Kidnapped by the Billionaire (24 page)

And Violet found that she was moving too, but not away from what was happening. She was running toward it, her heart thumping loud in her ears, fear gripping her. Fear for him.

Elijah was grappling with another man, while a second man, tall, lean and black-haired, familiar-looking, trained a gun on them. The third figure, a woman with long blonde hair and dressed in a black suit, who looked as lethal as the gun she held, also trained a gun on the pair on the ground.

These people, they were going to kill Elijah. And she couldn't let that happen.

“Stop!” She screamed the word, launching herself at the man who'd just aimed a vicious punch at the bandage on Elijah's shoulder. As the blow landed, Elijah went white, stumbling a couple steps, his lips pulling back in a grimace of pain. Red bloomed against the new bandages she'd only just bound around him.

“Stop it, you prick!” Violet shouted again, and before she could think twice about what she was doing, she stepped between the man and Elijah.

He was familiar. Wide shouldered and tall, built along the same massive lines as Elijah. Dark eyes, blonde hair. Brutally handsome features. It was Gabriel Woolf.

Which means this is a rescue.

Violet shoved the thought aside. She didn't care what it was right now, not when all that mattered was that they stopped hitting Elijah.

Gabriel's dark eyes settled on her, an expression she didn't quite understand in his gaze. “Are you okay?” he asked harshly. “Did he hurt you?”

There was movement behind Gabriel and the black-haired man, who Violet could now see was Alex St. James, Honor's long-lost brother, said in a low, dangerous voice to Elijah, “Don't you fucking move, asshole.”

“Violet.” Elijah completely ignored him. “Step away.”

“No.” She didn't bother looking behind her, keeping her gaze trained on Gabriel. “Not until I get a promise that they won't hurt you.”

Gabriel's dark brows drew down. “What the fuck? You know we're here to rescue you, right?”

“Princess,” Elijah's voice was softer this time. “Get the hell out of the way.”

She was shaking for some reason—probably shock—and she had the most ridiculous urge to burst into tears. Either that or to turn around and walk straight into Elijah's arms.

You fucking idiot. They came for you. Someone actually came for you.

She should be thrilled. She should be running toward the door, getting out and never looking back.

But all she could do was stand there, staring at the three people training guns on the man behind her, murder in their eyes.

“I'm not moving,” she said thickly, focusing on Gabriel. “Promise me. Promise me, he won't get hurt.”

“Any particular reason you're defending him, Violet?” This from Alex, whose blue eyes never left Elijah.

She didn't know Honor's brother. Had never met him. But Honor had told her all about their reconciliation after she'd gotten together with Gabriel. Her friend was happy, but that hadn't changed Violet's opinion of Alex. Which was poor.

Violet opened her mouth to reply when Gabriel took a sudden step forward and reached out to take her bandaged wrist in his hand. “What the fuck is this?” he demanded. “Did he do this to you?”

She jerked her hand out of his grip. “It's not what it looks like, okay?”

“Touch her and I'll kill you, prick.” Elijah's voice came from behind her, cold as ice.

Gabriel's attention flicked to him. “Oh no, I've had enough of this bullshit. Come with me, Violet, we're—”

At that moment Elijah's hands were around her waist, pulling her back against the heat of his body and holding her there. “
We
are going nowhere,” he said flatly. “You and your friends can fuck off out of my apartment.”

The guns trained on Elijah had now moved. To her.

Violet swallowed. She was okay with being his shield, especially with him half naked and his bare skin pressed up against her back, a reassurance rather than anything more sinister. It made her feel weirdly powerful.

She relaxed against him, hoping he'd understand it meant she trusted him.

Gabriel looked furious, while Alex's blue eyes glittered coldly. The blonde woman hadn't moved, but there was a frown on her face, her green gaze looking from Violet to Elijah then back again.

Then she said, her accent clipped and Russian sounding, “Why are we doing this? We are all on the same side.” She lowered her gun, her attention focusing on Elijah. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Hunt.”

