Chapter 43 TrickTreat – Aurora
TRICK OR TREAT
AURORA
How is it Friday already?
"Happy Halloween," Seven mumbles against my hair as he wakes.
I groan, rolling over in my bed to face him. Glad he snuck in for my last night at home.
"But that means I have to leave."
"What if you didn't?"
I frown up at him, and he plays with a lock of my hair, wrapping it around his fingers. "What if we called this whole thing off and you stayed here forever, instead?"
I chuckle, but he doesn't look like he's joking.
He kisses the knot between my brows and then pulls back. "Just a thought," he says, stretching before he throws the covers back and slides out of bed, giving me a full view of him in the dawn light. Every inch wrapped in dense, corded muscle. Every inch covered in ink.
It should be a crime for him to own any form of clothing.
I should start a petition.
"What are you thinking?" he asks with a coy smirk when he catches me staring.
"That I want to burn every piece of clothing you own."
His eyes spark, and he leans down to pull my chin up and press a hot kiss to my mouth. "The feeling's mutual, Ro."
Seven's phone buzzes in his pocket, and he doesn't even have to check it to know who it is. "That'll be Atty. We made him wait until the last day, but it's almost ten, and he's probably been waiting for us to get up since five."
I press my face into the pillow and groan.
Things have been a little off since my admission. They all took it so much better than I thought they would, but still, there's a tension there that there wasn't before. A sort of caution. At least where Atticus and Elijah are concerned. Unless I'm reading into it too much.
It could be that they're trying not to push me. Or that they aren't quite sure how to comfort me, or whether I even want to be comforted.
I'm glad it's not the other way around. I thought I was the one who would need to be comforting them. Reassuring them.
This, I can handle.
Especially since at least one of them seems to get it. Seven sees that I don't need or want coddling. I'm not interested in empty platitudes or reassurances they can't give.
I want to accept it and move past it. That's it.
"Come on." Seven throws back the covers. "Let's get you dressed."
I pull the covers back. "Do I have to?"
"If any of us are going to be able to focus on a single word Atticus says, then yes. You need clothes on. Actually, if Atticus is going to be able to speak at all, you need clothes on."
He gathers the discarded shirt and jeans from the floor and carries them to me. I clench my teeth against a devious smirk, but he catches it anyway.
"What's that face for?"
"Nothing," I say innocently.
I told him about the steam room with Atticus. I told Elijah, too. I also told them that, even though I haven't fully forgiven Atticus, I'm trying to. I can tell he meant every word he said to me out there. I can tell he's sorry, and I believe him now when he says he'll never do it again.
But even without all that, there's one other variable I can't ignore. I want him.
And not just physically.
I want what he can give me.
I've seen him with the guys. How fiercely he protects them and how he'd do anything for them. It's why he holds on so tightly to his control and comes off as the hard-ass Daddicus watching out for his family without compromise or apology even if I know now that there's something softer underneath.
I want that.
Not just that sort of fierce loyalty, but that little bit of softness he reserves only for those he trusts.
"That's not nothing, Ro." He smirks and tosses me my clothes. "You like the idea of driving Atty crazy, don't you?"
"Oh, I already know I drive him crazy," I correct, sitting up.
No man has ever come from touching me. Tasting me.
But Atticus did.
I could tell he was mortified, but the truth is…I've never felt more powerful than when I heard him grunt and groan through his release, spilling himself all over the floor because he was so turned on just from the feel of me in his hands.
What we did out there—it was cathartic. Physical. Necessary.
But I can't afford for it to be much more with him. Not yet. But maybe soon.
Seven's expression darkens as I tug on my jeans, and I cock my head at him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"That's not nothing," I say, mimicking his words from only a moment ago.
He snorts. "I'm glad you're trying to forgive him, Ro. I couldn't say for sure if he deserves it, but he's my brother and despite all his flaws and fuckups, I love the bastard."
He runs a hand through his sleep-tousled hair, pushing it away from his face.
