Chapter 59 My Mother’s Daughter
MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER
AURORA
My face betrays nothing. Even as everything around me—within me—crumbles like brittle stone.
Did you really think I didn't know?
Maybe it's not what I think. Maybe the warning singing in my veins and churning in my stomach is mistaken.
Denial has never been my strong suit.
Ambrose De La Rosa appraises me with open disdain that borders on disgust.
"You really are your mother's daughter."
He checks his watch, shifting back a step to lean against the edge of his desk.
I spin on my heel and step forward, moving to shove through the men blocking my exit. They shove me back, and I slam my palms on the chest of the one to the right. "Move."
The giant statue of a man doesn't budge. Doesn't speak.
I shove him again, and he grunts, shouldering me back hard enough to make me stumble.
My heart races as I regain my footing and lock gazes with the one on the right.
The one that was labeled as Coyote in Ambrose's files.
"Get out of my way!"
My breaths come fast and loud, and when I go to shove him again, he aims his weapon at me, and I freeze. He gestures with the barrel, telling me to back up while Ambrose sighs behind me.
"You'll regret this," I warn Coyote, fist tightening on my pack.
"No," Ambrose replies for him. "I doubt that."
When I turn back to throw my rage at him instead, I find him boredly arranging the items on his desk, putting some pens back in the marble tumbler with the gold scissors.
Ambrose drops the last pen in with the others and then rests his palms back against the desk's edge. "I know they're here, too."
My blood goes cold.
So fucking cold.
"Who?"
My skin pricks.
Please, no.
"They're likely close by," he prattles on instead of answering me. "But I'm fairly confident they have no idea where you are."
This isn't happening.
I'm trying to make sense of it—how this could happen, what I did wrong—but all the connections in my mind are broken and jumbled. Like some part of me is protecting itself from fully comprehending the full weight of what this is.
"I'm sure my men will find them before they have any chance of finding you, and then Julian's sons will finally be made to answer for all their many sins."
At the mention of Julian, something cracks.
I'm flying across the room, curses filling my mouth as I go straight for his stupid fucking face. He recoils as if being attacked by a striking viper, but my fangs don't have a chance to sink in and do the damage he deserves before rough hands drag me back.
I kick and thrash, scratching, throwing my whole body into the fight against Ambrose's men.
"I'll kill you!" I shout, my voice cracking. "I'll fucking kill you if you touch them!"
I'm rewarded with a pained grunt as I claw at Coyote's face, leaving streaks of violent red. I get an inch, but they take a mile, dragging me back until there's a wide valley between me and Ambrose.
Their brutal grip on my arms makes it hurt every time I try to pull free, and I know if I pull any harder, I'll break my own bones.
I scream my frustration, but the sound is cut off as my backpack is violently torn from my body, and I'm shoved so forcefully to my knees that they crack as they hit the tile, making my teeth rattle.
Coyote brings my pack to Ambrose while his buddy twists my arm so hard behind my back that my eyes burn.
"You fucking bastard," I hiss through my teeth as he sets the bag next to him and starts to meticulously pick through every pouch and pocket. The tearing pain in my shoulder almost makes me cry out, but I hold it in. I would not give Ambrose or his fucking lackies the satisfaction.
"I'm going to enjoy gutting you like—"
"Shut her up."
I don't have time to prepare before there's a hard knock in my skull and my vision goes black.
For a second, there's no pain, and I question where it went. Where I am. How I got here.
For a second, I think I'm at the cabin, and the wet spot on my forehead is Ellie giving kisses, trying to wake me up.
Just a minute, Ellie, I try to say, but my tongue is heavy and useless in my mouth.
My cheek leaves cold tile, and the movement of my body being forced upright makes me want to vomit as the colors and light in the room twirl and expand, unable to assemble themselves back into a clear image.
There's copper in the back of my throat and a pickaxe in my skull chip, chip, chipping away at the false reality until I remember exactly where I am.
"You idiot," a deep baritone growls, but it's distant, muffled, and so hard to hear over the ringing. "I want her conscious."
The shifting double image of Ambrose tries to put itself back together, but both of him are swaying too fast to latch on, and my stomach roils at the dizzying dance of the douchebags until I taste bile in my throat.
"Ah," he says finally. "There it is."
