28. No more miss perfect – Aurora
28
NO MORE MISS PERFECT
AURORA
I follow Elijah’s movements as he leads me through the stopped cars in traffic toward the sidewalk, keeping low in an attempt to remain unseen.
“Seven, stay low,” he hisses at Seven ahead of us, who doesn’t seem at all concerned about trying to lose our tails.
Every step I take carries me farther from the dark-suited men in pursuit of us, but it also feels viscerally like another step I’m taking away from myself. Into this hellscape—or is it dreamland?—these guys have dragged me into. If I’d had any idea that this was where accepting the cleaning job and signing that NDA would lead, would I have done it?
There’s a war of opposing thoughts racing through my head, and I have no idea which side is right. They all blend into a sea of gray areas and is wrong really wrong if it feels this right?
My senses sharpen as we race into an alleyway off the main road, and alarm bells ring in my mind.
“Shouldn’t we stay where there are lots of people?” I whisper-shout to Seven as he leads us deeper, to where the alleyway narrows and forks off in two directions.
“No.” He looks up and down each way, and his hesitance makes me sharply aware of every passing second in a way that has me vibrating on my feet and clenching Elijah’s hand tighter.
He winces, and I let go as if burned, remembering his injury. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he says in a rush, reaching out to me with his other hand instead.
Seven squints down the alley to the right. I see the moment some recognition sparks in his mind and hear the music maybe just a second later than he does. It’s a bar. Or maybe a club.
He leads us right to the painted back exit. The red tint is scratched and chipped in places, scrawled over in permanent marker and graffiti. He pulls the handle, and it sticks.
Locked. Fuck .
“Fuck,” Seven echoes my thoughts, spinning in a circle to see another route out of here, but this alley dead-ends and there’s no guarantee there’s a better way out if we turn around. Bouncing on his feet, Elijah squeezes past him, setting the shopping bag down as he goes to his knees on the asphalt.
He pulls a small kit from his jacket pocket and opens it to pull out two long silver pins. I smirk. It’s been a minute, but I had pins that looked a lot like that once. I’d almost forgotten. The same pervy foster dad who liked to have me on his lap in the armchair in the living room also liked to keep a key lock on my bedroom door. That lock rarely opened after I took the butcher knife to his chair, so I had to learn to open it myself.
The hairpins were barely strong enough for the job, but I made them work. If I’d had the shining silver picks Elijah has, it would have made things a whole lot easier.
“Hurry,” Seven says, and his husky, dangerous tone rattles down my spine in a way that makes me shiver. “If they saw us come down here, they’ll be on us in minutes and I don’t like this alleyway for a fight.”
He raises his gun, readying himself in case the men pursuing us come around the corner.
“Damn it,” Elijah curses through gritted teeth. I notice how his hand is shaking, how he pauses to stretch it out, and how his breaths are coming heavy.
“Let me.” I bend to my knees next to him, ruining the satin dress as it scrapes against the rough, dirty asphalt.
His brows come together, and he hesitates for only a second before releasing the pins still dangling from the lock and shifting out of the way.
“What is she doing?” Seven asks roughly.
“Do you want to get in or not?”
I take one steadying breath and then pick up the pins. The lock isn’t exactly like the one I practiced on all those years ago, but it’s like riding a bike. I fumble the latch once, twice, but the third time comes with a satisfying click and I pull the pins free, pressing down on the handle. The door swings in, and a waft of warmer air gushes out with the music.
Seven looks me up and down appreciatively, biting his lower lip in a way that makes my cheeks heat. “Fuck, that was hot.”
Elijah tucks the pins back in his kit with shaky fingers and picks up the bag, a muscle in his jaw ticking. I’m about to tell him it was harder than a normal lock when I catch sight of the first suited man coming around the corner of the alley not more than twenty feet away.
“Move!” I shout, dragging Elijah into the dim hall on the other side of the door. Seven extends his arm, firing two shots as if the weapon is an extension of his flesh. But then his arm jerks back, and his normally aloof expression twists with cold rage. My ears ring as he follows us inside and shuts the door behind himself, locking it just as fists pound on the other side.
“Got one,” he says breathlessly, sagging for a moment’s rest against the door as it shakes against him from the assault on the other side.
“You’ve been shot.”
It isn’t a question, but still, my eyes race over him to see if it’s true.
There’s a hole in his jacket. Almost unconsciously, I reach out, and the tips of my fingers find blood on the leather.
“Motherfucker put a hole in my jacket.”
“Shit, Seven, how bad is it?” Elijah demands, dropping the bag to pull Seven’s jacket back and reveal the wound. He wrenches the collar down, looking at the back of his shoulder. “It went through.”
“Great, so there are two fucking holes in my jacket. I wish I could kill him twice,” Seven grits through his teeth, and I barely hear him over the thump of the music. He jerks his shoulder from Elijah’s grip, giving him a serious look. “It’s fine. I’m fine. We need to go. There were more of them.”
The banging has stopped, which means they must be looking for another way inside.
I raise my voice to be heard as the song from the bar down the hall crescendos. “How many more?”
“Five. Well, four now.”
The casual murder admission takes longer than it should to sink in, and all I can think is, that’s one less person chasing us, and I’m glad.
Fear and anticipation clash in a battle of wills as my focus sharpens. Every breath feels wasted without action.
Seven tugs a short, hooked blade from his waistband and grips it in his free fist, using it to gesture at the hallway ahead. “We need to move. They might try to go around.”
“Aurora should stay,” Elijah says, and I can’t stop the shock from parting my lips as I look at him, dumbfounded.
“What do you mean I should stay?”
“I don’t think they got a good look at you,” he says. “You can blend in with the other people in the bar. They want us . They don’t care about you.” He shifts his stare to Seven. “We can lead them away from her.”
A muscle in Seven’s jaw flexes and I scoff.
“Fuck that. You are not leaving me alone in Paris.”
Quickly, I bend to tear the lower part of my dress away. It takes some doing, but the satisfying rip of the fabric comes after the second attempt. “Get your arm out.”
Seven does as I ask, cursing to himself as he tugs his arm free of the sleeve of his jacket and I wad up one end of the strip of satin and press it tight to the wound, winding the rest around and under his arm twice before tucking the other end through the bind and tying a knot. Holding it in place, I lean in to pull the knot tight with my teeth.
“Can you still use that?” I ask him, pointing at the gun.
His brows rise. “Why? Can you?”
“I can.”
He looks doubtful and this is just wasting more time.
“My adoptive dad is a collector. We went to the range every Saturday before I moved out.”
He and Elijah share a look.
“Have you ever used one to kill a man?” Seven asks.
“No.”
“Think you could?”
There’s no time to think. “If I had to.”
He flips the gun into my waiting palm. “Good. Because you might have to.”
It feels like a bomb in my hands, and I blow out a breath as I check the clip, check that the safety is on, and conceal the weapon inside the lapel of Elijah’s overcoat, silently thanking Chris for dragging me to the range with him every goddamned Saturday even when I didn’t want to go.
He’d hate that I might break his number one rule tonight.
It’s his calm voice in my head as I spin on my heel and press farther into the building, toward the swaying red lights, the drone of conversation, and the swell of the loud music.
Never point your weapon at someone, Aurora. We’re connoisseurs, not killers. Remember that.
I was always disappointing him. So this would just be the cherry on top of the disappointment pie.
“Sorry, Chris,” I whisper to myself, something like freshly poured resolve solidifying in my veins, bringing with it a rush of confidence as I leave my self-restraint at the door. “I’m done playing perfect.”