Page 90 of Legacy

I nodded, my cheeks heating, thinking about how I must have looked that day from her perspective.

“I figured he was hung and knew how to use it. Yay for Avra.” She gave me a mocking fist pump.

I glared at her. “Really?”

“Shh. I’m still talking.” She put a finger to her lips. “What proved that he cared about thoseyoucared about was when he sent his men to back up ours, ensuring we were protected here. Then he arranged the whole thing for you with the trio. Those were his father’s friends. He wentagainsthis father’s allies. That’s pretty cut and dried. If he were working with Ozias, I can’t see him serving up his friends for you to slaughter.”

She was right. That didn’t add up in any other way.

“Not only that. I’ve studied the way he watches you. You’ve had my back for fifteen years, Avra. Mine and Cali’s. Hell, even Vik’s. You are a protector.”

I stared at her, wishing I could take faith in whatever observations she would share with me.

“Elias does for you what you do for us—always keeping an eye on you, watching you. Your comfort is his priority. He genuinely cares if you’re happy.”

“But his father…and the video.”

“Let me address each one separately. His father is an evil asshole. Him. Not Elias. Ozias is a bastard we need to put down. But Elias is not his father.”

I liked her comparison, separating the two. The more sheelaborated on her opinions, the more swayed I was to believe her.

“And the recording,” she continued. “I’m suspicious why we only have that small clip, not the whole conversation. Doesn’t it make you wonder why the soldier didn’t want us to see and hear the whole thing?”

“Vik will have the answer to that question soon enough,” I said, looking down at the rings on my left hand. “And for Eli, I will know the truth based on how he handles this situation with Ozias. He’ll prove you wrong if he follows his father’s orders.”

“And if he doesn’t?” she pressed. “If he stops or tries to prevent his father from seeing his plan through?”

“Then I’ll reconsider and have faith that he does love me.”

Layana smiled a bit wider, pleased. She patted my knee. “I respect that. Given the circumstances and how hard we’ve worked and planned to get to this point, I would decide the same.”

“Thank you.” Her support helped.

“I mean,I’venever been in love. It looks like I won’t have a chance to discover it, but I can imagine that maybe love overrules hate in some regards.”

I hope so.I badly wanted to think that Elias’s love would triumph over anything his father wanted him to do or go along with.

Deep down, I wanted so strongly to trust my husband. I yearned to believe him after all we’d managed to build. He’dbroken down and smashed apart so many barriers to my heart, and now all of this. It was cruel. It was unfair. And I hated that I wanted to stomp and rage that both circumstances shouldn’t interfere with my future.

Because that alternative was too bitter and sour of a reality to accept, now that I’d let Elias in and given him carefully dosed-out permission to creep into my heart and mind, it would be far more painful to endure the aftermath of not having him so close.

“How mad will Cali be at us for leaving her out of this discussion? I’m sure she will have some choice words.”

I rolled my eyes. “If by choice, you mean the colorful string of acronyms I can’t decipher. I’m sure she will.”

“Actually…” She frowned, glancing at her phone. “I haven’t heard from her at all today.”

That wasn’t like her. She kept us in the loop on everything.

“She wasn’t at the house?” I checked.

She shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t either. Vik and I were out talking, and then I went out last night, pretending to be a college girl, and ended up with too many secrets to keep to myself. I slept in after the drinking”—at my glare, she sighed—“not that much drinking. Still, I thought waiting until today to tell you would make more sense. I didn’t want to barge into the ‘just married and we like to fuck in the kitchen’ house that late to talk.”

“Are you kidding me?”

She shrugged. “The staff knows it all,Avra.”

“The house was empty,” I surmised.

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