No. Fuck no.
Forcing the emotion away though sheer bloody-minded will, Elijah made himself move again, over to the windows, to the bookshelf, the chair by the fireplace, to the sofa, and back once more.
He couldn't be thinking this shit. There were people he had to call, some stuff he had to set up. He didn't want to go into a meeting with Jericho blind, especially given the man's reputation. And there was also the fact that his flunky had agreed to everything Elijah had said without arguing. Battery Park. The Esplanade. 3 p.m. Come alone.
No argument always meant something was up. He just had to find out what.
Then there was the other thing that he'd had to put on hold while he'd been holed up with Violet. What to do with the remains of the Fitzgerald empire.
His goal had always been to take it down, and gradually over the years he'd been undermining it from the inside, eroding it away piece by piece and in such a way that Fitzgerald had never noticed. Right up until Eva King had put a bullet through his brain, he'd still believed that the deaths of two members of his little coterie, the Seven Devils, had been due to a car accident and a mugging, respectively. As Elijah had intended when he'd taken them down.
However, now that Fitzgerald was dead, that goal was a little more difficult. Especially if he was going to take out Jericho. Especially if he didn't survive the attempt. Then again, perhaps he could leave that to Gabriel Woolf and his friends. They certainly seemed keen. Hell, if Jericho was dead, he didn't care what they did with whatever was left. As long as they destroyed it, of course.
From the hallway outside the study came the sound of voices.
Elijah froze, staring at the closed door. Because he was damn sure those voices were feminine. Which meant … Violet.
A weird adrenaline rush had the blood pumping hard in his veins, and he was moving to the door before he'd had a chance to think about why he was doing so.
It opened while he was still halfway across the room, and sure enough, Violet came in, followed by a dark-haired woman with familiar blue eyes. Honor, Woolf's lover. Behind her was the guard, who gave Elijah a warning look.
Like that would ever be enough to stop him if he wanted to get out.
Then again, Violet was finally here and he didn't want to make things difficult for her with her friend so he stopped where he was, waiting. Deliberately not thinking about why not making things difficult for Violet was quite so important.
And then he got a good look at her face and everything ceased to matter.
She looked broken, like a piece of china smashed into pieces and poorly put together again. Her face was white and there were circles under her eyes. She wasn't wearing the clothing he'd bought her, but a pair of dark blue skinny jeans and a soft sweater the same deep turquoise of her eyes. Expensive, low-key clothes that somehow made her look even more vulnerable than she did already.
He began to move toward her and to hell with the asshole standing guard behind them, but then she said, "Elijah, stop."
And he did, because the same expression of desolation in her face was in her voice too, and he found he couldn't ignore it.
Violet turned her head a little toward her friend. "I need to speak with him alone, Honor."
Honor St. James flicked a glance at Elijah. "I'm not sure I can-"
"Please." Violet never took her gaze from him, as if he were a lifeline and she was drowning.
Something heavy and unwelcome shifted in his chest.
Honor sighed. "Okay." She gestured to the guard. "Come on, let's give them a few minutes."
A few seconds later, the door closed behind them, leaving Violet and him alone in the room.
He took a step toward her, but she held up a hand. "No. Wait. I have to ask you some questions."
Again, he stopped, held by the awful note in her voice. The one that seemed to reach inside him, looping wire around his heart and pulling tight.
"What questions?" he demanded. "What's happened, princess? Are you okay?"
"No. I'm not okay." Her voice had thickened, and she stood there with that terrible look on her face. He wanted very badly to do something, but he didn't quite know what that something should be. Perhaps something violent, that would involve pain and preferably to the person who'd put that expression on her face.
"What happened?" he asked again. "What did they do to you? Because if they did something, I swear to Christ-"
"They didn't do anything. They told me about Dad."
Ah. Well, that was never going to be easy for her, was it? "About how he died?"
