Page 36 of Treachery

Elijah seemed to curl further into himself, and she couldn’t stop the surge of remorse. Shit.

“Yeah, I do owe you…and I’ll make it up to you, I swear,” he offered, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets, like he was trying to shrivel up and disappear. “I just…there’s something I need to do first—but I wanted to talk to you.”

Sighing, she sensed his sincerity, something she’d never seen in him before.

“Fine, let’s sit there.” She indicated a bench a few feet away and headed toward it. She sat down, and when he sat down next to her, she tried not to cringe at the scent of stale sweat. Once both of them were seated, she knew she only had so much time left before she had to get back to work, but she felt that this—him approaching her—was something that needed doing. For them both.

“Go ahead,” she prompted, “what is it you need to tell me?”

Elijah slumped, his shoulders high, his head low, and his hands were in fists on his knees.

He sucked in a slow breath, lifted his head, and met her gaze.

Remorse, self-loathing, anger, regret, and sadness—it all hit her in the belly, making her gasp.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry—and not just for what I did to your closet.” Rubbing at his face, he sighed. He was silent for a moment, and she remained quiet, sensing that he needed this. And she’d give it to him. “I’m sorry that I was such a shitty brother to you, Bug—I mean—Nadia. I’m sorry that I was such an asshole to you growing up, and my only excuse was that I was jealous of you.”

She scrunched up her face, confused. “Jealous? Of me? Why?” She was truly flabbergasted.

He chuckled without humor. “When my dad first got with your mom, I was excited about having a sister; I’d been an only child, and the idea of having someone closer in age, who’d be my friend…it was appealing. Then Dad brought you home, and you were this bright, happy, sweet thing. I felt like you were clean and good, and I was ugly and dirty?—”

“What?” she gasped. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Elijah, that’s not true?—”

“Come on, Nadia!” he effused, his eyes glittering with unshed tears. “I’d already been up to my neck with trouble, in and out of juvie three times, and then this goodie miss two-shoes comes along, all smiles and glitter, and I felt like a piece of toe jam stuck in some hobos ass crack.”

She shook her head, disgusted at the image he’d created—about himself.

Nadia opened her mouth to disagree, but he raised his hand, shaking his head.

“I know how I was, sis. I was a jealous asshole, and it only got worse when I started hanging with CJ and his crew. They got me into petty crimes, drugs, and CJ’s cousin, Marcus, introduced me to the Bone Dogz. They were a one percent club back then, all the blow, booze, and bitches I wanted….”

She held her breath, waiting for him to continue. If Evander Bengwell had a problem with her being late from her lunch hour, he could kiss her ass. Elijah was her family, and in that moment, they needed each other.

“I wasn’t thinking about you when I stole that money from Mad Dog, and even before then, I wasn’t thinking of you when I took those pictures….”

The pictures, she knew, were of documents Elijah had stumbled upon while he was running drugs for the Souci’s in New York City. He’d taken the pictures, thinking he could use them to blackmail the mafia family for more money. When they’d sent goons after him, he’d fled, hiding the phone. Then he got with the MC in Erie, got more addicted, more reckless, forgetting about the phone for two years, until he ran into an associate while on the lam from the Bone Dogz. Elijah realized getting the phone back was the only way to save himself. Unfortunately, the apartment where he’d left it had been emptied, and when he traced his belongings to her, he broke into her house to get it back.

“Are they…still after you?” she asked, terrified of the answer.

He shook his head frantically. “No, no—your friends took care of that. Red got the pictures off the cell, and let the Family know I wasn’t a problem for them anymore.”

She furrowed her brows; there had to be more to it than that.

“How’s that possible? They went from wanting you dead to just letting it slide?”

Elijah dropped his gaze, scratching at his shirt sleeve, under which, she was sure, were track marks.

“The club vouched for me, promised that I’d get clean, and that I’d never say a word about what I saw.”

She pursed her lips, realizing what he’d said.

“Get clean?”

For the first time, a new emotion glimmered in his eyes.

Hope.

There was hope in Elijah’s eyes.

---