Elijah slid an arm around Violet's waist, heavy as an iron bar. “‘Nice' is a relative term, Ms. Ivanova,” he said coldly. “Why is it you people are always involving yourselves in other people's fucking business?”

“We involve ourselves when you take something that's ours.” Somehow there was a gun in Gabriel's hand and he was pointing it straight at Violet.

“I'm not going to kill her,” Elijah said. “If that's what you're worried about.”

“And yet you're quite happy to use her as a human shield.” Alex's voice was full of disgust. “Fucking coward.”

Violet felt Elijah's muscles tense, the arm around her waist tightening. And it was instinct to lay her hands gently over his forearm, using touch to soothe him like she would a wounded animal.

She felt his breath across the back of her neck, a soft, inaudible exhale, and the hard, bunched muscles underneath her fingers gradually eased.

“He's not using me,” she said firmly. “I'm protecting him.”

All three sets of eyes focused on her once more.

She lifted her chin and met them each in turn.

“You heard what the lady said.” Elijah pulled her closer. “Now make like the good soldiers you are and fuck off.”

“Why?” Gabriel demanded, looking at Violet and ignoring Elijah. “We know he kidnapped you at fucking gunpoint, we have the security camera footage to prove it.”

So they had been looking for her. That must have been Honor's doing.

“She doesn't have to explain herself to you,” Elijah said icily. “Now, I'm not going to—”

“We know about your wife.” It was Alex who cut in, keeping his gun exactly where it was. “And we know what you want.”

Behind Violet, Elijah had gone very still.

“You want revenge,” Alex continued. “And you would have had it, if Eva hadn't pulled that trigger.”

Violet didn't dare take a breath, knowing something was happening but not sure what or even what Alex was talking about. It was important though, that much she was certain of.

“Yes,” Elijah agreed, a harsh edge to his voice. “I would. I told you to keep out of it. I told you to stay the fuck away. But you didn't listen, did you? You just had to keep searching.”

“We had our goddamn reasons.” Alex's tone was hard. “And if you know who I am, then you'll know what those reasons are.”

Elijah had begun to back away slowly, imperceptibly, taking her with him. And she went, not even understanding why, only knowing she had to go with him because if she didn't, something terrible was going to happen. “Oh, I know your reasons,” Elijah was saying. “I know who the Seven Devils are. I already destroyed two of them.”

The other three looked at one another, glances Violet couldn't interpret.

Who the hell were the Seven Devils? And what did he mean by destroying them?

Gabriel's expression was like iron. “Fuck this bullshit,” he said coldly. “This ends now.”

Violet didn't understand quite how it happened, because neither Gabriel or Alex moved. But somewhere a gun went off and she was suddenly thrown violently to the side. Biting off a scream, she threw her arms over her head as she crashed to the floor.

The wood beneath her vibrated with a heavy impact, the sounds of shouting filling the room.

Wild with inexplicable fear, she was already on her feet again, turning around in time to see Gabriel lift a hand, a wicked-looking gun held tightly in his fist.

Only to bring it down hard across Elijah's face.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

Elijah came to, his vision blurry, his cheekbone hurting like fuck and his shoulder wound feeling like someone had kicked the shit out of it with steel-capped boots.

Jesus, what the hell had happened? Last thing he remembered, he'd finally gotten the phone call he'd been hoping for, the one from one Jericho's flunkies naming a time and place for a meeting. Then after he'd ended the call, he'd come out of the kitchen area to find Violet standing there with the Heinlein Marie had given him for their first wedding anniversary.

And she'd asked him … what? Something important. Something that had hollowed him out like she'd reached inside him with a melon-baller and scooped out his heart.

After that … Shit, that's right. The front door of his apartment had flown open—God knew how, since his security system was state of the art and no one should have been able to get past it—and Gabriel Woolf and his merry band of assholes had burst in.

Mother
fuck …
What had he missed? What had he done that had given his position away?

He blinked hard, trying to get his eyesight working, taking a scan around at where he was.

