Kidnapped by the Billionaire (27 page)

“Please.” Violet never took her gaze from him, as if he were a lifeline and she was drowning.

Something heavy and unwelcome shifted in his chest.

Honor sighed. “Okay.” She gestured to the guard. “Come on, let's give them a few minutes.”

A few seconds later, the door closed behind them, leaving Violet and him alone in the room.

He took a step toward her, but she held up a hand. “No. Wait. I have to ask you some questions.”

Again, he stopped, held by the awful note in her voice. The one that seemed to reach inside him, looping wire around his heart and pulling tight.

“What questions?” he demanded. “What's happened, princess? Are you okay?”

“No. I'm not okay.” Her voice had thickened, and she stood there with that terrible look on her face. He wanted very badly to do something, but he didn't quite know what that something should be. Perhaps something violent, that would involve pain and preferably to the person who'd put that expression on her face.

“What happened?” he asked again. “What did they do to you? Because if they did something, I swear to Christ—”

“They didn't do anything. They told me about Dad.”

Ah. Well, that was never going to be easy for her, was it? “About how he died?”

“Among other things.” She stopped. “He hurt people, Elijah. He hurt them. Gabriel's mother. Eva King. Honor's Dad. God, so many people.” Her pale throat moved, and he could almost see the shattered pieces she was holding together break again, into smaller pieces, all jagged and sharp. “I need to know something. I need to know whether you were a part of it. Whether you knew about it.” Another pause. “What did you do for him, Elijah?”

He'd never hidden what he was, what he'd done. Not from himself and not from anyone else. He'd embraced the identity he'd created for himself, the mercenary Elijah Hunt, ruthless and dark and absolutely as cold as ice. Taking down Fitzgerald had required it.

He hadn't made any excuses for his behavior and he'd never regretted it. Regrets would kill him.

Except now, staring into Violet's eyes, he thought that perhaps he might have regrets after all, because he wanted to tell her that no, he hadn't done anything bad. That he hadn't been a part of those things she'd mentioned. That he wasn't the monster she so clearly feared he would be.

But he had and he was. And he couldn't lie to her.

So he said, “What he did to Woolf's mother was before my time and no, I had no idea about that. Same with Daniel St. James. But yes, I shot Honor's stepfather. I was supposed to kill him, but I missed the shot. The man wasn't like the others and his death would have been pointless. As to Eva King … Again, that was before my time. But he had other girls that I knew about.”

Violet's face was still deathly pale. “What happened to them?”

“Some of them I managed to get out. Others I couldn't without blowing my cover.”

“You kidnapped Eva. Honor told me.”

“Yes. I did. Fitzgerald wanted her and I couldn't stop him. I did what I could to give both her and Rutherford the opportunity to escape.” He held her gaze. “I did what I could to help
all
of them get out before anyone else got hurt.”

“Oh.” She fell silent for a long moment, staring at him, and he hated that look on her face. Hated it for reasons he couldn't have explained even to himself. “Why? Why did you work for him? And what were you hoping to achieve?”

“His death. And the death of that fucking empire he built up.”

“Because of your wife?”

“Yes.” There was no other answer.

Violet stayed where she was, her blue-green eyes burning into his, and he didn't look away. He had no idea why she wanted to know these things, or whether it would change things between them, but he was what he was and there was no changing what he'd done. He couldn't pretend otherwise. Anyway, she should know what he was by now. He hadn't held himself back when it came to dealing with her.

“I'm sorry,” she said suddenly, thickly. “I'm so sorry, Elijah.” Suddenly she was walking toward him, closing the distance between them, coming right up to where he stood, and then putting her arms around him.

Shock held him frozen to the spot. The heat of her body was right up against him, and part of him—the raw, desperate, grief-stricken part—wanted to shove her away. And yet he couldn't. Her arms were slim and they held him so lightly, yet they felt like iron bands around his waist. Chains holding him fast.

