Kidnapped by the Billionaire (41 page)

He stared at Violet, at her vivid eyes, her wet cheeks, and her soft, lush mouth. Bright and beautiful and alive. Hurting so much already. And he knew there was no choice to make.

Marie was dead and had been for a very long time. He couldn't save her. But he could give Violet this. Heal a little bit of her pain. It would only be fair after everything she'd given him.

Slowly, Elijah lowered the Colt. He looked at Violet one last time, memorizing everything about her so he could keep at least the memory of her to last him.

Then he turned and walked out the door.

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Violet wiped futilely at the tears, scrubbing them all away with vicious swipes of her hand.

She shouldn't be crying, not now she'd made her choice and picked a side. And it was the right choice, she knew that in her heart. Pity her heart kept insisting it was broken and shouldn't be making any sort of choices right now.

Theo was speaking on his phone to someone, his voice completely calm as if he hadn't just faced down a man intent on putting a bullet in his brain. He was again speaking in German and it sounded as if he was issuing instructions.

Violet tried to pull herself together, tried to ignore the way her chest felt like it was full of broken glass. Elijah was gone and she'd understood the moment he'd given her that final look, as he'd lowered his Colt, that she wouldn't see him again.

There had been such pain in his eyes. He'd looked at her as if he was a man standing on a desert island watching his last chance of rescue disappear over the horizon.

You have me,
he'd said. The closest a man like him would ever come to laying out his heart.

And yet in the end, it hadn't been her who'd left.

She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. Even now there was a part of her that wanted to go after him, throw herself at his feet and tell him that yes, she had him. And he had her. That he didn't have to hurt again. Pity she was such a fucking coward.

I need this, princess.… Let me have it.

But he hadn't taken it. Why not? What had stopped him?

“A car will be waiting by the curb when you get downstairs,” Theo was talking to her, his deep, smooth voice so achingly familiar, and she had to struggle to pay attention. “It'll take you to Teterboro, where I have a jet waiting.”

Ah yes, that's right, he wanted her out of the country. Ostensibly to keep her safe.

She lifted her chin, studying his handsome face, noting the tightness in his jaw and the lines around his mouth. Marks of grief and pain. There were shadows in his eyes, too. Shadows that she hadn't seen before.

You were the one who made the deal. And you were the one who let her die when a client slit her throat …

Had he really been the one who'd let Elijah's wife die? Who'd sold her to a brothel? Who operated behind a cloud of secrecy, the power pulling the strings on a vast, shadowy human trafficking ring?

“How could he not know?” She wasn't sure she'd said the words aloud until she heard them echo in the silence of the apartment.

Theo glanced at her. “Who?”

“Dad. How could he not know it was you?”

“Because I made sure he wouldn't.” He'd put his phone away, reaching for an expensive-looking overcoat that was slung over the back of the threadbare couch.

“Why not? Why are you doing this?”

He put on the overcoat, shaking his head. “You need to leave now.”

“Answer me!” She took a couple of steps toward him. “I spent years looking for you, Theo. Do you know that? I was convinced you hadn't died, I was positive. Shit, searching for you has driven me for years and now here you are, and you won't even answer a few of my questions?”

There was no anger in his eyes, only a regret that tore at what remained of her heart. “No, Peanut, I won't. Because I don't have the answers for you, at least not the ones you want to hear. Now come on, it's time to go.”

“Tell me!”

He only shook his head and the look on his face was like a parent with a demanding child. Patient yet firm. Laying down the law. “I can't. This is not your fight, Violet, it's mine.” Turning, he went over to the kicked-in door and stood there, his arm out in a strangely old-fashioned gesture. “After you.”

She remembered him like this. Her pushing him to play with her or talk to her back when they'd been children, and him always so patient, refusing to be pushed. He'd never gotten angry either, no matter the tantrums she'd thrown and the tears she'd cried. She'd been like the wind, battering at him, while he'd been a rock, standing firm. Completely unaffected.

