Chapter 65 Complications & Consequences – Atticus
COMPLICATIONS & CONSEQUENCES
ATTICUS
I'm only half invested in my interrogation of the nurse. The other half of me is already across the pond, watching my brother shatter in slow motion.
Julian asks Eli what our attempts at vengeance cost us, and even from here, I hear the answer break him.
"Fuck," I whisper, my chest crumpling in on itself as I stalk away from her mid-conversation, hustling around the pond's edge with my hands balled in tight fists.
I knew this was coming. He's been on the edge of it since everything fell apart in Spain. Balancing there on the tip of that blade.
There were only two ways to fall, into a parasitic blackout rage…or into this.
I wasn't sure which would be worse, but now I know.
Julian's arms wrap around Eli, holding him fiercely, and I know he's remembered his son.
There should be relief at knowing that, but there's only dread here.
"My son." Julian's voice croaks as he holds Eli together. "It's all right. It'll be all right."
Ellie whimpers, unsure what to do.
"It's okay," I mutter to her, giving her head a scratch as I pass to sit on Elijah's opposite side on the flat stone.
"Deep breaths, E," I coach him, fighting to keep my own voice even and calm, feeling every one of his sobs as if they're my own.
"Come on, breathe with me."
I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to fix any of this. So I do the only thing I can: I stay. I breathe. I pretend I'm not falling apart right beside him.
My nose stings as I inhale audibly, trying to get him to anchor to the sounds even while I fall apart on the inside. We continue like that for a while, until his breath comes a bit easier, and Julian's arms around him no longer need to squeeze so tightly to hold him together.
"What's happening?" Julian asks, his brows drawn and eyes dark as he rubs Eli's back.
Eli curses, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps as he pulls away from his father's embrace and brings himself out of the spiral. He takes three more purposeful breaths, pushing a closed fist into his chest like he wants to rip out his own heart.
I grip his shoulder until he's out of it.
"I just need a second," he mutters, his throat bobbing as he stands and strides toward the tree line, scrubbing his hands over his face as he tips it up to the moon.
I let him go, staying with Julian.
"Atticus," Jules presses, and I realize he asked a question we haven't answered yet. "Elijah said something went wrong? That you lost everything? What happened?"
My throat feels hoarse, and I have to swallow twice before I trust myself to speak. "It's hard to talk about, Jules, but we think you might know something that could help us fix it." I swallow again. "That's why we're here."
His expression pinches. "Of course. Anything. What do you need?"
I flinch. "The problem is…the information we need—it's trapped in your mind."
He nods slowly, his gaunt face catching the moonlight in a way that makes him look positively skeletal. It hurts to see him like this.
Fuck, he'd hate it so much.
"I think there are lots of things trapped there," he murmurs.
I nod.
"Do you remember…" I start, biting the inside of my cheek. "Do you remember that girl we brought a few weeks ago? Eli's girlfriend?"
He frowns, thinking, and after a few seconds, there's a flicker of some memory he's trying hard to hold on to. "Yes. Her name was…was…"
I wait while he thinks.
"Aurora?"
I sigh. "Yes. Yes, that's her name."
Pushing my hand into my jacket pocket, I find the tiny metallic dick I keep there, pinching it between my fingers like if I hold on to it hard enough, I can hold on to her, too.
"It's not just Eli who cares for her. We all do. She's…"
Damn.
When I speak again, it's through my teeth, and I have to push the words out hard. "Aurora's really fucking important to us, Jules." My voice cracks on her name, and I have to stop. Swallow. Try again. "And something has happened to her."
Something I caused. Something I could've prevented if I'd been smarter. Faster. Better.
The weight of the truth presses down on my chest like a fucking boot.
Eli wanders back, huffing a sigh through his hands. "And now, we need to know what you know so we can help her."
Julian's brown eyes search his son's face, confused but clearly trying to understand.
"It won't be easy to get the information out of your head," I add. "And we aren’t even completely sure if you have the information we need."
"But she's important," Julian finishes. "So you need to try."
Eli's eyes glisten again, and he pinches away the dampness there before speaking again.
"We do," he agrees. "But we can't do it here. It isn't safe. We'd have to take you somewhere else."
At this, Julian recoils. "Well, what about your mother?"
My stomach turns.
I try to understand how he can be here, but also not here.
How he can remember us, but not that she's gone.
