Isabella reached into her purse as she stood inside the phone booth.  Lightening spider webbed across the summer night's sky.  Thunder rolled.  Rain hadn't come but she could taste the pent up energy, barely held back as she trembled, unfolding the small bit of paper with a single name and a phone number scrawled onto it.

It was an impossibly late hour.  The witching hour some called it.  Isabella looked out at her bodyguards who stood with their backs to her, watching for any sign of trouble... but she knew the truth.  They couldn't see the trouble because they were drowning in it.  She deposited her coins and spun the rotary dial and waited for the sounds of the line connecting to another phone on the east coast.

One ring.

A second.

"Please..."  She whispered.

A third and then the receiver was picked up.

"Gavin?"  Her voice wasn't recognizable to herself - she sounded terrified, breathless, not at all the person she prided herself in being.  And yet, of all the options left to her in such a moment - Gavin seemed like PRECISELY the person who she needed to talk to.  Only he could possibly understand this madness... or at least she hoped that (with his checkered & difficult past) he might be the only other person on the planet who wouldn't be shaken to his core by the arrival of a dead man back into her life.

It was an impossibly late hour, which meant Gavin was just getting ready for bed. He had a whiskey in hand and was nodding off in an old beaten up chair when he heard his phone ring. Cursing, he snapped awake. He considered ripping the phone out of the wall. Again. Although the last time he'd done that, Tara said she wouldn't pay to fix it anymore. He sighed and picked it up on the third ring.

"Gavin?"

Well that didn't sound like Tara...

"Yep. Who's this?"

"It's Bella."  She said, wrapping her arms around herself as the thunder rumbled over head.  "I... I'm sorry for calling so late, but some shit... it's... some very bad shit has happened and I..."  She tried to make herself say it, to say that Elias was alive.  She should be so happy.  She should be so damn happy and at his bedside but she was was in tears on the phone with her lover.

She sobbed. "I didn't know who else to call - I can't tell my crew... not yet... I don't even know what to tell them..."  She was near hysterical and failing at her attempts to keep herself together long enough to make the words come out her mouth.  Who the fuck ever dealt with such a thing?  Such a stupid, impossible thing... she was an impossibly stupid woman that she'd been so badly fooled!  That she'd allowed herself to be made to believe he was dead and all the while he was tortured!  TORTURED!  God, he'd turned on them... he must have!  It didn't matter that Elias was alive because as soon as her father learned of all this - he'd surely kill him and there as NOTHING she'd do to stop it.

No longer able to keep it all in, Isabella leaned away from the phone and vomited the contents of her stomach outside the phone booth with Gavin still on the other end of the line.

Gavin stood up when she said "it's Bella". By the time she got to "some shit " he'd shrugged on his shoulder holster, and by the time she got to "bad shit" he'd checked and holstered his gun. He kicked his shoes on during the pause, and was switching hands to pull his suit jacket on when she really started talking.

His nostrils flared and he looked around the room. Shit, this did not sound like the woman he'd known in Montreal. And then he heard her get sick.

"Look, Bella. I don't know what the fuck is going on, but if you can't tell your crew about it and you're this upset, you need to get the hell out of dodge until you've got a handle on things. Or you're safe. Or whatever. Take your two bodyguards with you and hop on a plane. Give me the name of a city and I'll be in the air in 25 minutes."

"I can be at Chicago O'hare inside an hour."  She said coughing and wiping the sick from her mouth. 

"I'll wait for you by the gate coming in from Philly, but I HAVE to be back with the sun.  Promise me, no matter what I tell you... you can come with me if you want, but I have to come back."  She paused and added, "Lives are on the line.  Promise me, Gavin?"

"Promise me, no matter what I tell you... you can come with me if you want, but I have to come back."

Gavin froze. He never made promises. It was part of his code. In fact, he'd made three serious promises in his entire life. One was to his mother, to save her. One was to his sister, to protect her. One was to Jack Mezzo.

