to help Daire get his home back.
Her lips dried as she said the word, “Olympus.”
As his expression relaxed, he sank back against the arm of the bench. “Damn, you’re a conformist…” Styx frowned again. “How the hell did that happen?”
“I’m not a conformist,” she said. “And I’m not afraid. Damn, you like to throw around labels, don’t you? You don’t know the first thing about me.”
That raised his brows. “I know more about you than you do.”
“You weren’t at Olympus when I was.”
“No,” he said, not showing any hint he was surprised she knew about her imprisonment at the beta site. “I know you were born on my brother’s birthday. I know six months later H went AWOL. At six years old, Ares was ready to commit his first murder… you.” Daire’s hatred of her was no newsflash. “I know when you were sixteen you started running away. Want to know how many times I was the one tracking you? Shit, Pandora, you about cost all of us our lives.”
Daire hadn’t told her anything about that. “H told me…” Confusion changed the direction of her thoughts. “You knew they were writing to each other.”
Daire didn’t know it, so how could Styx?
“Not exactly,” he said. “Though it doesn’t surprise me.”
“What do you mean ‘not exactly’? You knew they were writing or you didn’t.”
“Then I didn’t,” he said. “Knew they were screwing though.”
No chance of even thinking about a poker face when shock impacted her. “What?”
His head bobbed. “Went on for a few years.” As the questions cascaded through her mind, he shook his head and straightened up. “We don’t have time to talk about this now. I’ve gotta get out of the country.”
“No,” she said, shoving closer to the middle of the bench to grab his forearm. “You don’t have to go.”
“If you’re in Z’s pocket, I need to regroup and come up with another strategy,” he said, meeting her eye. “But when you’re telling him this story, make sure you tell him loathing death doesn’t save him from it.”
“I won’t tell him,” she whispered, determined not to lose an ally. “I won’t breathe a word of this… if you stay.”
“My mission is to take him out,” he said. “Patience is the greatest asset of an operative… Took me a long time to learn that.”
“Then isn’t it best to stay? What if I change my mind? I can get to him, I’m close to him.”
“If you’re protecting him, you’re my enemy.”
“I’m your sister,” she said.
It didn’t sound weird to acknowledge they were family. The reason why hit her quick. If Tess married Styx’s brother, then she would be his sister… in-law.