The Ambroses have something in their hands.
I shake my head, trying to see what it is.
He drops it and stamps it beneath the heel of his boot. He stomps and stomps, each thud punctuated by the sharp sound of plastic shattering to unrecognizable bits of black and silver on the floor.
Pain lances through my skull when I shake my head a third time, but my vision clears enough to recognize the obliviated flash drive.
I reach for the rage I know I should feel, but it's like grasping at shadows, and I think it got knocked out of my head when this asshole hit me with the butt of his rifle.
Then Coyote says… "My team has a lock on their location."
"No."
He presses his earpiece more firmly against his ear. "They're closing in."
"No."
"Tell them to take Elijah alive if they can."
I am going to kill this man.
Coyote relays the message, and Ambrose nods when he's done. "Fantastic. Now, where were we?"
All that's left is a bone-deep understanding of what this means.
I failed.
I failed them.
Atticus told me not to get complacent, but that's exactly what I did. The last few days have felt the easiest of all, because I knew it was all downhill after getting the data onto that drive. If I'd opened my eyes for one second, really looked, I would've seen this coming.
Oh god, the guys…
My throat is thick with emotion that I fight to keep contained. It won't help me now. It won't help them.
And something tells me, I won't have to feel any of it soon.
Fuck, it was so idiotic to think that a man like him wouldn't hurt his own daughter.
A small sound breaks free from my lips, unable to be held in when I realize what all of this means for my Ellie girl. I won't ever see her again. She'll think I abandoned her. She won't understand.
And then a worse thought punches through all the rest…
If he knew about me—about the guys' plans—does he know about Céline?
Does he care?
Would he go after my sweet Ellie girl and—
I can't finish the thought, it's too much. I…can't.
Tears fall, and my hands shake in the grip of the man at my back.
Ambrose nudges the busted pieces of flash drive with the toe of his boot, making sure it's all thoroughly destroyed before he fixes his hair and huffs a sigh. "I'll bet you're wondering how I knew."
The creeping smirk at the edge of his mouth makes me want to set him on fire, but the rage is still so slippery, and I can't grip it long enough to hold on with all the thoughts spiraling in my head.
I mentally slap myself, stopping the onslaught of terrifying images from bombarding my mind, reminding myself who I am and who they are.
Seven, Elijah, and Atticus wouldn't roll over and take this. They'd fight. They're probably fighting right now.
And I need to fight, too.
"I was there, you know," Ambrose muses, but I'm not paying much attention as I force myself back to the present, grounding my body in this moment.
I force myself to register the hard tile beneath my knees and the rough grip of the man holding me here.
In the now, I can still do something. Atticus said there's always a way—always a solution—I just have to find it.
I put away the panic, shove down the abject terror at what could happen, and pay attention to what is happening right now. There has to be something. A weapon. Or something I could threaten him with.
Think, Aurora. What do you know? What can you use?
"In Paris," Ambrose continues. "At La Tante Sophistiquée."
His words register, and I frown.
"Oh yes." He grins at me wickedly. "Seven and Elijah were so focused—or perhaps so distracted by you—that they didn't even notice. I was just another face amid the Parisian upper class."
He couldn't have been…
"I had my eye on that Van Gogh for a while," he explains. "I knew Flo always wanted to add it to their collection. I thought of it as my duty to the dead to see that goal realized."
"You're a disgusting excuse for a human being," I mutter, my mouth still not working exactly as it should. Tongue swollen where I must've bitten it when I was hit in the head.
I spit blood onto the tile.
His nose wrinkles in revulsion.
"It really is too bad Atticus wasn't with them. That one was always too smart for his own good. Too cunning. Gave me a run for my money on several occasions and sabotaged some of the most lucrative deals I ever would've made."
I don't miss how he's already talking about them in the past tense, and I almost, almost am sick all over the floor, but I choke it back.
"If Atticus had been there, I'm certain he wouldn't have missed my presence."
I flinch, glad the others aren't here to hear this.
"If only I'd been better prepared." He clucks his tongue.
"I only had a few men with me. I knew they wouldn't be enough with that psychotic one in the mix, but I had to try.
It was the best opportunity I'd had to get my hands on them in years.
And if I were able to capture one of them, I could use him to lure the others—which is what I should've done a long time ago. "
I shiver.