Bare room. Concrete floor and gray brick walls. No windows. Lit with a harsh, white fluorescent light. Your standard torture room in other words.

He was sitting in a chair, unbound, which was a mercy. But not, apparently, unguarded.

In front of him stood four people. Woolf. Rutherford. King. And Alex St. James. They were all looking at him, their expressions ranging from completely blank to ice cold to furious. None of them had guns but he felt the prickle at the back of his neck that told him someone somewhere had a weapon trained on him.

A slight turn of his head and he spotted a fifth person. The bodyguard, Ivanova. She was the one with the weapon and it was pointed directly at his head.

Okay then.

He said nothing, shifting slightly in the chair, staring back at them expressionlessly because he'd be fucked if he gave them anything. Their insistence on sticking their noses where they didn't belong had ended up destroying years of planning. They were no friends of his.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hunt.” Rutherford was the one who broke the silence, his cut-glass British accent sharp. “I have to commend your ingenuity. You've proven to be a bit of a bastard to track down.”

Elijah shrugged, fighting down the urge to wince as the movement aggravated his shoulder wound. “I'm hardly likely to make it easy for you.”

Rutherford's amber gaze dropped to Elijah's shoulder. He was still bare-chested and wearing the shorts he'd put on to take out his rage on the punching bag. Felt like years ago. The bandages were bloody again and he had a sudden flashback, of Violet's hands on him, wrapping the gauze around his shoulder, her fingers gentle …

“Is your wound troubling you?” Rutherford murmured. “I apologize. It's not like me to miss.”

Elijah ignored the dig. “Mind hurrying this Q&A session, or whatever the fuck this is, along? I have things I need to do.”

“Things such as using Fitzgerald's daughter for some kind of glorified revenge plan?”

The words were mild enough, but it prompted another rush of memory about the confrontation in his apartment. St. James telling him they knew about what had happened to Marie. That they knew what he wanted. At least they
thought
they knew what he wanted.

“Yeah,” he said flatly. “That.”

Woolf's expression hardened, the glitter in his dark eyes furious. “Over my dead fucking body.”

Elijah met the other man's gaze. “That can be arranged.”

“Fuck's sake,” Eva King said disgustedly. “Can we stop it with the dick measurements? I'm kind of over it.” She stepped forward, a small, delicate woman in black jeans, heavy boots, and an AC/DC T-shirt, her long white-blonde hair in a ponytail down her back. “I've got some questions that are actually relevant.”

This was the woman who'd taken Elijah's revenge from him and all because he'd made one stupid fucking mistake. Yeah, she was brave, he'd give her that. He'd been impressed with her fighting spirit when he'd brought her to Fitzgerald, but that didn't mean he'd forgiven what she'd done.

Elijah glowered at her, unable to stop the uprush of sudden anger that twisted in his veins. “What makes you think I'm going to tell you anything?”

He noticed Rutherford had taken a small step so he was right behind her, his posture tense. Clearly he didn't like his little girl being threatened.

Another memory flashed behind Elijah's eyes, of Violet pressed against him. Of his arm around her, holding her close. Of the strange feeling of wanting to take her and hide her away. Protect her from all those guns trained on her.

They thought he'd been using her as a shield to protect himself. Hell, that's exactly what he'd told himself he was doing, because there was no way they were going to take him. No way they were going to take her either. He needed her, after all. Yet that hadn't explained the fury that roared through him when St. James had pointed it out. Or why he'd felt himself relaxing when her fingers had rested on his arm. Or even the inexplicable need he had to turn them both around so that his back was facing all those guns.

But he hadn't done that. He'd seen the almost imperceptible move that Alex's beautiful bodyguard had made, a shift in posture that told him she was going to fire, and he'd shoved Violet aside to get her out of the way instead.

He didn't know why he'd done that since it was obvious Woolf and his friends wouldn't hurt Violet. That it wasn't her they were aiming at, but himself. And yet all he'd thought about was making sure Violet was well out of the line of fire.

Because you want her alive and whole for Jericho. Right?