“Still mad I married the hotter brother?”
“Devastated,” Stan says. “I cry about it while getting railed by the prettiest man on Earth.”
Kayla laughs. I tune them out and turn back to Em. Her shoulders are up to her ears. Her eyes look dull. But she’s picking at her food.
I nudge a drink closer to her hand. She wraps her fingers around it and takes a sip.
She moves closer to me, her shoulders lowering. It feels like my ribs respond to how close and quiet she’s being, with this thudding ache I haven’t felt since the hospital. I stretch my back out to fix it. That doesn’t work.
So I just hunch over Em, to make sure she knows all she has to focus on is the food in front of her. Everything else can wait and be handled by everyone else. All we have to do is sit beside each other.
***
Time stretches thin as the terminal empties. Boarding calls fade. The seats around us open up. The air feels colder when there are fewer bodies in it.
Em’s sitting beside Idris now. He speaks to her in whispers, his hand resting on her wrist. Her fingers stay wrapped around her drink, bringing it to her lips, while Idris slips a plastic pill box into her pocket.
Across the terminal, Darius and Damon are talking in a private lounge framed by thick glass. Their shoulders are squared.
Stan’s glancing that way while Kayla talks about my sister’s honeymoon, something about a beach-facing villa and a bartender who Sterling almost beat up for serving my sister the wrong drink with not enough tiny umbrellas.
“Yeah, um, if she wants a million of those,” Stan says, “she gets agazillion. You got the bartender’s name and address? Asking for an assassin.”
Kayla giggles. “God, I missed you. All I’ve had for company is Dae in that big house, and he’s alwayssoserious, like there’s a stick up his ass.”
“Well, did you leave it in there the last time you were pegging the guy?”
Kayla barks out a laugh, wiping tears from her eyes. “A girl can dream.”
Stan shudders. “Ugh, I wish I didn’t just imagine what I said.”
Then Stan goes still. His mouth opens, then closes. The hair along his arms rise, visible even from where I’m sitting.
There’s a cold draft that comes in, like a window was left open, except this is a huge airport. Maybe a plane landed? I look around and don’t see one letting passengers out.
A tall man walks in, looking like Darius or Idris but a couple decades older. That must be Set Adel.
He walks up to us from the end of the wide walkway.
He might look like his sons, but he’s not as tan. He’s a tad paler with sharper cheekbones, sporting a tailored dark coat. His blue eyes scan the space and stop at Idris, who has his back turned to his father, while he’s still whispering things to Em.
Set passes the glass wall of the lounge, and I catch his eyes in the blurry reflection, right beside my blue pair.
A memory comes crashing into mind. Clo’s hand at my shoulder. White light. A room full of mirrors. Her voice, calm and pleased, telling me the blue suits me better than my natural brown eyes. Telling me it matches with the others’ eye colors, even my sister’s. Whispering wickedly to me how I’ll look right when I stand in front of her other puppets.
Biting down my snarl, I drag my focus away before the memory sinks teeth into me.
Damon and Darius leave the lounge to trail after Set, stopping near us. Set’s smile is smooth, so polished it could charm a room full of people into believing he’s an ally or a friend, when he’s anything but.
I’m not easily fooled. Not after acting the role of Clo’s right-hand man. Not after I saw this man’s signature on too many paper trails. He’s as bad as her. Maybe even worse.
“Good evening, everyone,” Set says, voice warm and measured for eyes so soulless. “Looks like you all reached Cairo in one piece.”
Nobody laughs. Stan almost does but reads the room. I cross my arms, frowning at Set. He turns toward his sons. He speaks calmly and quietly. Logistics delivered like polite conversation.
Within minutes, the plan’s set up. The ship stays on dock. So do Set, Darius, Idris, and Damon. They say they’re staying to contain what happened and to keep it from reaching anyone it shouldn’t. Their voices stay shockingly still while they talk about it, which makes it worse. How the hell can they be so passive about the awfulstuff that happened on the ship?
Kayla steps up to Em once the decision’s made. “You’re coming with us, Em. We’ll make sure you’ll have your space, a warm bed, and plenty of good food. And you’ll never be alone, okay?”
