Now’s the time to throw what happened last night into my wife’s face. I fucked her ex, the one she still watches with her heart in her eyes when she thinks no one is looking. Pandora might be my best friend, but Aphrodite was romantically in love with Adonis. Still is, if I don’t miss my guess.
But it feels…weirdly wrong. I didn’t sleep with Adonis last night with the intention to hurt my wife. I didn’t even think of her once I started kissing him. I’m still not sure why I went to him in the first place. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Have dinner with me tonight.” I say it before my brain has fully processed that I was going to speak.
She blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Dinner. It’s a meal people eat in the evening. Have it with me tonight.”
“I know what dinner is.” She shoots a look at her receptionist, steps closer, and lowers her voice. “What game are you playing at?”
I don’t know. I wish I could say this was all part of some grand plan Minos and I devised, but the truth is that I’m acting on impulse. I hadn’t even thought about the invitation for a moment before it was coming out of my mouth, but now I want her to say yes. It’s…strange. “I’ll see you at seven.”
“I never agreed to dinner, you ass.”
I catch movement behind her as someone walks through the door. They’re wearing a trench coat and a hat pulled low over their face. Too warm for this weather. They slip their hand into their coat.
Gun.
I move on instinct. One step brings me to Aphrodite, and I fully intend to spin us around and put me between her and this person, but my knee buckles. “Fuck!” I go down, taking her with me. We hit the floor, and I barely manage to make sure she lands on me instead of under me. It happens so fucking fast.
The person sprays the space where Aphrodite just stood with bullets. Too many fucking bullets. The ridiculous etched glass divider shatters into a million pieces over us. I try to curl around my wife, but there’s no time. The receptionist shouts, and the attacker turns and flees. I didn’t even get a look at their face.
My blood roars in my ears and I can’t tell if it’s me or Aphrodite shaking. That was close. Too close. It’s not over yet, though. I keep one arm around my wife and point at the receptionist. “Call Ares’s people. Now!” I’m not going to be able to chase some fucking gunman through the streets. It’s already too late, anyways—they’re gone. But Ares should be able to pull the footage or some shit and track the fucker down.
The receptionist nods and grabs the phone with shaking hands.
I sit up slowly. “Are you okay? Did the glass get you?” Even as I ask, I see the cuts on her legs. “Fuck.”
“I’m fine.” She’s not quite steady as she pushes off me. I grab for her, but she’s too quick to her feet. Aphrodite stumbles to the door and flips the lock.
“Get away from the window.” I tense, but no more gunfire meets her.
She tries to smirk, but all the color is gone from her face. “They’re still running. They won’t be back.” Her lower lip quivers but she shakes her head. Hard. “It was only a matter of time. This is the reality we live in now.”
I don’t know if she’s trying to convince me or her, but I struggle to my feet all the same. My knee hurts like a motherfucker, but I don’t let that stop me from limping to her side. I take her shoulders. “Come away from the window.”
“What do you care? I know you don’t give a fuck about committing murder, but surely you would be relieved if someone else took care of the wife you never wanted. Gods, maybe Minos stopped plotting in the dark and finally decided to take more direct action. He’d like to rid you of me.”
“He’s not behind this. Look to your own people for that.”
“Of course. Why would he get his hands dirty when everyone else is all too willing to spill blood for him?” She blinks rapidly, her eyes too wide. “You certainly didn’t hesitate to do it.”
Her accusation rolls right over me, absent of the sting her comments usually contain. Her voice shakes. Aphrodite always seems larger than life, like she’s walking around bulletproof, but right now every sign says she’s scared shitless.
Again, I’m not thinking things through as I wrap an arm around her shoulders and snarl at the receptionist, “We’ll wait for Ares’s people in her office.” It’s a token of just how fucked up my wife is that she doesn’t argue as I guide her around the broken glass to the hallway leading farther into the building. She must be going into shock, though she manages to stir herself and point to the gilded door that’s obviously her office.
I sweep a look around the room as we enter, not remotely surprised to find the space just as gilded as the door. It’s subtler in here, though: gold accessories on the meticulously organized desk, gold foil on the books in the small bookshelf to the right of the door, a faint hint of gold in the patterned rug beneath our feet.
I guide Aphrodite toward one of the fancy chairs. “Sit down before you fall down.”
“I’m not going to fall down.” But she doesn’t shrug out from beneath my arm. “I hope you’re happy,” she says faintly. “This is what you wanted.”
“You keep saying that. It’s not true. It’s what Minos wants.” I don’t know why I say it. She’s not wrong. We had a plan when we came to Olympus, and this destabilization is part of it. If we had won Ares, Minos still would have played out his little house party and taken over as many of the Thirteen as possible via the assassination clause.
He might not be actively behind the assassination attempts now, at least not to my knowledge, but all that means is that we’ve moved on to the next stage of whatever his plan is.
I move back from her, just a little. The cuts on her legs drip blood, but none of them seem particularly deep. Still, they’ll have to be checked for glass before they’re bandaged.
What am I thinking?
Why the fuck do I care if Aphrodite is bandaged properly or just straight-out murdered? Yes, the bullets would have hit me, too, but that’s not what I was thinking when I went for her. I wasn’t considering the danger to myself at all. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
She lifts a shaking hand and stares at it. “What must you think of me? Sheltered Olympian princess, right? Never seen violence once in her life.” Aphrodite laughs bitterly. “If only that were the truth.” She waves a hand at her desk. “Bottom drawer.”
Now’s the time to leave. Her sister will arrive with her people, and the last thing I want is to face down Ares again.
Except I don’t leave.
I round the desk and pull open the bottom drawer. I snort at the sight of the perfectly normal first aid kit. “I half expected it to be gold.”
“Themes are important.” She watches me come back with dull eyes. “My brother might prefer simpler things, but my father liked his gold. I’m Zeus’s daughter, and there’s no point in having survived what I did without reminding everyone of that fact. The gold in this office serves its purpose.”
There’s no way I can crouch, so I drag the other chair closer. “You’re Zeus’s sister now. Why not give up the gold shit if it reminds you of your father?” Minos has a file several inches thick on the last Zeus. He was corrupt and violent, covered in a thick, honeyed charm that this fucking city ate up.
I’m nearly certain Minos crafted his approach to the press by using Zeus as an example.
“I’m my father’s daughter.” She says it likes she’s pronouncing a curse.
I lean down and grab her ankle, carefully lifting her leg to drape over my thighs. “I need to see if there’s glass in the wounds.”
“Hephaestus.” She pauses. “Theseus.”
Hearing her say my real name in such a serious tone gives me pause. “Yes?”
“Why?”
She doesn’t have to elaborate. It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since the adrenaline started to wane. “I don’t know.” I carefully clean the scattering of wounds and then prod them gently. “Any sharp pain?”
“No.”