19. Theo
Theo
This Hurts Worse
F or hours after my meeting with the Bishops, I push my hands into my hair and tug as I pace my hotel room. I need to calm down. I need to tear these fingers of anxiety from my stomach, and rid my body of something I never realized would clutch on after meeting them.
“I will not go to that wedding.” I shake my head, and pass Libby for the millionth time while she sits on the end of my bed. “Absolutely not. No chance in hell am I going to that shit.”
“Okay.”
“I will not go, Elizabeth! I will not be their friend.”
Libby’s lips creep up into a small grin. “I said okay.”
“I said no! Fuck.” I stop on the spot for a mere second, then I rush into the walk-in closet and yank my suitcase from the storage section on the top shelf.
“It’s time for me to leave.” I tear my clothes from the drawers.
Jeans. Shirts. Laptops. Why do I have so many laptops ?
I look up as I toss things into the bag and a shadow fills the doorway. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re leaving?” Lib’s voice gives a tiny crack that barely registers in my busy brain. She was smiling. But now she’s not… “You’re going back home?”
“Yep. I came here for a reason, and that reason was completely nullified today. So now I go home.”
“But what about…” She leans against the doorjamb and draws a deep breath. “That’s it? There’s nothing else keeping you here?”
I shake my head and dump my sweaters on top of the pile.
I packed with precision when I left my apartment, but now I toss things in without a single care for where they go.
“Nope. I have a company to run. My email inbox is overflowing. My assistant can’t do her job without me there.
She can do it for a little while, but it’s been two weeks, Lib.
It’s time for me to go home. A wedding between people I don’t know isn’t reason enough to stay here. ”
“Right.” Libby wears the jeans and shirt she changed into this morning.
The very same jeans I took down and unfolded a week ago.
They’re like a second skin and frame her perfect body, and right now, one leg folds over the other in my peripherals as I close the lid on my case and try to zip it up.
“I guess it’s done then, huh? You came here for the Bishops.
You met them, you reached a kind of agreement, and now you’re done. ”
“Right.” I tear the zipper around my case until it’s closed, then I stand and blow through the door and toss it to the bed where she was sitting only a moment ago.
“I don’t wanna stay here and play make believe with these guys.
Sophia wants to force something that’s not real.
She wants a new, powerful ally in Griffin, but she calls it something else. She calls it–”
“Brotherhood?” Lib presses.
“It’s a lie. The guys have it right; blood doesn’t make us family, and she won’t find her ally in me.”
I cross the room and stop at the desk I’ve been using to keep up with my work while away.
I tear charger cables from the power sockets in the wall.
I fold a Griffin Industries wireless keyboard that weighs a mere fifty grams. It’s the most powerful and intuitive keyboard on the market, so sensitive that it almost reads your thoughts and types them for you.
Retailing at only four-hundred and ninety-nine dollars, they come with a lifetime replacement warranty.
Yes, Griffin Industries expects you to pay up to prove your loyalty, but in return, we guarantee a product that will never stop working.
I toss the expensive contraption into my laptop bag, and send the mouse right behind. Libby slowly wanders into the room behind me. Her silence should worry me, but my mind refuses to focus on anything other than a Bishop wedding and women who think bridges can be built so quickly.
“I’m going to have Olly drive me to the airport.”
“No time to waste, huh?”
Libby’s voice trembles, and when I turn, I find her fussing with a shirt I’ve caught in the zipper in my haste. She slowly peels the zip back with care not to ruin my shirt, then she tucks it in and refastens the closure.
“No time to waste. I have meetings to attend on Monday, so…” I shrug and tear my laptop bag closed, then I take my cell out of my pocket and dial. “It’s time to head out,” I say as soon as Olly answers. “Pack up and get ready to leave in an hour.”
“An hour,” he asks, only for the same question to echo from Lib’s mouth.
“An hour?”
“Yeah.” A flash of red catches my eyes. My sweater.
The dinosaurs that mean so much to both people in this room.
I move across the luxuriously carpeted floor with Olly’s voice pulsing in my ear.
He speaks, but he goes ignored as I pick the old material up and hold it in my hand.
The last time I owned this sweater, my hand was much smaller.
The red was redder, the dinosaurs brighter.
The zipper was functional, and the hem wasn’t frayed.
