43. Chapter 43
Rory
As soon as the door closed behind Charlotte, I turned into her body. She caught me just as my knees collapsed and I buried my face in her chest, sobbing. I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe, gasping for breaths and soaking her shirt with tears, drool and snot.
She held me tight and dragged me over to the bed, where she laid down next to me and wrapped around me like an octopus, holding me tight with her arms and legs. She ran her hand over my hair, making comforting noises.
When minutes passed and my breathing hadn’t calmed any, she began to hum something. At first, I wasn’t sure what it was, until she reached the chorus and I realized she was humming the song Cal and I had danced to at our wedding. I sobbed and squeezed her tighter, listening as she hummed the song twice over before I was finally able to calm myself.
She sat up, pulling me with her and then led me to the bathroom. She went about applying light makeup, just enough to hide the face that I’d just cried harder than I’d ever cried in my life.
She helped me dress in a pair of soft, worn jeans, my favorite sweatshirt and my Converse. Once I was done, she pulled a random shirt off a hanger and tugged it over the tear stained one, then knelt in front of me, gripping my biceps.
“You can do this, Aurora. You’re the strongest person I know. You are going to go down there, find out what Elio knows, and go get your husband back.” She gave me a tiny little shake.
I took a deep breath and leaned into her, drawing strength from her tight hug. “Okay, let’s do this.”
We made our way back down to the office, all my men following me, as if a threat lurked around every corner. It was almost laughable, the idea of being in danger in my own home.
Entering the office, I lifted my chin, determination settling in my bones. I would do this. I would get my husband back and I would not rest until Fern and Hajek were rotting in cells beside Elio.
The men headed to the side of the room. Mikhail pulled on a bookshelf and it opened, revealing a small room, lined with shelves of weapons. I followed Connor into the room, looking around.
The guns made me uneasy, but the idea of facing a very pissed off Elio without a weapon made me even more so. I searched the shelves for the smallest gun I could find and then lifted it, testing its weight in my hand.
“What are you doing?” Connor asked, glancing at Carson who was shoving guns into the holsters around his shoulders. Carson, Fynn and Mikhail all looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I raised a challenging eyebrow. “If you think for one second that I’m going to sit here and wait for you to bring my husband back to me, you don’t fucking know me at all.”
Finn chuckled. “Of course, we figured you’d be coming with us, but why do you have a-”
“No!” a loud voice barked from the bookshelf doorway.
I turned. “Excuse me?” I asked Marco, my raised eyebrow inching up further. “What did you just say to me?”
“I was talking to him,” he said, pointing at Fynn. “What do you mean, she’s coming with? Have you lost your mind? She’s a woman! And pregnant!”
I raised the gun and pointed it at his crooked nose. I felt the twins and Fynn move to my back. “I am not the same, beaten girl you used to strap down to a pool table, Marco. If you even think about getting in my way, I will move you on my own.”
He glared at the gun in my hands, not an ounce of fear in his eyes. “I will not allow it!” he ground out, his teeth clenched tightly.
“I didn’t ask for your permission. With Cal gone, you report to me. You will do as I say, you will help me get my husband back, and you will do it without complaint, or you will be of no further use in any of our businesses.”
His nostrils flared and his hands clenched so tightly his arms shook and tendons stood out. “I will get Cal back, but I will not allow my daughter, my pregnant daughter, to walk into a fucking gun fight!”
My fingers went numb and the gun dropped to my side. White noise filled my brain and it took me a moment to find my voice. When I did, it cracked unsteadily. “What? What did you say?”
He licked his lips. “Your mother and I- we were childhood sweethearts. I couldn’t- I was supposed to marry another woman, but I kept putting it off, pushing the arrangement out. When Alessia fell pregnant, I hid her. I protected you both as best I could, but Elio found her. He didn’t know she was mine, and he claimed her. She was- I did everything I could to stop it, but he just-”
He sighed heavily. “I couldn’t protect you without Elio guessing at why I was so against his marriage to Alessia, or why I always tried to intervene in your punishments. I was working with Cal and I had to make sure Elio didn’t know anything was amiss. I did the best I could, Rory. I couldn’t protect you then, but I will damn sure do it now.”
I blinked at him stupidly. “We’ll talk about this later,” I eventually forced out, my brow furrowed. “Right now, my men and Mikhail and his men are going to escort me down to speak with Elio. You can- I don’t know, do something useful, but I don’t want to see you right now. Stay with Nate and…plan or something.”
I left the room and asked Mikhail to accompany me to the basement. Walking down the dimly lit staircase with an army of men at my back, the twins in front of me, I was still nervous, knowing what this man’s anger felt like.
When I finally saw him, I almost didn’t recognize him. In my mind, Elio had always been a big, bad monster. Right now, he was just an unkempt man, huddled on a cot in a cell.
When we approached the bars, he looked up, his dull eyes meeting mine.
“What do you want, Aurora?” His voice was resigned, dejected, as his head fell back against the wall, his gaze returning to the wall opposite him.
“I want to know where your daughter took my husband and why she’s working with Hajek.”