His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"Lives are on the line. Promise me, Gavin?"

He closed his eyes. Silence.

"I promise."

Isabella's plane landed at Chicago O'Hare Airport and she taxied over to the gate coming in from Philadelphia flanked by Joey and Nails.  She brought them with her because they knew the deal with Gavin and she suspected Gavin would do better with fewer surprises considering the nature of their visit.

Her hair was barely drying when she could see Gavin getting off his plane.  Her long raven hair hung flat on either side of her face, framing her milk-white skin like that of someone who had seen a ghost.  In truth, she sort of had.  Her bodyguards turned their backs the second Gavin came in arms reach of her and she threw her arms around him, burying her face into his chest and squeezing him with the arms of a desperate woman holding onto a buoy in a hurricane.

She said nothing at first, just held him so tight to her that she could feel his scars through his shirt.  It was an odd thing to bring her comfort, but there it was.  The smell of him, the sound of his heart racing and his steady breath, it slowly soothed her enough to say, "We can't talk here..."  Quietly.  "They could be watching."

For the first time in years, he didn't fall asleep on the plane when traveling alone. Maybe it was because he had his gun pointed at Tara's pilot. Maybe it was the fact that he was thinking. Either way, it was a sleepless flight- but at least it was a fast one.

He tried to smile at her when he saw her, make some comment about whether she'd crashed another car, but the sight of her chased his words away. She was fucking rattled, and when she grabbed onto him he was so confused that he just let his arms fall around her.

What the hell was going on? He looked around them for people paying attention, spies, sniper rifles, whatever.

"Who the hell would be watching? And what's goin' on? And how long do you have- do we have to hop back on a plane to Detroit right now? Or do you have time?

"Feds."  She said softly, knowing damn well that Gavin would understand that airports were places where the G-Men could easily blend in even at this ungodly hour.  Men in suits and with guns were not unknown in airports.  She didn't dare say more here with the technology they allegedly were using against Mafioso these days to make their court cases. 

"Two hours here, tops.  Then I need to be in the air back home.  You pick the place.  Just get me out of here so we can talk - my men will stay a safe distance away but help watch our six."  

She seemed so spooked that he wouldn't be shocked if "they" were ghosts or monsters or some shit. Feds? Feds he could deal with. Well, kind of. He took her hand and led her out of the airport, he flagged down a cab quickly; Bella practically collapsed inside. He winked at the bodyguards, knowing they could easily catch another cab and follow. At this hour, there were more than a few just idling and doing nothing.

Leaning forward, Gavin spoke to the cabbie. 

"Place to talk a walk. Outside. Maybe near water."

"In the middle of the night?"

Gavin bristled.

"Oh I'm sorry, I forgot I was paying you for your fucking opinion."

He slammed the barrier shut between them and the driver. As they drove, he realized he still hadn't let go of Bella's hand. The cabbie sighed and took off. Within a few minutes, he'd dropped them off at a place called the Chippewa Woods. It was a strange contrast, being in the woods and in the middle of the city, but Gavin's instinct was that Bella was so rattled that stars and a river would do more good than cooping her up somewhere. When they got outside, he'd ask what was going on.

She was happy to see the cab lights disappear and to hear the water distant in the darkness.  The trees gave them cover from sight and for a moment, if she tried to ignore the sounds of the city even at this hour, she could pretend they were back in Canada.  How she wished she'd never picked up her phone to call home.  She wouldn't have to know what she knew now and she wouldn't have to tell Gavin this.

"I got a letter a day ago."  She said as he walked with her.  "It was delivered to me by Elias' father who... as it turns out, had been recruited into my crew by one of my hands."  She realized then that sudden that made more sense.  If Stephen was flipped by the feds too then maybe that justified Enzo's presence.