"But so we're clear, no one gets to put their hands on you if you don't want them there. If he wasn't my brother and I didn't know how he was trying to protect us…or how sorry he is—I'd have cut them clean off his wrists."
He watches my throat bob as I swallow.
"Does that scare you?"
"No."
"Good."
He stands and extends a hand to me. I consider the birds inked into the back of it. The faded star-like symbols on his fingers and the snake that runs up from his forearm for its head to rest below his little finger.
I take it, and he twines his fingers with mine, helping me up from the bed to get dressed. It's a little intimidating, but I realize I trust him to be judge, jury, and executioner. To anyone else, his moral compass might appear broken beyond repair, but I think it works just right.
"Do you think we should remove the dickfetti cannon from his record room? I thought he'd have gone in there by now and set it off, but…"
Seven purses his lips, shakes his head. "Nah. You wouldn't believe it, but we used to prank each other all the time. I say we leave it. It took a lot of work."
I grin coyly back, pulling my shirt over my head. "It would be a shame to let it go to waste."
His eyes glimmer. "Exactly."
His smile is broad as he takes my hand and leads me from the room.
As we enter the library, Atticus stops what he was doing with Ellie—trying to teach her to do some kind of trick with her front paws fully off the ground by the looks of it—and hands her a treat.
"Where's Céline?" I ask, scanning the room. I thought she was supposed to come back for this meeting.
"I already went over things with her this morning," Atticus says. "She headed out."
He pulls his dirty blond hair back from his face to twist it into a knot atop his head.
"I hope my text didn't wake you," he adds as he walks toward where Elijah is already sitting on one of two low brown leather sofas that face each other in the corner of the library.
"Nah, we were up already."
Elijah looks up from the file he was reading and slides down the sofa to make room for me to sit next to him.
"Sleep okay?"
I nod. "You?"
"Yeah."
He's lying, I can tell by the way he looks away and presses his lips together. Those are his tells. But I let him lie, because I know the reason he wouldn't have slept well probably has everything to do with what I told him on Wednesday.
"We should get started," Atticus says, folding himself into the seat opposite us while Seven leans against the arm of the sofa nearest to me.
"What are we looking at?" I ask, gaze roaming the papers on the table.
Atticus sighs. "A lot of things. I told you, you're in control. There are a lot of options here. I've explored the possibility of you accepting Ambrose's offer to visit his estate in Spain."
He pushes a file toward me, and I sense Elijah's energy shift next to me.
"Then there's the option of continuing to play it slow." He offers another folder, then indicates the one still in Elijah's lap. "Then there's that one. Made at Eli's request."
Elijah sets it on my lap.
I lift the top sheet of paper, finding a map with a red line from a building into what is marked as an Olive Garden.
"I don't get it."
Elijah points at the building. "There is a perfect sight line from the fifth floor of this hotel into the front windows of the Olive Garden across the street in Boone." He drags his finger over the red line, and my throat goes dry as understanding dawns on me.
I twist to face Elijah. "You want to kill him?"
His expression is grim, haunted. "Yes," he says. "I want to end it."
"But…" I flip through the rest of the pages, of which there are only three, and see nothing that details anything about his family's art collection. Nothing that details the systematic takedown of his empire.
Those are the whole reasons why we're doing this.
To get it all back. To give him what he deserves.
"I don't get it," I find myself saying as Seven takes the file from me and flicks through the pages with confusion in the set of his brow, scratching the triple seven tattoo on his neck.
I meet Atticus's hard stare. "What about the art? What about taking your revenge?"
"It's an option," he answers in a cautious monotone.
"There's also the option of doing nothing, but I didn't need a folder for that.
We can stop now. We have the money and means to make you disappear.
You'd never have to see Ambrose again. We could start over.
Here. Somewhere else. Wherever you want. Leave this whole mess in the past."
He doesn't like this option, I can tell, but the fact he's offering it at all is a testament to how much he meant it when he said I am in control.
But this option, the one still in my hands, doesn't have Atty written on it. This is all Elijah.
I turn to face him. "You want to give up?"
