The area around the upper city warehouse district is where people go for a little illicit fun when they don’t have the strength or the balls to cross the river to the lower city. Here is where Dionysus rules, and there’s plenty of vice to go around. People also tend to look the other way and mind their own business when they’re in the area, which suits my purposes.
I have to play this carefully. This bar is small, but it’s been built into the space between two buildings so it has lots of nooks and crannies filled with shadowy tables. I have one staked out near the back, and I’ve tipped the bartender well to look the other way during what comes next.
No matter what this task entails or what my mother wants, I have no desire to make Psyche actually suffer. I’m sure Aphrodite would like me to drag her into an alley and get to work with a dull knife, but all Psyche will feel is a sleepiness and then nothing at all.
It’s the bare minimum she deserves.
I sit back and rub my hand over my chest. Now is not the time for doubts or guilt or any of that bullshit. I’ve done worse to nicer people, all because they got in my mother’s way or she decided they were threatening her position. The public might think murder is the greater evil, but they haven’t seen a young up-and-coming person have everything stripped away. Their beauty, their status, the respect of their peers. It’s so fucking easy to dismantle someone’s life if you have the right information, the right resources.
All that being said, not even I can convince myself that killing Psyche is a mercy.
It never used to be like this. I only went after people who deserved it, people who actively threatened my mother. I was a hunter of monsters, of people who intended to harm the only family I have in this world. Until one day I looked up and realized I’m the biggest monster of all. I’d sacrificed too much, had erased too many lines for morality to be anything more than a theory.
There was no going back.
There is no going back.
I sense the moment Psyche walks into the bar. The few patrons go silent and watchful. No matter that she’s dressed down in a pair of jeans and a black coat that covers her to the knees, she’s beautiful enough to stop traffic. She moves through the bar slowly, surveying each table before those hazel eyes finally land on me.
It’s a good thing she’s still a fair distance away because I suck in a breath at being the sole focus of this woman. I was too distracted the night of the party to properly appreciate her sheer presence. Even in pain and pissed the fuck off, I’d still enjoyed the way her gray dress hugged her generous figure and gave a tantalizing glimpse of her large breasts and ass. Especially when she leaned over me to change my bandages.
Focus.
She crosses to my booth and slips into the seat across from me without hesitation. Despite myself, I like that she’s not cowering or flinching. She walked in here with confidence, and I get the feeling that she approaches every situation the same way. It’s too damn bad she can’t brazen her way through tonight. “Psyche.”
“Eros.” She considers me for a long moment. Is she comparing and contrasting how I look now versus the last time we spoke? The only time, really, aside from a handful of greetings over the years at various parties. Even as children of the Thirteen, we hardly move in the same circles. The Dimitriou women hold themselves apart. Another thing about them that drives Aphrodite up the wall.
Psyche leans back slowly. “Most people send an email when they want to meet me. You’re efficient enough to have figured out my phone number. Why bother with Hermes?”
Because an email can be hacked and a phone can be traced. No matter what everyone believes about Hermes, she takes her title and her role seriously. If a message is meant to be secret, it stays that way. Not even the legacy titles can compel her to share a message.
If Psyche is murdered, I want nothing tracing it back to me.
If? What the fuck am I talking about if? Her fate was sealed the moment my mother demanded her heart. No, before that, when she showed me kindness despite the fact that anyone else in that party would have turned away. Even my friends would have pretended not to notice the blood or the limp. We all operate under the carefully balanced lie that I am nothing more than Aphrodite’s playboy son. A little too free with his charms, a little too hard to pin down in anything resembling commitment.
No one talks about what else I do for my family.
Or who pays the price.
There is no room for doubt about the price to be paid tonight. The only way forward is through. It’s not like I haven’t done worse. My hands are covered in the blood of my mother’s enemies, both real and imagined. I’ve long since made my peace with the fact that I’ll never get them clean. I’m no longer particularly inclined to fight that uphill battle for sainthood. It’s Tartarus for me.