"Enzo, his father, went to your dad's school for parenting."  She rolled her eyes assuming she didn't need to say more about the sort of man Enzo was.  "So needless to say I wasn't ready to fall into his arms and accept his comfort over the loss of Eli... not that he was offering.  Instead he told me he had a note slid under his door.  I wish had brought it with me, but, the letter was penned by Elias.  I'd bet my life on it and it claimed I'd been tricked.  It claimed he was still alive & in hiding; that he wanted to meet with me."

Gavin walked with his hands in his pockets, focused on the road immediately ahead of him. The night was chilled- and part of him wanted to offer Bella his jacket, but strolling around with a visible shoulder holster wasn't the way to make friends with Chicago. Besides, if she wanted something, she'd ask. His more mundane thoughts quickly vanished as she began her story. He listened without reacting, at least until the bittersweet smirk at 'your dad's school for parenting'. 

Elias... alive?

"Seems too good to be true. And unlikely, considering your family's resources. Where was he? What did he say happened?"

"He looks..."  She put a hand to her mouth and then ran it up into her raven hair.  "His... it's him, but he's unwell.  He's been... tortured."  She wet her lips.  "For months."  She admits, trembling, her breath quickening.

"I... I... I took him home.  I put him in the car and I took him back to the Tower and I had my guys go get my Left Hand.  He's a doctor."  She began shaking her her head.  "He says, he says to Elias that he told him that he needed to go to a hospital... as if he knew and ... and didn't tell me that Elias was alive."

Both of her hands went into her hair, pulling. "So there I am... watching him clean up Elias and my head is spinning.  He's alive.  He was tortured because I couldn't identify my own FUCKING FIANCEE'S BODY..."  She grit her teeth to prevent sobbing.  She didn't know if she was more angry or sad - emotions weren't definable in this moment, really all there was was this lung crushing weight settled upon her chest.  It was bigger than any single emotion, not so easily labeled or dismissed.

Isabella roared at the night sky like an animal.  She wanted to kill something, with her bare hands and she couldn't say if it was Elias, or Stephen or every g-man in the whole country.  Hell maybe killing Gavin would have helped her at this point, she almost wanted to taste blood she was so blinded by a need for someone else to know the maddening and senseless feelings she was overcome with.

"They kept him.  They must have broken him... they FUCKING BROKE HIM and sent him to me to be a spy - a mole in my OWN FUCKING FAMILY!"  She began to pace like a caged predator, seeking the first crack in the door to bolt through and throat some lesser beast. 

"They think I won't kill him..."  she purred the words, they felt wrong even as she spoke them, but she wasn't beyond believing that was her own fear wanting her to curl up and die.  She would do ANYTHING for the family and now the FBN, that fucking agent... what was his damn name?!?  This was HIS doing! 

"I LOVED HIM!"  She raged, her still damp hair flying about her as she spins to look at Gavin.  "And they send him back to me like this... they want me to believe he escaped - HE CAN'T FUCKING WALK ON HIS OWN!!!"  Tears rolled down her cheeks.  "And ... and Stephen... OH STEPHEN!  He fucking KNEW!  My own left hand!"

Isabella balled up her fist, thinking of Stephen trying so hard to get her to 'let out her anger' and 'heal' at her party... in disgust she moved to punch a tree, needing to hit something - anything!  Isabella threw her weight forward, all her force and energy coming at a single point and then - it stopped.  

The smacking sound of flesh on flesh was NOT what she had expected.  Nor did she expect Gavin to suddenly be in front of her, nor that he would expertly catch her fist mid swing.  In any other situation she would have taken a moment to express how impressed she was.  Instead, her whole arm shook with rage.  Her face was a twisted mask of fury and sorrow - a bitter thing that only someone who had been betrayed by someone who was supposed to love them could possibly know.

"Cut that shit out!"  His eyes locked on hers.  His tone that of a man giving an order he expected to be followed.  

"He flipped on us..."  She said through gritted teeth, struggling against Gavin's grip - eyes wild with near madness.

He replied in his same commanding tone.  "Punching trees is nothing like punching a moose."  