No wonder you liked what you did to Elijah. You affected him.

But there was no point thinking of Elijah. Just like there was no point pushing Theo. She'd get nothing out of him, not if he didn't want to talk.

So she closed her mouth and shut up. Went over to the door.

Theo looked down at her, and she thought for a minute he was going to give her a hug, but he didn't. And there was something radiating off him, a kind of warning that suggested hugging him would be unwelcome. So she kept her arms wrapped tightly around her middle, trying to ignore the cold stealing through her.

“Once you get to Paris, lay low for a while,” he said quietly. “You'll have everything you need there for a few weeks. I'll let you know when it's safe to return.” He paused, his gaze roving over her, the look on his face impossible to read. “Good-bye, Violet.”

She must have said good-bye too but she couldn't remember exactly as she'd walked down from the apartment to the foyer in a daze.

There was a car at the sidewalk, like he'd promised, and a man waiting next to it, ready to drive her away.

She got into the backseat without a word and the driver started the car, pulling out into the traffic.

Soon she'd be away from here, flying back to France. Away from the heartache that was her life, the reality of her world crashing down around her ears. If she closed her eyes, she could even pretend that none of the past week had happened. That she was still the daughter of a wealthy New York businessman, still puzzled by her brother's disappearance, still dressing to annoy her mother, still living off her trust fund, and still flitting from place to place, thing to thing, never settling on anything.

Still Violet Fitzgerald.

But no, she wasn't that Violet anymore, was she? She'd been changed. Irrevocably. By a man with black eyes and a scarred face. Who'd not only pulled her out of the stupid little box she'd been living in, but destroyed the box completely. He'd stripped her of her façades and forced her to confront who she really was inside, the person she was when all the layers had been ripped away. A selfish woman, like her father had been selfish. Thinking only of herself and her own loneliness.

Violet watched the traffic and the buildings sliding past outside the car window, her chest sore and her eyes gritty, like they had sand in them. And she couldn't get out of her head the sight of Elijah's face. The sharp pain in his obsidian eyes that cut her like razors. But she'd chosen her side, she'd chosen her brother.

You have me.

Elijah's voice echoed in her memory. She couldn't get that out of her head either, couldn't stop herself from wondering that if she had him, who did he have? But then, she knew the answer to that. He had no one.

Tears filled her eyes, the scene outside the car window blurring. How long had he been alone? Seven years. And what would he do now? He'd let Theo live, had given up his revenge, and now he was faced with the task of cleaning up the mess her father had made by himself. And all because of her.

He'd given up everything he'd been working toward for so long, for her.

And she'd taken it away from him.

The tears slid down her cheeks and a sudden wave of fury gripped her, so tight she could hardly breathe. Because here she was, sitting passively in this car, letting herself be taken away by yet another man. Letting herself be used the way they'd all used her at one point or another. A pawn of her father, of Elijah, and now of Theo.

And you're still a pawn. You think that move back there was you choosing a side? That wasn't a choice. That was reflex.

She swallowed. Fuck, she was so sick of this. Sick of being taken. Sick of being rescued.

Perhaps it was time she did some rescuing of her own. But not herself, because quite frankly, she didn't deserve it. Didn't need it. But there was another person who did. Who had no one to save him. No one but her.

It didn't matter what he'd meant when he'd told her that she had him. What mattered was that he needed to know that he had her. And if he didn't want her, then she'd just have to live with that.

The car slowed as it approached an intersection, then came to a stop for a red light.

Violet waited a moment.

Then she pulled open the door very, very quietly and slipped out.

*   *   *

Elijah stood in the middle of Gabriel Woolf's downtown office, his arms folded, not making any move to break the silence that filled the room. A silence so thick you could have cut it with a knife.

Before he'd gone to get Violet, he'd agreed with the others that they'd meet back at Gabriel's office on the fiftieth floor of the Woolf Construction building. He hadn't wanted to. What he'd wanted was to take her back to his own apartment and keep her there, possibly forever, but naturally enough Woolf and his friends wouldn't have been happy with that arrangement.

