43. Collateral damage – Elijah
43
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
ELIJAH
“W hat do you mean, ‘no’?” Atticus asks, cocking his head at me.
I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, but it bears repeating if he really can’t get it through his head. “No. We aren’t throwing her to the wolves.”
“That’s not what I’m proposing here. I’m saying we?—”
“That’s exactly what you’re proposing!”
“Eli…” Aurora’s voice is soft and calm next to me. It should be anything but.
She has no idea what Atticus is trying to sign her up for.
I imagine it, imagine her in the same room as Ambrose, and it makes me fucking sick to my stomach. And now in my head it’s her in that room. The one where I was trapped for five hundred seventy-two days. No windows save for a massive skylight overhead. Forced to turn something she once loved into something she’ll grow to loathe with every fiber of her being. Twisting her into a version of herself she won’t recognize anymore when she looks in the mirror.
She hasn’t even seen my scars yet. All the angry lines Ambrose gouged into my back when I tried to refuse him. He might not have held the whip, but he was the one who gave the order.
Again. Again. Again.
“You don’t know what you’d be risking,” I tell her, and the words come out a lot harsher than I mean them to. “You have no idea what that man is capable of. I won’t put you in his path, Angel. No fucking way.”
“I agree with Eli,” Seven says like he’s casting a vote. Making it final. Two against one.
Atticus sucks his teeth as he gathers up all the documents and stacks them into a neat pile. “With respect, Eli, it isn’t up to you.”
His eyes flick to Aurora, and I don’t like what I see pass between them. There’s some sort of understanding there that shouldn’t be. Did he fucking talk to her about this behind our backs? Grease the gears? What did he say to try to convince her?
I turn to face Aurora head-on, trying to appeal to her since it’s clear Atticus will not be reasoned with. “I don’t know what he said to you, but I promise you it won’t be safe. If he were to find out that you aren’t who you’re trying to say you are…”
I don’t finish the thought, mostly because I don’t want to give voice to the possibility in case the universe decides to take it and run with it. I just pray she gets the point.
Aurora chews the inside of her cheek, casting furtive glances at Atticus from the corner of her eye. “If Ambrose has been looking for his family all this time, do you really think he’d do anything to hurt them? And if Atticus gets the DNA result to say we’re a match—if Ambrose really thinks I’m the daughter he lost—wouldn’t he be happy? In my experience, dangerous men are only dangerous when they’re un happy.”
No . She’s not hearing me. “Ambrose was like family to my father. To us. And he didn’t hesitate to take everything from us the second our guards were down. This is not a man you can play. He plays you .”
I turn my attention back to Atticus again. “We can find another way.”
He rolls a reply around in his mouth like it tastes sour and decides to nod instead of spit it out. Smart choice.
“What are you thinking?” Seven asks, and I think he’s talking to Atticus, but I find him looking at Aurora. “I don’t want to speak for you. You’ve had enough of that shit.”
She’s surprised at this, and her expression turns guarded. Uncertain. “I—I don’t know. I think it could work.”
“But you don’t want to do it?” Seven pushes hopefully.
“I didn’t say that.”
Atticus shuts the file. “She doesn’t have to decide right this second.”
My back is hot, and my palms grow clammy where they grip onto Aurora’s. I let her go to wipe them on my pants, feeling a nauseating vibration begin deep in the pit of my stomach, rattling my defenses. Fighting for release. Making me shudder.
“But it is her decision whether she wants to help. It’s not mine. Not yours. Not Sev’s. Hers. ”
I close my eyes and breathe through my nose, flinching when Aurora places her hand on my back. “Don’t you want to get your family’s collection back? Get vengeance for what he did to you?”
God, it’s like she’s already decided. We just haven’t told her enough. She doesn’t know the whole story. She hasn’t seen the extent of his cruelty. Maybe if I show her, she won’t be so willing to rush right into his grasp.
I lift the edge of my shirt up to reveal my back, twisting away from her so she’ll see. In my periphery, Atticus drops his head. He could never look at it. Seven was the one who had to help me apply the salve to try to lessen the scarring. The one time Atticus tried, he had to excuse himself to throw up.
It’s not fucking pretty.
“Oh my god.” Aurora’s voice is watery. Quivering. I don’t dare look at her face.
“It’s all I’ve wanted since the day he took it.” I struggle to keep my tone even as I answer her question. “But this is what Ambrose’s handiwork looked like when I inconvenienced him by delaying forgeries. Imagine what it would look like if he were truly angry?”
His wrath would be without end. He’d kill her. I know he would. Especially if he found out we were the ones who planted her there. No one else should become the collateral damage of my father’s mistake. There’s been enough of that already.
I cringe as Aurora’s fingertips brush the scars across my shoulder blades, hating the sound of her soft hiccup and sniffle. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Elijah.”
I jerk my shirt down and turn around. “Don’t be sorry,” I tell her forcefully, reaching up to rub the tears from beneath her eyes, holding her face between my palms. “I won’t tell you what to do, but I need you to consider the risk. What Ambrose would do to you would be far worse than anything he did to me if this were to go sideways.”
Her chin quivers as she nods and pushes past my hands to wrap me in a fierce hug that makes my chest crack open and bleed . Her hands twist into the fabric at the back of my shirt as she clings to me and wipes her tears on my shoulder.
I drop my face into her hair, breathing her in. Sighing. “Take some time. Think about it.”
Past her shoulder, I glare at Atticus. He never should have asked her to do this.
“I’m sorry, E,” he says with a shrug, as if he’s read my mind. “I had to try.”