She bent, her forehead resting against his chest. And then she began to cry.

The band looped around his heart pulled even tighter. So tight it was painful.

He'd watched plenty of people cry over the years, both men and women. Tears of sorrow, of anger, of pain. Of fear and desperation. But none of them had ever moved him. His heart had been long hardened against anything as weak as pity or mercy.

But now … The sounds of Violet's sobs were doing something to him. Breaking him in ways he couldn't describe. She'd come to give him comfort, the first person to do so in years, and yet now she was the one who was crying. Holding onto him as if a storm was tearing at her and she was terrified of being blown away.

Why? Did she expect him to give her comfort in return? Didn't she know that he wasn't the kind of man who did that? He hadn't been that kind of man for years.

And yet despite that, he found himself lifting his arms and putting them around her slender figure, gathering her in close. Holding her like she was holding him.

The tension in her body abruptly relaxed and she cried harder, deep, gut wrenching sobs that had him holding her even tighter, as if she were coming apart at the seams and only he could keep her together. He found himself whispering inanities he didn't even realize he was capable of, his mouth against the short, soft spikes of her hair. “Hush, princess. It's okay. Everything will be fine, I promise.”

He didn't know how long he stood there holding her, but after a while her sobs eventually quieted into soft hitched breaths before dying away completely. Then they both just stood there for a good couple of minutes until, abruptly, Violet pulled away.

He almost reached to haul her back but sensed she needed a moment, so he let her go, watching as she turned away from him, dragging an arm over her eyes.

If anyone had come into the room right at this moment, he would have killed them.

Violet's arm dropped, her cheeks shiny with tears, her eyes red. “All I wanted was to find my brother,” she said in a thick voice. “That's all that mattered to me. But now? Fuck. After hearing about everything my father has done? It's selfish. Theo's probably really dead and I've been wasting years—
fucking years—
chasing a ghost.” She took a small, ragged breath. “But you know who's not dead? Jericho. And he should be, Elijah. He fucking should be. So if you want to use me to take him down, then from now on I'm all yours.”

*   *   *

She had thought she'd be the one to comfort him. She hadn't realized that the moment she put her arms around him, she'd be the one needing comfort. Absorbing his strength like a flower deprived of sun absorbs light. She even half expected him to pull away the way he'd done a number of times before, but he didn't. He just stood there, so hot and strong and immovable. Like granite. And then he'd put his arms around her in turn, and because it had been so long since someone had just held her while she cried, she didn't question it. She just took it.

It was kind of a relief to cry, because she hadn't done so since the apartment and there had been so much building up inside her. Grief and shock and the terrible bleakness that had settled on her soul as Honor had named her father's crimes.

A bleakness she'd never be able to escape.

But she could have this, a moment or two to cry and to take some comfort. God knew, she didn't deserve it, not after what her father had done to her friend, to all these other people too, but she'd allowed herself to take a couple of minutes.

And then she'd forced herself away, because for two days she'd managed to bear the fear and the uncertainty of being held captive and hadn't broken. She wouldn't break now. Especially not now that she had a new purpose.

She would make things right. She would help Elijah take down Jericho if it was the last thing she did.

Elijah didn't say anything, which was unexpected. She'd hoped he'd look at least a little bit pleased, but he didn't. If anything he looked more … concerned. Except that wasn't an expression she associated with him, so it couldn't be, right?

He was standing in front of her, still in his exercise shorts; and someone must have given him a T-shirt because last time she remembered, he hadn't been wearing one. In fact, last time she remembered, he'd been on the ground having been hit in the face by Gabriel. Who'd also gone for the wound on his shoulder.

Oh shit. She'd been so lost in the horror of what Honor had told her about her father, she hadn't even stopped to think about what had happened to Elijah. What Gabriel and his friends had done to him. Perhaps they'd hurt him. Perhaps that was why he was looking at her like that.

