Kidnapped by the Billionaire (40 page)

Violet opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of that when the front door of the apartment burst open with a crash and all hell broke loose.

The big man in the suit reached for a handgun in his jacket, starting to raise it in the direction of the doorway. But he had no chance to get a shot off before he was suddenly dropping without a sound, a dark red wound in the center of his forehead.

Violet, frozen in shock, stared as Elijah stepped into the room through the remains of the door, his Colt in his hand, lethal fury twisting his scarred face and glittering coldly in his black eyes. He looked immediately in her direction and she saw the fury turn and change, morphing into savage satisfaction. But that Colt of his was moving, his arm coming up, aiming at the tall, golden figure of her brother, who strangely hadn't moved a muscle since Elijah had first kicked the door in.

And Violet knew without a shadow of a doubt that Theo would be next to get a bullet right between the eyes. So she didn't even think. “Stop!” she screamed at Elijah, throwing herself between her brother and the muzzle of that gun. “Don't!”

Surprise flashed briefly over Elijah's face, but he didn't lower the Colt. “Get out of the way, Violet,” he ordered.

“No.” She was shaking as she met his terrifying gaze, a mass of emotions tangling in her chest, far more than she could ever hope to sort out. Only one thing was clear: she couldn't allow Elijah to kill her brother. “I won't let you hurt him.”

Behind her, Theo was silent. As if he was waiting for something.

Elijah's dark brows arrowed down, his gaze sharpening on her. “What are you doing? You were taken and I—”

“I know,” she interrupted, trying to make her voice sound steady. “It was Theo, Eli. Theo was the one who took me.”

For a second there was only a heavy, dark kind of silence as Elijah stared at her, then focused his gaze on the man she was protecting, his quick mind obviously sorting out the implications of that statement.

“Theodore Fitzgerald.” It wasn't a question, his tone devoid of inflection.

“Yes,” Theo said levelly. “Good afternoon, Mr. Hunt. I see you've found us.”

Something twisted in Elijah's face. Something dark. “You took her.” Another non-question.

“Yes,” Theo repeated. “I did.”

“Eli,” she began. “You can't—”

“You're him.” The rough edge in Elijah's voice was full of heat and fury. His gaze was no longer sharp and cold, but burning with a kind of black fire that Violet found both utterly terrifying and totally mesmerizing at the same time. “You're fucking Jericho.”

How he knew, she had no idea. But he did.

“Elijah,” she said.

“Get the fuck out of the way, Violet.” Death lurked in each word, in his eyes. Merciless, ruthless. Because this was what he'd come here to do. What he'd been trying to do for the past seven years. Claim his revenge.

“No.” She stayed exactly where she was, staring at the man she'd fallen in love with so quickly and so very hard. “He's my brother.”

“He's a monster.” Elijah didn't look at her, his gaze firmly on the man at her back. “He helped your father murder my wife.”

She wanted to turn around, see Theo's face, demand to know whether this was true or not. But she didn't.

You don't want to know.

Grief choked her. Theo was all she had of her family. The only one who'd ever been there for her, the only one who'd ever loved her. She couldn't let him die, she just couldn't.

What if Elijah's right? What if he's a monster like your father was?

“I … I can't let you kill him.” Her voice was hoarse, unsteady. “He's all I've got.”

Elijah's gaze shifted, focused on her. And something intense gathered in his expression. “No, he's not. You have me.”

Her breath caught and for a second it felt like the ground hadn't finished moving under her feet after all, was in fact still shifting, rearranging the landscape once again. Theo didn't say anything, though behind her she could sense his attention sharpening.

“You?” she croaked. “What do you mean?”

There was movement behind her, the sound of her brother taking a step closer. “You want her?” Theo made it sound like a casual question. “It'll be over my dead body.”

Elijah's smile was frightening as he pointed the Colt. “That's the general idea.”

“No.” She moved more fully in front of Theo. “Please, Elijah. Don't do this.”