His eyes flashed back to me, his expression a mix of worry and fear. “What do you mean?”
“Why would Fern have kidnapped my husband? What would her motive be?” I made sure to keep my voice calm, an aura of power surrounding me, even though my insides trembled and my chest quaked with nerves.
“Not even Fern is that stupid, Aurora, and she’d never work with Hajek. She isn’t aware of any affiliation I had with him.”
“What affiliation did you have with him?”
He sighed, long and loud, his heavy stomach heaving with the motion. “A marriage contract.”
My eyebrows disappeared behind my bangs as I thought of the contract I’d seen in his desk. “You were going to allow Fern to marry that monster?”
He scoffed. “Never,” he said vehemently. “I…bought, I guess is a good term. I bought a wife from him.”
Disgusted, my upper lip curled. “You bought a woman? Do you have any morals, Elio?”
He huffed a laugh and closed his eyes, apparently trying to tune me out.
I studied him for a moment, my head cocked to the side. “You killed her, didn’t you?”
“Alessia?” he questioned, not even pretending that he didn’t know what I was asking. He didn’t wait for me to confirm before continuing. “Yeah, I did. That bitch was sleeping with Marco and thought I didn’t know about it.”
“So why didn’t you kill Marco, too?”
He looked genuinely confused at that. “Why would I? A man wants what a man wants.”
“So it’s okay that he was sleeping with her, but it’s not okay that she was sleeping with him?”
“I wasn’t married to him. I don’t care who he fucks. I wouldn’t have cared, if they hadn’t been caught. I had to kill her or my men would have thought I was weak, allowing my wife to whore herself out like that.”
I breathed heavily, white-knuckling my self control and refusing to give him the rise he was fishing for. “From what I hear, she was his first and you stole her.”
He laughed at that. “She was never his. He didn’t even know who she was until I brought her to the house after the wedding.”
“That’s not Marco’s story.” I shook my head and he looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “If Marco is telling the truth, he’s my father.”
His face colored, anger turning it that purple color that always scared me most. I shifted on my feet and felt the twins move in closer, sensing my unease. Their nearness settled my nerves slightly.
“Answer my question, Elio. Why would Fern kidnap Cal, and why is she working with Hajek?”
“I don’t know why she’d be working with Hajek, but I imagine she took Cal because she’s angry that I killed Carlo. If he hadn’t told me about their affair, I never would have known about it. When I found out, I killed him for dishonoring her. Any chance of a good marriage was lost to her the moment he outed them.”
I rolled my eyes. “For a man sitting in a cell, you sure were power hungry.” He snorted, as if he found my disdain amusing. “Who did you buy from Hajek?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t, really. He was just…the broker, if you will. But it doesn’t matter now. Her father will never go through with the marriage. Not after my trial with the Concordia.”
My eyes narrowed. “Her father was the one selling her?”
“It’s amazing, what men will do for money and power.”
“It’s disgusting, is what you mean.” He shrugged again and just stared at me, not saying anything in return. I stared back, something I never would have done before marrying Cal. His teeth ground together at the perceived disrespect. I held his stare until my phone pinged.
I pulled it out and looked at the texts from Nate. The warehouse was surrounded by Hajek’s men and going in would be a death trap. We needed to come up with a distraction before going in for Cal. I ground my teeth, not liking the sinking feeling in my stomach.
“So, you’re of no use to me then? You know nothing?”
“What are you going to do, kill me?” He smirked. “Your husband has promised me safety until the trial.”
I smiled at him sweetly before lowering my chin and baring my teeth. “Yeah, he did. But that was before your daughter kidnapped him and I made no such promises. But, if you can give me something useful to get Cal back with minimal harm or death to my men, I will spare your life. I might even bring Fern to you instead of wrapping my hands around her fucking neck and strangling her myself.”
He stared at me through narrowed eyes, trying to gauge if I was bluffing or not. Whatever he saw on my face must have assured him I wasn’t lying about killing Fern, because his face went from purple and scowling to pale and pinched.
“Let me make a call. If I can get Hajek to meet with the father of the woman I intended to marry, it might give you enough of a window to get in.”
“If you are lying to me, if you are trying to trick us, I swear to God I will make you watch as she dies. Do you understand me?”
He swallowed heavily. “Aurora, you lived in my house for sixteen years. You know the man I am, and you know that there is very little in the world I care about, with Fern being at the very top of that list.”
“Good.” I held his gaze a moment longer, before turning to Finn. “Let him make his phone call. Stay with him and if he so much as blinks wrong, shoot him between the eyes.”
Finn smiled. “Of course, ma’am.”
“Ugh,” I huffed, rolling my eyes at him as I turned to walk out of the basement.
Twenty minutes later, the men on the computer screen, surrounding the warehouse, began to filter off. Many left in a caravan with Hajek himself, the remaining spread thin to guard the warehouse on all sides.
“Let’s go,” I said, leading my men, my husband’s men, our friends, an entire army out of my house and into the unknown.
I’m coming, mo phrionsa.