Isabella paused.  The memory of that damn moose, the shadow of a smile on his face caused her to stop struggling.  Her body, exhausted from the war it was waging on itself, finally yielded to Gavin's superior strength and size.

"My father..."  She said in a near whisper, her lower lip trembling, "He'll do worse than kill him - oh God... I have to kill him, I can't let my father know.  Oh Gavin - help me..." 

Gavin listened silently. She didn't seem to doubt that it was him, at least. The part of her LHM not telling her something so important was obviously concerning. It was easy to see conspiracies. 

He almost grabbed her hands when she seemed close to pulling her hair, but he left them in his pocket. 

His hands came out of his pockets, though, when she threw her head back and exploded at the sky. She seemed to totally wild that he almost tackled her, and he tensed up, ready to move as he listened to her primal shouts of pain and rage.

I loved him. Past tense. 

If he can barely move, any idea of escape did seem extremely unlikely. Gavin bit his lower lip.

When she moved, Gavin was just a split second faster, grabbing her fist before she broke it against the tree. The back of his own hand slammed into the wood, but his focus was on Bella as he stared her down. Her face was almost bestial, and he tried to break through to her. 

"Cut that shit out!"  

"Punching trees is NOTHING like punching a moose."  

Remind of something else. Better times. For once, Gavin didn't want her to live in the moment. This moment, at least, wasn't something she could handle right now. He held her until her breathing slowed again.

"Come on."

His voice was softer, and he took her hand and led her on the path along the river.

"Let's walk. We'll run through your options. Lay them out for you."

He paused.

"I don't know these people. Elias. Your LHM. Your family. So I'm not makin' judgments here, yea?"

Taking a deep breath, he began.

"To start, he could be telling the truth. Maybe he did escape. In the shape you mentioned him being in, it doesn't seem likely. But it's at least possible. In that case, you either pick up where you left off or you have a hard conversation and tell him you're a different person now."

He frowned.

"To be honest... his story doesn't really sound likely. When things sound too good to be true, in my experience they usually are. Now again, I don't know shit here. But the odds of some feds pulling off something like this under the noses of your family... and then the odds of him just escaping? In the shape you described him as? If Jack asked me for my security assessment... I'd have to tell him to assume that the guy flipped. People don't get tortured for a few months and then let out for good behavior, you know?"

"In that case... well, you've got a hard decision. You could kill him. You mentioned your father would do worse. Torturing and killing him won't do nothin'. So if you're going to kill him, just do it. You can do it yourself, if you feel like you have to, or you can have someone else pull the trigger. Someone you can trust. No shame in that."

He paused again. 

"If you don't kill him, it'd still be pretty damn hard to keep him around, unless you believe his story. So you could always send him away. Out of the country. If he comes back or tries to get in touch with you again, he's done. That sort of thing."

"But here's the thing, Bella. Whatever you choose, you're strong enough to survive it."

They walked in silence for a while, and Gavin waited to hear her thoughts. 

Isabella strongly suspected, in some distant and more logical part of her brain, that Gavin was so good at making her calm down because he knew what it was to walk around as angry as she felt most of the time. 

She'd learned long ago that her pretty smile made the world bend to her desires... that her tears could make people doubt their own eyes and ears... but the rage at her father's absence for her life was a constant.  Not all the boys kisses, nor the fastest cars she drove, or all the glasses of gin in the world could drown the pain of a little girl who felt abandoned to a boarding school on the opposite side of the country from her mother (a woman who claimed she wanted her to 'be better' in life than she'd been) and the father who never even knew she existed.

She was silent a long while.  Just listening to the sound of the 'woods' and the distant city.  She was numb.  She'd buried Elias and spent months mourning him.  She'd finally let him go - begun to think about a future in which she might be happy and maybe not so alone; and now he was back.  While that was hard enough to sort out... the FBN forcing Elias to flip and possibly having gotten to her left hand man was much worse.  