But Elijah wasn't looking at her now, his gaze wholly on her brother, and there was such hate in his eyes. Such fury. It made her heart twist in anguish for him. “Two years she was in that fucking Russian brothel,” he said in a cold, dead voice. “That's what your cocksucker of a father told me. He also told me that you were the one who sold her there. You made the deal. And you were the one who let her die after a client slit her throat.”

Tears blurred in Violet's eyes. His wife. He was talking about his wife. The woman he'd failed to protect and had been taking the blame for ever since. And she waited again for Theo to say no, to tell Elijah he had nothing to do with it. But again, he was silent.

“Now's the time to pay, you fucker,” Elijah went on, toneless. “Now's the time you go down.”

It would be easy to step aside. To let this man take the revenge that, surely, he was owed. Yet she wasn't going to.

She had no altruistic reasons. No lofty motivations. She didn't have a wronged past and she had no one to avenge. She only loved her brother and didn't want him to die, no matter what he'd done, no matter the murders or rapes or any other evil he'd committed. Because he was the only family she had left and she couldn't bear to be alone.

You have me.

But, no, she didn't have him. She could never have him. Elijah may have been a killer, but there was a nobility to him that she'd never had. He was doing this out of love, out of love for his wife. Because he'd been a victim. He'd been manipulated and used, and so had Marie.

But Violet hadn't. All she'd had was a shitty family life. She hadn't been tortured or murdered or raped, and neither had she known anyone who had. There was no nobility in her, there never had been. She was a pampered Manhattan princess enacting a petty rebellion against her family because they never paid her any attention. She had no excuse, she hadn't been anyone's victim. She'd only wanted to feel connected to someone. Only wanted to feel not so alone.

But maybe there was a reason she was. Maybe the monster that had lived in her father, that now lived in his son, lived in her too. The dark hunger, the need. The hole in her soul.

Elijah had told her there was nothing wrong with her, and she'd wanted to believe it. But in so many ways, it was easier not to. In so many ways, it was safer to accept what she knew deep down inside.

There was no hope for her.

Because surely only a monster let another monster live for their own selfish reasons.

“No,” she said thickly, again. “I'm sorry, Eli. I can't let you. If you want to kill Theo, you'll have to kill me first.”

*   *   *

Elijah stared into Violet's blue-green eyes, searching for any kind of understanding. But there was none. There was only pain and the kind of determination that he'd recognized in her so many times before. She meant this. There would be no moving her.

Getting into the room where Violet was had been easy. He'd decided against going in the front, since it was likely the roof would be less heavily guarded, a hunch that had paid off. There had been an easy route from the roof of the building next door and the door that had led down into the apartment block's stairwell had had a paltry lock that had given the moment Elijah kicked it.

There had been no one watching the roof or the stairwell. Clearly Jericho was not expecting visitors.

Eva had tracked the phone to a particular apartment, and Elijah had managed to get rid of the four guards who had been watching that floor without too many problems. He'd checked the bodies for ID but hadn't managed to find anything. All of which just added to his suspicions that Jericho had indeed taken Violet.

He'd debated briefly the merits of kicking the door in and then had decided to hell with it, he wanted Violet and that was the most direct route. So he had, shooting what must have been the owner of the phone he'd been tracking before the guy had even managed to get a shot off.

Then he'd had eyes for nothing but Violet, because there she was, standing in the middle of the dingy apartment, her face white, but alive. And the relief had nearly brought him to his knees.

He hadn't failed her. Which meant he could save her.

Then he'd realized she wasn't alone.

Now, the dead man who was apparently Theo Fitzgerald was staring back at him, looking like he'd just stepped out of the pages of
GQ
and so fucking smug, Elijah wanted to pull that trigger and Violet be damned.

He could. In fact, she didn't even need to die. He could just reach out and take her, pull her away and shoot the prick.

But clearly the asshole had had the same thought, because he reached out and put a possessive hand on Violet's shoulder, pulling her back. Holding her. “I wouldn't,” he said calmly. “She meant what she said.”

Violet's expression didn't change, no matter that her brother seemed to be using her to protect himself.