Wiping her face to get rid of the last of her tears, she scanned his scarred, brutal face. There had already been bruises on it when he'd kidnapped her, now there were more. One darkening on his cheekbone and around his eye socket, making the scar that ran across his face seem like a stark white line. His lower lip was bloody too.

“Are you okay?” She took a step toward him, closing the distance once more. “What did they do to you? I saw Gabriel punch you in your shoulder—”

The words died in her throat as Elijah's big, warm hands suddenly reached out, cupping her face. She stared at him in surprise. Because the touch was gentle, and the look in his eyes …

“You had a lead,” he said. “You said you had a lead on your brother.”

She blinked, not understanding where he was going with this. “Well, yeah, but that's not important anymore—”

“It's important to you?”

Violet stared at him. There was a fierce gleam in his eyes now and although the words had sounded like a question, she got the impression that they weren't. Like he knew already. “It was important before,” she said slowly. “But now…”

“Why not?”

“Why do you think? God, after everything Dad did, me trying to find a dead man seems a little dumb. Especially when I can help you take Jericho down.”

But he was frowning now, his gaze moving over her face as if she was a difficult book he was trying to read. “Why are you doing this, Violet? This … concern over me. Binding up my gunshot wound. Throwing yourself between me and Woolf. Telling them not to hurt me. And now…” His thumbs moved almost absently along the line of her jaw, a soft caress that seem to wake every single nerve ending into full awareness of him. Of the heat of his palms cupping her cheeks, the hard warmth of his body inches from hers. “You're giving up what's important to you in order to help me kill a man. Why?”

Good question. And one she had yet to come to a decision about. Because fundamentally, she had no idea why. Oh, she knew the answer with regard to Jericho, that was clear to her at least. But the rest?

You're falling for him, dickhead.

No. No way. Falling for him would be … all kinds of wrong. Really, what kind of idiot would she be to fall for her kidnapper? Yeah, she'd had sex with him, but she wasn't one of those girls who fell for the first man she had sex with.

How would you know? You've never had sex or fallen for anyone before.

Violet swallowed. “I'm helping you because I need to fix what my dad did. Not for any other reason.”

He didn't let her go, those thumbs moving back and forth along her jawline, making her shiver. “And throwing yourself between me and Woolf's gun?”

“I'd do that for anyone.” And that wasn't a lie. She would.
That's not the whole truth though, is it?
“Anyway,” she went on, trying to drown the voice in her head because it felt too raw and exposing, “what's it to you?”

He didn't reply, staring at her in that intense, sharp way he had. As if he could see the secrets of her soul, the secrets she didn't even know she had. And then just as suddenly as he'd held her, he released her, turning toward the door. “If you want to help me then we need to get out of here.” His voice had turned cold. “There are some people I need to contact, things that need to get set up.”

The imprint of his palms still burned like fire against her cheeks, the gentle motion of his thumbs on her jaw a featherlight, ghostly memory. He'd always been hard and rough with her, never gentle. Never … tender.

Something that felt awfully like disappointment twisted in her chest, as if she'd said the wrong thing or made a mistake in some way. Except she couldn't think of what mistake she'd made. Or why it even mattered to her.

No, that was another lie. She knew why it mattered.

“Elijah,” she said before she could second-guess herself.

He turned back, the look on his face impenetrable. “What?”

“I lied. I wouldn't put myself in front of Gabriel's gun for anyone.”

“But you did for me?”

“Yes. I did for you.”

His dark brows drew down, and for a long moment he only looked at her, black eyes enigmatic. But all he said was, “Come on. We have to go.”

What she was expecting she didn't know, but that wasn't quite it.

You hurt him.

The words echoed in her brain. Unbelievable. Ridiculous. How could she hurt a man like him? He was so strong, like a mountain—he didn't bend and he didn't break. Besides, in order to hurt him, he'd have to care about what she'd said, and he didn't. Did he?