“A?”
“Yeah?”
“Wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”
I reel back, my eyes wide. “What do you mean?”
He leans forward, clasping his hands, his elbows on his knees. “You know exactly what I mean,” he says, his voice low. “You tell me you’re moving out all of a sudden and I have no idea where it’s come from.” I grip my hands in my lap. “If it’s the way I’ve been recently, then it’s going to change.”
“It’s not that,” I reply, my voice small.
I look down at my feet, feeling the burn of tears and willing them to stay back. I can’t break down now, I’ve kept it together for too long to let it all out right now.
“Then what the hell is it!” he thunders.
I swallow, looking back up at him where he’s now standing and pacing the floor in front of me.
“Tris, calm down,” Harmony says.
“No.” His gaze meets mine, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “I know there’s been something going on. I asked Nate to look into it, and you know what he found?” My eyes widen even more at the sound of his name coming from Tris’s lips. “Nothing, but he told me there was more to it.” He waits a beat. “I want to know.”
I’m shaking my head and not even realizing it. Is that why Nate started to come around? To find out what’s going on? For Tristan?
No. He wouldn’t do that; the things he said and has done don’t marry up with him only wanting to find out what’s going on.
Closing my eyes, I steel myself, standing up and taking a deep breath. When my eyes open, I know my wall is in place as I tell him, “It’s time for me to move on. I want to try something different; move onto bigger and better things.”
“So you want to work for another family?” he asks, his brows drawn down into a frown.
“No, I want to discover something more, maybe go down a different career path.”
“I don’t get it, A. Everything has been working just fine the last six years.”
“I know it has,” I say softly. “But it’s time now. You and Harmony are together and you don’t need me hanging around here.”
“Amelia,” Harmony announces, standing up and walking toward me. “I’d love for you to stay. You’re more than a nanny to the kids and Tris.”
I swallow down the building lump in my throat.
“You’re like a little sister to me, A.”
“And you’re the brother I never had,” I choke out. “But I have to move on now.” I step toward him, halting as I finally say, “This is my week’s notice. I’ll be moving out next Saturday.”
I block out whatever he says as I walk out of the living room and through the kitchen to the pool house where I lock myself away and close the curtains.
I know he doesn’t understand right now, and I hope he’ll never find out, because if he does it means they’ll all be in more danger. I don’t know what I’d do if any of them got hurt because of me.
“We’re getting a lot of high-profile clients lately and unfortunately that means our pro-bono cases have had to take a back seat, which we don’t want.” Marina walks to the front of the table and everyone’s attention is on her. She knows how to work a room. “We need three associates to take on the pro-bono cases and I’m leaving it up to you all to decide who those three people will be.”
She pauses and everyone looks around at each other before Jamie, one of our junior associates, rolls his eyes and puts up his hand.
“Excellent. Anyone else want to volunteer before you get voluntold?”
My pocket—or more accurately, my cell—vibrates for another ten seconds for the fifth time since we’ve been in this staff brief. I desperately want to answer it because it might be Amelia. I haven’t heard from her properly apart from a few random messages in the last three days, but I’ve just been too busy to go over and see her.
The vibrating stops and I raise my head back up to see Marina pointing out two of our interns. “Laura, Sarah. You’re on pro-bono with Jamie. Murphy has all the case files you’ll need.” They nod reluctantly before I’m distracted by another vibration, this time a short one.
As the meeting is coming to a close anyway, I pull my cell out under the table and frown down at the number of the messages and calls I’ve been getting.