"I have to hear the explanation.  I don't know that I'll buy it, if I don't... I could tell my father and let him handle it."  She shook her head, as if answering her own statement with a denial that she could EVER leave Elias' fate to Salvatore.  "But... I'd never sleep again."

She kicked a rock into the stream.  "I could send him to another crew... but he'd die.  Not because others would kill him, but if he survived flipping on the family it was only because he hoped I'd be there on the other side waiting for him.  I'd bet my life on the fact that the hope of us being together again is the one thing that gave him the power to survive... and for what?"  

Isabella arched an eyebrow.  Her voice was full of pity and self-loathing.  "So, he could die another way, the world hating him as much as his fucked up old man, knowing I didn't even wait for his fake body to be cold in the ground before I ..."  She stopped herself from insulting what happened with Gavin.  She actually stopped walking, suddenly realizing the man she was leaning on was a person whom she'd been intimate with - a man who, she very coldly, hadn't considered in all of this.

Her brown eyes softened, searching Gavin's face and body language for signs that she'd hurt him with this selfish outpouring.  Seeing nothing immediately she straightened herself and stood tall.  "I'll never regret our trip.  Not even having come back to me hail, whole, and unbroken by those bastards would have made me regret a single thing that we did.  In case that's somehow lost in all this I want to be blunt about that... I called you tonight because you helped me through what I thought would was the worst hell anyone should have to face emotionally."

The look in her eyes shifted, for a moment the anger and pain were gone.  Instead the woman he saw in Canada was looking back at him again, even if her voice still wavered with weariness.  "We... share something... and I don't have the right words for it, but I like it.  And I'm not sorry.  Not even a little."

In his brief time with Bella, Gavin found himself tapping into reactions he hadn't used it a long, long time. In the wake of his father's violence, he'd learned to distract and support his sister, and especially his mother. That he was responding to Bella in a way that reminded him of those days showed just how truly fucked up this situation was.

"Look, if what you said is true, about his hope of the two of you being together is what kept him going... that's a nice idea. But if you don't feel the same way, then those are fucking chains. I'm not going to tell you that you don't owe this guy anything. That's obviously not true. But you don't owe him everything. You've got no obligation to him, even if he didn't flip on you, because you're not the same person you were six months ago. And for the record, six months is more than enough time to process your grief. It's not like you got hitched two months after he died or anything."

He glanced over at her as she talked about their trip- about them.

"I'm glad I helped you, Bella... but I didn't give you anything that you didn't already have."

He paused, listening to her talking about what they shared. He stepped closer to her, his blue eyes focused on her. 

"Look, just... I have no fucking idea what you should do, except that it should be what you want. If it were me, I'd probably cut ties, assume it's a lie. But just... remember this. I think a lot of people see you as the princess, ya know? Your family is royalty, and there you are up in your tower. You've got servants. And a royal court. And all these knights who're trying to protect you, save you from the big dragon."

He leaned forward, speaking in her ear.

"Just remember... you're not the princess they want you to be. You're the fucking dragon. Whatever happens, you can fight it- and win."

For a moment the world stopped wobbling on it's axis and Isabella and Gavin stood on solid ground, eye to eye.  "I'm a fucking dragon..."  She quirked the corner of her mouth and put the finger tips of her right hand just above his heart, "What in the world does that make you in this analogy?"

For the first time that night, she saw something gleaming behind his eyes. The wolfish grin flashed as he leaned in to kiss her. Right before their lips touched, he half-whispered two words.

"The fire."

A breeze kicked up.  She could feel his body near to hers, warm and inviting.  As he breathed his words and came nearer for a kiss, she froze.  A part of her mind protested that she should not betray Elias in this way.  She knew he was alive now and anything she did - she did maliciously; for God's sake, she was wearing his grandmother's ring while she closed her eyes inviting Gavin's brazen behavior.  But that voice was tiny, far away and tired of fighting, so very tired.  He may have saw a dragon in her, but right now she was bit of dry brush consumed.

