Elijah looks up from the file he was reading and slides down the sofa to make room for me to sit next to him.
"Sleep okay?"
I nod. "You?"
"Yeah."
He's lying, I can tell by the way he looks away and presses his lips together. Those are his tells. But I let him lie, because I know the reason he wouldn't have slept well probably has everything to do with what I told him on Wednesday.
"We should get started," Atticus says, folding himself into the seat opposite us while Seven leans against the arm of the sofa nearest to me.
"What are we looking at?" I ask, gaze roaming the papers on the table.
Atticus sighs. "A lot of things. I told you, you're in control. There are a lot of options here. I've explored the possibility of you accepting Ambrose's offer to visit his estate in Spain."
He pushes a file toward me, and I sense Elijah's energy shift next to me.
"Then there's the option of continuing to play it slow." He offers another folder, then indicates the one still in Elijah's lap. "Then there's that one. Made at Eli's request."
Elijah sets it on my lap.
I lift the top sheet of paper, finding a map with a red line from a building into what is marked as an Olive Garden.
"I don't get it."
Elijah points at the building. "There is a perfect sight line from the fifth floor of this hotel into the front windows of the Olive Garden across the street in Boone." He drags his finger over the red line, and my throat goes dry as understanding dawns on me.
I twist to face Elijah. "You want to kill him?"
His expression is grim,haunted. "Yes," he says. "I want to end it."
"But…" I flip through the rest of the pages, of which there are only three, and see nothing that details anything about his family's art collection. Nothing that details the systematic takedown of his empire.
Those are the whole reasons why we're doing this.
To get it all back. To give him what he deserves.
"I don't get it," I find myself saying as Seven takes the file from me and flicks through the pages with confusion in the set of his brow, scratching the triple seven tattoo on his neck.
I meet Atticus's hard stare. "What about the art? What about taking your revenge?"
"It's an option," he answers in a cautious monotone. "There's also the option of doing nothing, but I didn't need a folder forthat. We can stop now. We have the money and means to make you disappear. You'd never have to see Ambrose again. We could start over. Here. Somewhere else. Wherever you want. Leave this whole mess in the past."
He doesn't like this option, I can tell, but the fact he's offering it at all is a testament to how much he meant it when he saidIam in control.
But this option, the one still in my hands, doesn't have Atty written on it. This is all Elijah.
I turn to face him. "You want to give up?"
"It's not giving up, Angel," he argues, a hardness in the set of his jaw. "It's deciding what's more important."
"But we could have it all?—"
"And we could lose you in the process." His tone is sharper than I've heard it since that morning in his studio when he yelled at me to get out. It brokers no argument, but Iwillargue this point because we didn't do all this work for nothing.
"Elijah, knowing you would give up all this—everything you've been working for since you came home—forme…I never thought I'd mean that much to anyone."
His eyes linger on my face like he wants to memorize it, even as he shakes his head, because I know he can see that I've already decided, and it's not going to be folder number three.