They were even less happy about it now that he hadn't actually gotten Violet at all.

Behind him huge windows gave a magnificent view out over Manhattan, the sun glittering off glass and steel, the concrete jungle in all its glory. But he didn't turn around to see it. He didn't give a shit about views. Not when all he could see were the tears sliding down Violet's cheeks. Not when he knew that walking away had been one of the best things he'd ever done. And one of the hardest.

“You bastard,” Woolf said furiously at last. “I can't believe you left her with him.”

“You expected me to drag her kicking and screaming from the building?” He met the other man's gaze head-on. “She was free to make a choice and she made it.”

Pity it wasn't the one he wanted.

“You didn't seem to find that a problem last week.” Woolf's voice was a growl.

Fuck, they wouldn't understand and he wasn't going to explain it to them. He could barely explain it to himself. Giving up the work of nearly a decade for one lovely woman's tears.

Giving up the one chance he had—because he knew there'd never be another—to avenge Marie's death. And all because he couldn't stand to hurt Violet.

He was a fucking liability, that's what he was. Soft and weak and vulnerable. His ex-boss would have laughed himself sick if he'd known what his hard-as-nails henchman had fallen to.

Anguish stirred inside him, and a despair he'd been trying to keep at bay the whole time he'd made his way from the broken-down apartment building in Alphabet City to Woolf's office. But like blood in the water, it crept out, staining everything.

He wouldn't see her again. And not because that was actually what he wanted, but because she'd made her choice and he had to respect that.

Us monsters have to stick together.

Why she thought she was a monster he had no idea, because a woman less likely to be one he'd yet to meet. Nevertheless, that didn't change the fact that she hadn't chosen him. Not unsurprising, given all he'd done to her and yet it still hurt, a subtle pain that worked its way inside him, like a splinter heading straight for his heart.

But, shit, he had to ignore that. He had things to do. An empire to take over and bring down. Yes, it would be that much harder with Jericho still alive, but he'd do it anyway. At least he'd try.

After all, it wasn't as if he had better things to do.

“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.” He stared at Woolf, his fingers suddenly itching to do violence. “I already took her choices from her once before, I'm not doing it again.”

“So you thought leaving her with her fucking monster brother was a better idea?”

“He wouldn't hurt her.”

“And how the fuck would you know that?”

The rest of them were staring at him, accusation in their eyes. And he couldn't blame them. He'd walked out and left Violet with one of Europe's most secretive and notorious crime bosses. Who also happened to be the brother who'd supposedly died sixteen years earlier.

And the brother who'd been trying to rescue her all this time. Because it was all so clear now, why Jericho had wanted her so badly. He'd been trying to get her free of her father the only way he could. So no, he wouldn't hurt her.

“He won't,” Elijah said. “Jericho spent a long time trying to get her free. He wouldn't do all of that just to get rid of her now.” He paused, looking at all of them in turn. “He's her brother, you do understand that don't you?”

Woolf cursed under his breath and flicked a glance at Honor, who'd been waiting in his office with the rest of them when Elijah had finally gotten back.

“Yeah, I didn't see that coming,” St. James muttered.

“None of us did.” Rutherford was leaning against Woolf's desk with his arms folded. “You didn't ever find anything about him, did you, angel?”

Eva sat next to him on the edge of the desk, her legs swinging. “Nope. Nothing at all. It's like he doesn't exist. Jericho I mean, not Theo.”

Katya was by the door, frowning at Elijah. “You said his father never knew he was dealing with his own son?”

“He didn't.” Of that Elijah was positive. Fitzgerald had had no inkling and in fact had spent a good many resources trying to find out who Jericho was, since the man had hated mysteries. Which in many ways made it odd that he'd accepted Theo's disappearance without any argument, especially when a body hadn't turned up. “He tried to find out but came up against the same dead ends. Jericho didn't want to be found and so he wasn't.”