Her arms wrapped about his solid core and pulled him tight to her.  Passionately they devoured one another.  His fingers knit into strands of her hair.  She was his again- a part of him and it was a position she was becoming increasingly fond of.  Their lips parted just a moment to take in air they needed to survive. 

Isabella begged, "Please..."  for the second time in a single night, but this time not for promises, instead she desired action.

Gavin did not have to be asked twice.

His mouth slid away from hers and took hold of her ear lobe, a weakness he'd discovered on their trip to Montreal.  She whimpered, greedily tugging at his belt, pulling it free a bit at a time.  Her blouse came open, violently as Gavin violated any modesty that might have been left between them tonight.  Breathless she squirmed as he squeezed the fullness of her curves - all the while walking her slowly backwards towards a picnic table.

"You came."  She whispered, incandescent with feelings that blinded her to all the woes that had brought them together tonight.

"You're in for a lot more fun before that happens..."  He impishly quipped, lifting her up on to the table top.

"Gavin!"  she laughed, reclining her neck as he kissed his way down it.  "I... I mean... You came to me."

He stopped.  It was sudden and brutal - leaving Isabella wondering if she had so offended him that he'd walk away from her.  For an instant she was afraid.  His hands did not move, his sharp tongue didn't cut wise.  His sapphire eyes drove into her own.  She wondered if he was measuring whether or not she doubted that he would have have, or if he just wanted her to know he felt the same way she did - without having to say the words.  Either way, she was sure they both found what they wanted to see in each other's eyes & the plans he seemed to have to pleasure her for the bulk of their time together seemed to burn away.  The ineffable flame between them combusted anew; an incendiary force like the sun melting away all reason leaving behind two reckless souls en-rapt in their own inexplicable and very human needs.  

Still mostly dressed he slid himself between her thighs, aggressively pulling her tight to him.  Her legs and arms snaking about him and what had first been about hedonism or distraction to Isabella's mind was suddenly something much more intense.  Rising and falling at a frantic pace, they found their rhythm with practiced ease that stunned her to silence.  Gavin seemed to be in his own world, his fingers digging deep into her clothes and flesh; shockingly the pain of which only served to heighten her thrill.  She clung to him and let go letting her lover scorch away everything from her heart and mind with his savagery.  Whatever had brought this on - she wished she understood it so that it could be done again.  She liked the Gavin who put her pleasure first, but the Gavin who could not hold back his own desires for her... he was a sight to behold ...and to be savored.  

"You came to me."

When she called, he had responded instinctively, just as he had in his conversation with her. Bella had needed him.

And he had liked it.

It was that simple. He had liked being needed. It wasn't a particularly strange thought for most people, except that it was something he couldn't remember experiencing for a long, long time. For someone who prided himself on not coming when he was called, on not needing anyone and not having anyone need him, it was like a seismic shock that staggered him, and he felt a wave of confusion wash over him.

He froze as he looked at her, noticing the way the moonlight shone in her hair. Her looked into her luminous eyes, brimming with desire. Her body, perfect despite- no, because of- her scars.. He stared, like he was looking at her for the first time.

In the space of that single heartbeat, his entire world was knocked off its axis. Foundations that had been built decades ago felt a resounding boom- and dust and pebbles drifted downwards from ancient walls. 

Oh... Shit.

For some men, moments like this would paralyze them, or send them running. But as Gavin sensed his foundations shaking, he simply threw himself from the battlements with his arms out wide, giving himself over entirely to the moment and driving thoughts, questions, the past, and the future from his mind. He threw himself at Bella instinctively, losing himself in pure sensation. His hands, his tongue, his body became not extensions of his self, but his only self.

Bella had rested one hand on his scarred chest and gripped the back of his head with the other. He felt her back arch as he moved with her, as perfectly in sync as the tide- and Gavin Byrne allowed himself to get pulled away.