Julian turns to me. "Could Flo come with us?"
I lean over my knees and look up at Eli, but his eyes are squeezed shut and I know he's thinking the same thing I am.
We can't do this.
There was a time when I thought I could.
I thought I could put him through it all just for a chance at something that would give us our revenge, but now we're here, and…
I don't think I can.
Not like this.
Julian Ashford took me in when I was sixteen years old with nothing but a duffel bag and a sour attitude. He gave me a family. A purpose. A reason to believe I could be more than my father's son.
And now I'm supposed to break what's left of his mind for information he might not even have?
Florence would never forgive me.
I would never forgive me.
"I could go get her," Julian continues. "We could leave tonight. All of us."
I want to try to ask just once, but I know in my bones that as soon as I mention Ambrose's name, it's game over.
Eli opens his eyes and focuses on his father, and I was wrong. It wasn't resignation I read in his face. It was him steeling himself.
I stand and stop him before he can do something he'll regret. Shake my head. "E, I don't think it'll—"
"I have to try," he snaps, and pulls my hand from his arm to rejoin his father on the stone.
"Wait," I hiss, dragging him aside. "What if I checked the house?"
Eli's eyes narrow. "You're the one who said we could never step foot in there again."
"I know." I grip the bit of dickfetti in my palm, and a sharp pang of dread stabs into my gut.
"But it's possible there's something there.
Like all the things he scratched into the floor and the walls at our place.
What if he did the same thing here? Or wrote something down?
I can check the library. He always keeps his notes in that one false desk drawer or in that copy of—"
"Romeo and Juliet," he finishes, nodding slowly.
"If he had a lucid moment where he remembered something that could help us, he might've written it down there, knowing we would find it."
It feels like a shot in the dark, but I'll take anything I can get if there's even a sliver of a chance it could lead me back to her.
"Okay," he says. "You try that, and I'll talk to him. I'll go slow. See what I can get."
It's clear we agree we can't take him with us. But this, we can do.
I pivot on my heel, renewed by the new plan even if it's risky. We're sure Ambrose has the Ashford family home under some sort of surveillance, but I'm armed, and I'd know if the surveillance were constant. It has to be intermittent at best.
With any luck, I'll be in and out before Ambrose will ever know we were here.
Ellie barks, following my purposeful steps with a determined trot of her own, like she's decided she's going into battle with me.
Such a good, brave girl.
But this poses a greater risk, and I won't risk anything else I love.
"No, Ellie," I say softly, making the hand gesture for her to sit and stay. "Stay here, girl."
She barks at me again, but sits, restless paws stamping the dirt.
"I'll be back soon."
The nurse moves to intercept me as I storm toward the path. "Um, we should really get Julian back inside. Nancy was, like, really adamant that I not bring him out."
I sidestep her.
"Soon. He's doing fine."
Something like hope burns beneath my rib cage as I stalk down the familiar trail, remembering the thousand times I walked it as a teenager. Almost always with Sev and Eli on either side of me.
It's a dangerous feeling—hope. It makes you soft. Makes you believe things might actually work out.
I should know better by now.
Even in the dark, I see the shape of the Ashford house through the sparse fall trees after a minute. The tall, weathered brick chimneys. The arch of the grand front face of the house.
I wish I were reentering the house I had come to know as my home, under any other circumstances, with my brothers beside me.
How many times did I imagine coming back here with them—with the legacy Ambrose stole from us—to return it to its rightful place with Julian?
Countless times.
I even imagined bringing Aurora here someday. Showing her where we became men. Where Florence taught me that family isn't about blood but about choice.
I wish Florence were here to meet her. To see how she raised three boys into men capable of loving someone the way she and Julian loved each other.
But Florence is gone.
Aurora might be, too.
And I don't know how to survive losing both of them.
I flinch, squeezing the little piece of confetti tightly in my fist.
We're going to get her back.
We are.
Because I could never fucking live with myself if we don't.
This was all my idea. My fucking plan.
Eli and Sev haven't said as much, but I know they blame me, too.
Something brushes against my senses like a phantom brush of fingertips down my spine, and I stop, turning to squint into the trees.
Slowly, I pull my weapon from its holster and listen.
What the fuck is that?
It's not a sound.
It's like…
Way down the path, I hear Ellie bark, and then she comes racing down like a bat out of hell.
What the fuck?