Chapter 27
ALONZO
I know she’s there, but I try to keep my frustration from making me do something stupid.
I can feel her eyes on me. Like all the times she watched me in our room at Nico’s, or when she thought I didn’t notice.
It’s a different feeling to know the woman who’s burrowed under your skin is looking at you instead of an enemy.
A sizzle of electricity across my skin, neck prickling, and excitement burning in my gut. I used to think it was anger, distrust, but then I took my head out of my ass.
Mostly. After it was too late. Now I want to fix it, and she’s being difficult. I get it, she wants me to pay, and at this point, I’m willing to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness, but I can’t do that if she won’t fucking talk to me.
“Rori.” I sigh. “I want to talk to you. We need to move past this. I can’t let this all go to shit and you not forgive me.”
“All I hear is you, you, you, Alonzo,” she says. I whirl around, but I see nothing. No movement, not even the wind blowing. I look up into the trees, but only see shadows. “Then again, what should I expect? Everything has always been about you, hasn’t it?”
Wait, how did her voice come from behind me so fast? I spin, but again, nothing. How the hell is she doing that? Unease filters through my frustration. I ignore it, instead focusing on what she said.
“You know I don’t mean it like that.”
“There’s that, I, again.” She gives a soft tsk, once again in a different position. I’m going to get dizzy if she keeps moving like that. “You just can’t help yourself, can you, Alonzo?”
A brush of something moves across my back, and I whirl, every sense on alert. I catch a flash of something moving to my left. I curse when I realize it’s just a rabbit running, but it gives me a direction to look.
“I…fuck.” Damn her and her mind games. This is a waste of time. “Aurora, I’m going to tan your ass the minute I catch you. I’ve apologized. Do you want me to crawl? Beg? Tattoo it on my forehead? I’ll do whatever you want, but we need to have this out.”
“Is that right? You’re willing to do all of that? You don’t love me, Alonzo. You barely tolerated me, remember? Seems a bit extreme.” A crash through the forest ahead of me has me rushing toward it, but movement from the corner of my eye stops me.
“If that’s what it takes for you to see that I want you, then yes, I’ll do it.
” And I’ve never meant anything more. “All that shit that happened before? It was a mistake. I never should have treated you that way. I should have told you the truth that it scared the shit out of me that you got under my skin so quickly.”
A dry laugh above my head, and another movement to my left. How the fuck is she doing that? It doesn’t sound like a rock or anything falling. Is she just hopping through the trees?
“So this is your way of gaining absolution for your sins? If you want a clear soul, find a priest, Cattaneo. A few Hail Marys and you’ll be all set.” I turn in a circle, trying to pinpoint where her voice is coming from this time, but the echo in the clearing isn’t helping.
I’m getting dizzy with all this turning.
I’m in the middle of the clearing now, and done with this game.
Is she trying to prove something? “I don’t need a fucking priest. I need you.
Do you really think that if I didn’t want you, didn’t care for you, that I would put myself in the middle of this bullshit?
That I’d be fighting so hard to talk to you?
That I let that…that I let them drop me in the middle of all of this?
I could be home with my family, heading home to my own fucking bed.
But I followed you. I came after you because I refused to let this happen to you. ”
“Seriously, all this I bullshit is getting annoying, Alonzo.” I don’t bother looking at the sound.
At least she’s talking to me. “I told you to stay the fuck home, and I’m not rehashing that again.
Do you want to know that you hurt me? Fine, you hurt me, but none of that matters. I don’t do second chances, Alonzo.”
“Technically, we weren’t ever together, so I think this is our first chance.”
Silence, and then something hard hits me in the back, sending me sprawling. I’m rolling fast, just in time to see Hades darting away, rushing into the brush once more. Guess I know how so many different noises are happening. I get to my feet, brushing myself off.
“Our first chance? I fell for you, you big-footed wart face,” she snaps, the first cracks in her armor showing.
I still can’t see her, but anger means making mistakes.
