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."