“Hiding behind your sister, prick?” Elijah didn't lower the Colt. He wanted to shoot so badly it was all he could do not to pull that trigger. “I guess that's what Jericho does best after all. He hides and lets other people do his dirty work for him.”

Jericho's expression didn't alter, remaining calm. “You should never have involved yourself, Mr. Hunt. You should have given her to me and let me keep her safe.”

“What, with you? Safe like Marie was safe? I don't fucking think so.”

There was no flicker in that green-gold gaze. No hint of remorse or guilt or even sympathy. There was nothing at all. “Be happy with your trade concessions. That's all you're going to get.”

“I don't want your fucking trade concessions,” Elijah spat. “I never did. All I wanted was your father's head. And then someone took that, which means I'll have to settle for yours.”

At last, a flicker of what looked like regret passed over Jericho's golden-boy features. “I suppose I should have seen this. Nevermind, can't be helped now. You won't shoot me, Mr. Hunt. Not if you want Violet to live.”

“You happy with this?” He looked at Violet, staring into her eyes, wanting to see that sympathy he knew was there, that understanding. But there was nothing but pain and that fucking awful determination. “Your brother using you to protect himself?”

An emotion shifted and changed in her eyes, more hurt. “Like you never did the same thing.”

And he felt that, the barbs on the words catching at him, tearing at him. Because of course it was true. He had used her. All this time, that's exactly what he'd been doing.

“Violet,” he said, unable to keep the desperate sound out of his voice. “Princess … I need this. Let me have it.”

But her expression shuttered. “No. You're not killing him, Elijah.”

“You want me to hurt you? Is that what you want?”

“But you won't hurt me.” A bright spark of agony glowed in her eyes, suddenly sharp. “That's the thing Eli. I know you'd never hurt me, because I know you're a good man, a just man. And I'm…” She stopped, that little spark glowing brighter. “You told me once that all of us are monsters deep down, even me.”

Oh, fuck. No. “Violet, you're not—”

“I'm a Fitzgerald, Eli. And us monsters have to stick together.”

“Bullshit,” he said, hard and certain and sure, not wanting those words lingering in the air, not even an echo. Because they were wrong, so wrong. “You're not a fucking monster. If anyone's the monster here it's that asshole standing behind you. And me. I'm the one you should be pointing the finger at.”

“Okay,” Jericho said unexpectedly. “I think I've had about enough of this.” And with a smooth movement, he stepped around Violet and pushed her behind him.

Giving Elijah an unimpeded target.

“Theo, no!” She pulled at his arm, but he ignored her, keeping her behind him.

To anyone else there was a bored look in those green-gold eyes, yet Elijah knew it wasn't. He saw deeper than that. Because he knew men like this, had worked with them many times over the course of the years with Fitzgerald. It wasn't boredom. It was emptiness.

The look of a man who'd sold his soul to the devil.

Whoever Theo Fitzgerald once was, he wasn't this man standing in front of him. Like Kane Archer, Theo Fitzgerald was dead.

“If you're going to fucking shoot me, you'd better shoot me.” Jericho's gaze was level and there was no fear in it. He looked like he'd stared death in the face one too many times and had come to terms with the fact that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Perhaps he even welcomes it.

No, he didn't want to acknowledge this bastard, he really didn't.

“My pleasure, asshole.” Elijah lifted the gun. “This one's for Marie.”

And then he made a mistake. He glanced at Violet, standing behind her brother, and saw the tears streaming down her face. She didn't make a sound.

She was his peace, but he wasn't hers. He only caused her sorrow. Pain. He only hurt her. And if he shot Jericho, he'd keep on hurting her. Her brother's death would be a wound that wouldn't heal, and he knew all about those kinds of wounds.

He'd promised he wouldn't hurt her again.

What about Marie? What about that promise? Didn't you want peace?

And his heart cracked, a great jagged line going right down the middle of it. Because he knew there would be no peace for him, no matter what he did. Killing Jericho would lay Marie to rest, but it would shatter Violet. Letting him live would spare Violet, but he'd have to live with his wife's death forever.