“And you strung me along. All because you wanted to find out what I was doing and who I was talking to. Then you realized I might be working with you until you found out who I knew. You weren’t long in correcting my assumptions. ”
I wince. Damn it, she’s right. I did do all that. “I’m sorry, Aurora. I really am. I was… no, I am an asshole, but I want to fix it. I want to make things right.”
“Because you think you’re going to die, or that I am, and you want to have one less sin staining your soul in hell?
” I turn now when I hear another noise directly behind me, and I let out a grunt of pain when I find Hades there again, and his big paws come up and slam me in the junk, making me fall.
What is the dog’s obsession with my nuts?
I wheeze, barely managing to breathe through the pain, and lift my head when I sense someone above me. I watch with wide eyes as a figure emerges from the shadows of the trees, in all black. Only the skin around her eyes shows, but they’re not the emerald green of Rori. Who the fuck is that?
I reach for my gun, cursing when I remember that Oleg stripped them from us when we got here. Fuck.
I freeze when the figure speaks. Wait, that’s Rori? A shiver of fear slithers down my spine, my aching balls forgotten. Nothing about her is recognizable, not even the way she moves. Seeing her this way, it’s a mindfuck all of its own.
“I…”
I can’t see her mouth, but from the slight crinkle of her eyes, I think she’s smiling. But it’s not a kind or funny smile. The dark eyes looking at me are cold, hard, and full of a danger that has me desperately wishing for any kind of weapon. I wouldn’t put it past her to try to kill me right now.
“If that’s what you’re looking for, Alonzo, you’re sorely mistaken.
You won’t get it from me. I’ve already told you I’ll forgive you for what you said, but that’s where my forgiveness ends.
” She crouches in front of me. Close enough, I can grab her, but I don’t move.
I have no idea where Hades is, and I don’t need death staring me in the face and waiting to get me from the back too in the form of sharp teeth and strong jaws.
“You seem to think that this is temporary, Alonzo. That I’m going to go back to being the woman you supposedly fell for. That woman is dead.”
“No, she isn’t.” I stare at her, needing her to believe me. Needing her to realize how wrong she is. “That’s what I want you to fucking understand, Aurora. That part of you, that’s not an act. That’s the real you. I don’t know why you can’t see that.”
“It’s you that doesn’t see, Alonzo.” She gets back to her feet.
“Aurora O’Brien was the woman I wanted to be.
The one I dreamed of being as a kid, and when I had the chance to play her, I took it.
I created a life that was exactly what I hoped it would be.
But underneath all of that is this. You can’t be born in the dark and go fully into the light.
The darkness will always lurk underneath.
This time, it’s my choice to embrace it and use it to my advantage. ”
I push to my feet, wincing at the sharp pang between my legs. “Fine, you want to say that you were acting. You think you were acting when you became friends with Sienna?”
Am I an asshole for using her best friend against her? Probably. Do I care? No fucking way. Whatever I have to do or use to get her to see my point, I will.
“My friendship with Sienna has nothing to do with anything.”
“Bullshit. It has everything to do with it, Rori. The two of you are best friends, and you were yourself with her. You wouldn’t allow yourself to be anything else.
Maybe you didn’t tell her everything, but she was your best friend.
Even if you let down your walls a little bit with me, you let them fall almost all the way with her. ”
Am I jealous of that? Fuck yes, even if it is irrational.
“Alonzo, if you think you’re going to guilt me into whatever it is you want, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I’m not trying to guilt you into anything, Aurora.
You know I’m right and I can’t figure out why you want to keep fighting with me.
Fine, maybe parts of you were acting, but this, this isn’t you.
Not completely. And you letting them brainwash you into thinking that you have to be anything other than what you actually want to be is only doing yourself a disservice. ”
No reaction. “No one is brainwashing me, Alonzo, and I’m getting fucking tired of you acting like you know anything at all about me.
I let you see the things I wanted about myself, and you tossed them back in my face.
So I’m not going to pretend anymore. This is me.
The—What did you call it? The assassin ninja spy?
That is exactly who I am. Who I was born to be.
Do you really think I haven’t spent years honing my skills, even without being around the Bratva or my father?
You don’t just unlearn things. It served me well hunting down bounties.
It served me equally well in training Hades and staying out of any law enforcement radar.