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“Maybe… but with you, Daire, and Carrie at his side… I don’t think there would be anything beyond Harry’s ability. He was younger than Daire is now when you were born. You have to remember, Harry didn’t want to choose. Zeus forced his hand. He put all of you in impossible positions. You are where you are today because of him.”
“How do you know all this? You were twelve when Harry found you.”
He nodded. “Yeah, when Harry gets too many beers in him, he likes to talk… And like I said, they never got over that moment when Harry walked away from him to go to you… When he chose you over Daire and Daire chose Olympus over his father… Still comes up sometimes.”
“I was six years old,” she muttered, recalling Daire’s words in the control room. “There’s still so much resentment.”
It was made all the worse by the men’s refusal to sit down and be honest with each other. If Daire really understood why Harry was mad that day, he’d see that walking away from the boy he classed as his own broke Harry’s heart. But he could only show the depth of his love in anger and discipline.
Love was weakness. Even Daire told her that.
“So everyone’s an asshole, is that what you’re saying?”
“Zeus is an asshole,” he said. “We’re all puppets in his pop-up theater. Ready to go at his whim twenty-four, seven.”
Confused, she squinted at him. “I’m sorry, did something I said lead you to believe I was a fan of the guy?”
His focus shifted to the passport on the bed. “There’s something in this game called quid pro quo.”
She exhaled. “Quid pro quo is a thing everywhere, not just in Olympus.”
“Okay, so now you have your passport…”
“You want something from me,” she stated. It would’ve been quicker for him just to say that. Though learning more about Daire’s history was always welcome. “What is it?”
“I want to come upstairs.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. Understanding took her back to the argument they’d had more than once. The shock of his request was enough to propel her up off the bed.
“No,” she said, striding to the window. Weren’t they done with that particular conversation? Obviously not. She spun around to face him. “If you kill him, Olympus is over.”
As he rose, he chanted. “Ours is not to wonder why…”
“This can’t be what you want,” she said when he met her eye.
“It’s my mission.”
“No, Harry said it would be your mission. You were still prepping, it wasn’t a go.”
The way his eyes rolled and his head bobbed suggested that was an inconvenient observation he didn’t want brought up.
“Yeah,” Styx said. “I fed myself that line for a while after the Exodus… Doesn’t stick for long.”
“Things have changed,” she said. “You need fresh intel. What if you do it and find out after that Harry didn’t want you to?”
“You don’t want me to do it. And your reasons are nothing to do with Harry. You don’t want me to do it because of Daire.”
She raised a hand toward him. “Doesn’t the story you just told prove why that is? You think he’s mad at you for not telling him about Zulu. He was mad at Harry for agreeing to Zulu because it took his home from him. How do you think he’ll react if you take away his last chance to have it back?”
“I already told you that if Daire wants to kill me, I’ll let him. Killing Zeus is doing him a favor. If he’s going to kill me anyway, why not do him the favor first? Yeah, he might be pissed, but in the long run? Daire and Harry will run Olympus way better than Z ever would.”
“And you’re happy for that to cost you your life? You don’t want to be a part of that future?”
He leaned back against the wall. “I don’t really think much beyond the mission.”
Narrowing the space between them, she spoke slowly. “You should this time. Because even if you’re right, the beta site is slated for demolition. Before they can demo it, they have to—”
“Retrieve Minotaur.”
