it like I crave food, which is possibly the most fucked-up part of this entire situation. It sounds so real. Like he’s been laughing in the middle of hell all his life.
Maybe he has.
I only heard enough about him to know how to find his whorehouse. If I’d known it would be like this…
I might still have come. That’s the terrible truth. I might still be here, pretending to orgasm while I’m splayed out on his lap in front of a group of other men.
Eggs. I focus on the eggs.
The oppressive silence in the room closes in, making me feel like I’m in a play about eating breakfast. The buttery toast makes no impact, and I oversalt the eggs to give myself something to do.
The rustling comes first, like wind in a grassy field, and then one of the girls sitting nearby turns around and looks at me with the kind of frank assessment I should be used to by now. “How did you do it?”
I chew a bite of toast and swallow it, aware of every tiny movement of my face. Look cool. Look normal. Look like this is not a big deal. Try to forget that these women surrounded you in a spa yesterday and watched you get waxed. “Do what?”
“Make Zeus like you.”
Savannah scoffs, rolling her eyes. “He doesn’t like Brigit.” Her voice is poisoned honey. “He feels sorry for her. Everyone knows he favors me, if anyone.”
I take another bite of toast and remain silent. Men will like you better if you’re silent. What about women? I don’t think it matters now. They’re all going to hate me for what he did.
What he’s still doing.
There’s a crackle of tension in the air. I stick my fork into some eggs. They’re way too salty. I eat them anyway. I’ll be grateful. If I can hang on long enough….
Conversation starts up on the opposite side of the room. The girls farthest away lose interest. “What happened with Zeus?” Alicia directs the question to me in a low voice.
I think of his hand on my hip and his fingers inside me. Reya watching. Men watching. The pleasure that wrapped itself around my hips and pulled until I had to give in. “I’ll tell you some other time.”
I pretend to be absorbed in the food while Alicia tells me about the house she used to live in. The neighborhood is close to my father’s. “Evicted,” she said, and I ask the right questions to dodge any more questions about myself.
It’s several minutes before I look up from my plate.
Savannah’s still watching, eyes dark with hate.
13
Zeus
The police station makes me feel vaguely ill. Oh, they’ve done their best to dress it up. Some modern architect came in a few years back, razed the original structure to the ground, and replaced it with a multilevel monstrosity that’s pretending to be a sunlit homage to the concept of putting people behind bars.
In my opinion, it’s better to kill a person.
The last time I was here, they brought me through the back in handcuffs. The architect thought of everything. Of course, they couldn’t just do away with the county jail. It’s simply hidden now, where it doesn’t detract from the shining justice displayed up front. I check myself in the reflection. I look utterly calm, bordering on pleased. They’ll never know how badly I want to destroy the bulletproof glass with bare hands and burn whatever’s left when I’m finished.
I’ve never been fond of police. My brother, Hades, knew that when he brought an oversized SWAT team with him to Olympus. The smirk on that motherfucker’s face still makes me want to kill him. But it was the furious grief the second time he visited that sliced into me. Razor-sharp jealousy cut up everything in its path. He owes me, but he would never admit it. Our young adulthood was not nearly as straightforward as he thinks it was.
And as for his little police raid—such retaliation. All I did was briefly take possession of his favorite new toy. She would have had a perfectly nice time. He never listens to me when I’m telling him he’s made a mistake.
Fucker.
I’ve been staring at my own reflection too long, so I pretend to take a call then go in the door with confidence. The woman at the desk stares, blushing, and waves me through. The chief of police has his office at the top of the building, up a flight of stairs and across a bullpen