"It's not giving up, Angel," he argues, a hardness in the set of his jaw. "It's deciding what's more important."
"But we could have it all—"
"And we could lose you in the process." His tone is sharper than I've heard it since that morning in his studio when he yelled at me to get out. It brokers no argument, but I will argue this point because we didn't do all this work for nothing.
"Elijah, knowing you would give up all this—everything you've been working for since you came home—for me…I never thought I'd mean that much to anyone."
His eyes linger on my face like he wants to memorize it, even as he shakes his head, because I know he can see that I've already decided, and it's not going to be folder number three.
"But," he says for me, the word coming out through his teeth. "There's a but, isn't there?"
"But," I relent. "I don't want you to give it up. I can do this. I wasn't sure for a minute, but now that everything is out in the open, I am sure. I can do it. We can do it."
"We just have to be smart," Atticus adds. "Plan for every scenario."
I nod and kick Seven covertly, trying to get him to weigh in. He drops the file he was looking at on the table. "What do you want, Ro? Don't think about what we want or what you think we're owed. Our vengeance is not your responsibility."
"Yes, it is," I snap, and he cocks his head at me, curious. "It is because it's mine, too. That bastard hurt the men I care about. I want to make him pay. And I might be the only person who can."
He chuckles, casting his gaze to the vaulted ceiling with a sigh that leeches some of the venom from my blood. "Oh, Ro. Just when I think I've figured you out, you still manage to surprise me."
When his burning blue eyes find mine again, they take my breath away. "Atty's right, Eli," he says. "She's in control here. We follow her lead."
Elijah won't look at me, and it hurts, but I know it's only because he cares so deeply. I know it's because he would never be able to live with himself if something were to happen to me on the road to reclaiming what's rightfully his.
"What is it you want to do, then?" he asks softly, like he's resigned himself to a death sentence.
I bite my lip, considering the files. Considering Elijah's request.
"How about I make you a deal?" I offer. "You let me try—really try…and if it doesn't work and I can't get the intel we need, then we end it."
He lifts his light brown eyes to me, but the usually warm shade is cold. "You want to go to Spain?"
I nod slowly.
He heaves a shuddering breath and drops his head into his hands. "I'm sorry," he mutters so quietly I barely hear him. "I can't agree with this. It doesn't feel right."
I taste blood in my mouth from chewing the inside of my cheek, and force myself to stop. I don't want to cause Elijah stress or worry or pain. But I know that this will always nag at him.
The what-if.
What if we tried harder?
What if he let me go and we could've brought Florence's art and their own damn family legacy home to Julian?
What if he could've gotten his vengeance?
The vengeance he is owed.
Where his shirt is pulled down at the back of his neck, I see the intersecting lines of the scars at the top of his back, and my resolve strengthens. "We put it to a vote, then."
Elijah's attention snaps up.
"It's the only way it'll be fair."
"Angel…"
I lift my hand. "All in favor of my plan? We give this one shot everything we have, and if it doesn't work, we're done. We put an end to Ambrose De La Rosa, and we move on."
Atticus is the first one to raise his hand, and Elijah bows his head, knowing he's already outnumbered, because Seven will support my choice. He will always support my choice.
"Sorry, E," Seven says. "But this is how it has to be. If the roles were reversed…if it were her legacy, her scars…is there anything that would stop you from seeking her revenge?"
Elijah twists his head to rest his temple on his clasped hands, looking up at me like he really does see an angel next to him instead of a mere woman.
"No," he says, and I offer him an apologetic smile as Ellie comes to sit next to him, laying her head in his lap to comfort him.
"Don't be angry with me," I beg.
He pets Ellie with one hand and slides his scarred one onto my thigh. "Never, Angel."
Atticus flips open the first folder and shifts to the edge of the sofa, spreading documents across the table. "Okay. We need to dig in. There isn't a lot of time. I need you all to pay close attention. If we only have one shot at this, I want to make sure we don't fucking waste it."
When his dark eyes lift to mine, there's a playful softness in them that makes my stomach flip. "And someone's got a Halloween party to get to."