THE SIMP AND THE MONSTER CONTINUED.
I whirled around. Elijah stood there, leaning against the doorframe, his phone in his hand. He wasn't in a suit. He was in a sweater and jeans. He'd never left.
My brain short-circuited. "Elijah? What the hell? l thought..."
"I know what you thought," he said, his voice low and even.
The pieces crashed together. The conveniently timed trip. The insistence I babysit alone. The specific girl I'd been trying to impress for weeks showing up exactly tonight.
"You set this up. You knew. You listened to the whole thing."
"Every word," he confirmed, his eyes glacial. "Through the monitor. Leo patched the feed. Viktor was in the garage the entire time. Had she taken one step toward the door with Jules, he would have been in the room before she could blink."
"Why?" The word came out as a snarl. Jules whimpered at the tone, and I forced myself to relax my grip. "You didn't trust me? You had to test me like some— some rookie?"
Elijah finally moved, stepping out of the shadows of the study. The usual power radiating off him was tinged with something else. Something raw.
"It wasn't about trust, Riven," he said, his eyes landing on Jules. For a second, he didn't look like a boss. He looked like our big brother. "It was about being scared. And being sure."
"Sure of what?"
"That girl wasn't some random person. We own her dad. She did what we paid her to do. She was never real. She was just... part of the test." He looked straight at me, and I saw the pain in his eyes. "I needed to see what you'd do. I needed to know if a pretty face could still make you forget what matters."
He looked me dead in the eye, and for the first time, I saw the ghost haunting my big brother.
"It was about the time you were supposed to be watching Enzo."
The air left my lungs. The memory was a physical blow: a sunny day, a distracted 16-year-old me talking with a girl on my phone, a two-year-old Enzo wobbling into the street, the screech of tires, the scream... I hadn't been fast enough.
"You were distracted by a girl then, too," Elijah said, his voice rough. "You almost got him killed. It would've wrecked us. I couldn't just wonder if you'd changed. I had to know for sure. So tell me, Riven. Did you pass? Or did you just get lucky tonight?"
He took a shuddering breath, the most vulnerable sound I'd ever heard him make.
"I couldn't lose another sibling because one of us was looking the other way. I had to know. I had to be sure that when it mattered, you'd see the threat. That you'd choose her."
His eyes glistened under the dim lights. "You passed."
He wasn't manipulating me. He was exorcising a ghost. In the only way his broken, burdened soul knew how.
I looked down at Jules, then back at him. I just nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
Elijah gave a single, sharp nod in return. The moment of vulnerability was over, sealed shut. The Don was back.
"Viktor is handling the clean-up. She won't remember the address. She'll wake up tomorrow thinking she had a bad dream and a sudden urge to move to another state," he said, his voice returning to its usual steel. "Now get her to bed. We have business tomorrow."
He turned and walked back into his study, closing the door behind him.
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