This was my most beloved possession besides my pencils.
And now it’s nothing more than worn fabric.
Libby’s breath catches when I bring the sweater up to my face. I draw in a long breath as though to bring back the boy I once was. To trade Theo for Gunner. If my mom and I never went to that club that day, would she still be alive? Would I trade Griffin Industries to be that child again?
I would probably always be broke.
Griffin was borne from desperation and hunger, so if I had never known a life living in alleyways, would I have built my empire?
I bring the sweater away from my face, and when I open my eyes, I catch sight of Libby’s watery eyes watching me.
I cross the room in four easy strides, and press the sweater to her chest until she accepts it with a soft sob.
She cradles it to her breastbone like she would a child, and drops down onto the edge of my bed to bury her face in her hands.
We have shit to take care of, and we don’t have a lot of time.
“Boss?” Olly’s voice finally breaks through. “You there?”
“Yeah. I’ll call Annaliese and have her book flights now. You have the car, so drive me to the airport, then you can continue up and drive the rest of the way home.”
“Yes sir. Anything else you need before we leave town?”
“Nothing.”
The Bishops. The Frankston girl. It’s all been resolved.
It doesn’t feel resolved, but I’m not going to stay here and execute people just because. The very thing that has consumed my every thought for so long has simply been… nullified.
“There’s nothing left to do. It’s time to go back to work. Get your shit ready, I wanna head out.”
“Sir. Do you wanna know what I found out about Jericho?”
My heart gives a heavy bump that I swear must be audible, because Libby’s head comes up and her eyes – one still swollen – latch onto mine.
My answer should be no. I should pretend this town and the people in it don’t exist, but a habit I’ve held onto for so long is hard to break. “Sure, what did you find out?”
I can almost hear the way he shrugs his shoulders. “I didn’t get much. I figure it’s a password for something. A safe word. Something that doesn’t mean anything to anyone but them. When did you hear it? In what context?”
“Someone said it to someone else,” I murmur. “To calm that other person.”
“Mm.” Olly moves around the room right next to mine and takes my orders literally. He’s packing his things. “Right, that’s kinda where I’m at too. It’s a private word, a safe word. But I don’t think it’s important to us.”
“So basically, you learned nothing?”
He chuckles. “Affirmative. I tried, boss. I really did. But all I’ve got are assumptions. I’ll keep looking. I have feelers out, so…”
“Okay.” I frown when Lib buries her face in the sweater a second time.
I don’t understand her mood; she was smiling only minutes ago.
She was high on adrenaline after our meet, but now it’s as though she hardly has the strength to sit up tall.
“I have to go. Pack up, meet me at Libby’s apartment in an hour. ”
“Yes sir.” He hangs up without another word, and makes Libby jump when his heavy fist thuds against the wall that joins our rooms.
“An hour.” Lib wrings my sweater between her hands and holds on so tight that her knuckles turn white. “You’re packing up and leaving in an hour, and that’s all there is to say about that?”
“There’s nothing else to say. There’s just…
” I lift my hands and suffer from my first ever bout of…
What next ? I’ve spent my whole existence fighting for the next thing.
To help my mom make ends meet. To help myself survive in the streets with nothing but a pencil and brains.
To build a business, to run it and make it thrive, then to learn everything there is to learn about the Bishop brothers until I was certain I would take them out.
But now there’s nothing.
“I don’t know what else to do here, Libby. There’s literally nothing left. If I stay, I might forget my promise to walk away. If I see them in the street, I might forget the white flag I tossed down on the way out of their building.”
“But…”
I stop in front of her when her shoulders bounce and she refuses to show me her eyes. Her back is bowed, her shoulders tight. Kneeling down, I hate the way my heart races at the thought of her hurting. “What’s the matter?”
“You won’t even consider staying?”
Her request confuses me and brings my brows tight. “Why would I stay? What’s here for me?”
Dirty green eyes – dirty, like the rainforest on a stormy day – come up to flicker between mine. They sparkle with hurt. With pain. With deceit. “What’s here?” she questions on a whisper. “You want to know what could possibly keep you here?”
She breaks eye contact when I nod, and lets her head drop with a gentle side-to-side shake.
“Libby?” I bring my hand under her chin. “I don’t know how to solve riddles like these. Say what you want to say.”