"Among other things." She stopped. "He hurt people, Elijah. He hurt them. Gabriel's mother. Eva King. Honor's Dad. God, so many people." Her pale throat moved, and he could almost see the shattered pieces she was holding together break again, into smaller pieces, all jagged and sharp. "I need to know something. I need to know whether you were a part of it. Whether you knew about it." Another pause. "What did you do for him, Elijah?"
He'd never hidden what he was, what he'd done. Not from himself and not from anyone else. He'd embraced the identity he'd created for himself, the mercenary Elijah Hunt, ruthless and dark and absolutely as cold as ice. Taking down Fitzgerald had required it.
He hadn't made any excuses for his behavior and he'd never regretted it. Regrets would kill him.
Except now, staring into Violet's eyes, he thought that perhaps he might have regrets after all, because he wanted to tell her that no, he hadn't done anything bad. That he hadn't been a part of those things she'd mentioned. That he wasn't the monster she so clearly feared he would be.
But he had and he was. And he couldn't lie to her.
So he said, "What he did to Woolf's mother was before my time and no, I had no idea about that. Same with Daniel St. James. But yes, I shot Honor's stepfather. I was supposed to kill him, but I missed the shot. The man wasn't like the others and his death would have been pointless. As to Eva King … Again, that was before my time. But he had other girls that I knew about."
Violet's face was still deathly pale. "What happened to them?"
"Some of them I managed to get out. Others I couldn't without blowing my cover."
"You kidnapped Eva. Honor told me."
"Yes. I did. Fitzgerald wanted her and I couldn't stop him. I did what I could to give both her and Rutherford the opportunity to escape." He held her gaze. "I did what I could to help all of them get out before anyone else got hurt."
"Oh." She fell silent for a long moment, staring at him, and he hated that look on her face. Hated it for reasons he couldn't have explained even to himself. "Why? Why did you work for him? And what were you hoping to achieve?"
"His death. And the death of that fucking empire he built up."
"Because of your wife?"
"Yes." There was no other answer.
Violet stayed where she was, her blue-green eyes burning into his, and he didn't look away. He had no idea why she wanted to know these things, or whether it would change things between them, but he was what he was and there was no changing what he'd done. He couldn't pretend otherwise. Anyway, she should know what he was by now. He hadn't held himself back when it came to dealing with her.
"I'm sorry," she said suddenly, thickly. "I'm so sorry, Elijah." Suddenly she was walking toward him, closing the distance between them, coming right up to where he stood, and then putting her arms around him.
Shock held him frozen to the spot. The heat of her body was right up against him, and part of him-the raw, desperate, grief-stricken part-wanted to shove her away. And yet he couldn't. Her arms were slim and they held him so lightly, yet they felt like iron bands around his waist. Chains holding him fast.
She bent, her forehead resting against his chest. And then she began to cry.
The band looped around his heart pulled even tighter. So tight it was painful.
He'd watched plenty of people cry over the years, both men and women. Tears of sorrow, of anger, of pain. Of fear and desperation. But none of them had ever moved him. His heart had been long hardened against anything as weak as pity or mercy.
But now … The sounds of Violet's sobs were doing something to him. Breaking him in ways he couldn't describe. She'd come to give him comfort, the first person to do so in years, and yet now she was the one who was crying. Holding onto him as if a storm was tearing at her and she was terrified of being blown away.
Why? Did she expect him to give her comfort in return? Didn't she know that he wasn't the kind of man who did that? He hadn't been that kind of man for years.
And yet despite that, he found himself lifting his arms and putting them around her slender figure, gathering her in close. Holding her like she was holding him.
The tension in her body abruptly relaxed and she cried harder, deep, gut wrenching sobs that had him holding her even tighter, as if she were coming apart at the seams and only he could keep her together. He found himself whispering inanities he didn't even realize he was capable of, his mouth against the short, soft spikes of her hair. "Hush, princess. It's okay. Everything will be fine, I promise."