"I'm sure you'll get the girls settled. You can find a place for them in Detroit, if that's what you're looking for. I'm sure some of them might take off because of what happened... but it wouldn't be so bad to streamline things. Easier to manage for you, at least."

Gavin glanced back at the house before returning to his coffee.

"I felt better out here, honestly. If I was inside, I'd just be tossing around wondering if another hitsquad was on the way. Out here, at least I got to be the first line of defense. And now I'm exhausted enough that I'll sleep fine."

Emily kissed him; Gavin returned it gently, but he didn't escalate it.

"And I... well, I wouldn't have felt right to visit you. Port Huron's my wife's house."

Finishing the coffee, he lifted the plate and fork and began eating.

"We'll be fine, Em. Right now... we've both got people to look after. You've got the girls, and I've got my family. Now... I'm looking after you, too. But I think we're similar enough that neither one of us is going to be able to focus on ourselves, or each other, until we've taken care of things for them."

Gavin nodded, seeing the understanding in her eyes.

"We'll get through this."

Emily froze for a moment, blinking.

"Gavin, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

There had been no explanation when everything hit the fan. Emily and the girls were woken up in the night and rushed into cars, then onto a plane, and they took off in the dark while the Las Vegas they knew burned below them. Emily had worried so much about getting the girls to a safe place that she hadn't bothered to ask where she was taken later. 

Knowing what she knew now, it was a bit more clear to Emily what she needed to do next; and Gavin was right. Her main concern was the girls. This wasn't the place for her. She pulled her cardigan a bit more tightly around her shoulders. 

"Aurora offered to take us to town to check on the girls, if you want to come along; but, I'm going to stay at the Bed and Breakfast with them and start trying to figure out what we're going to do next. Betty has family in Ohio, I think she wants to go there. I know they're all probably nervous and confused."

Gavin smiled reassuringly.

"No way you could have known. It made sense as a destination."

He ate... well, at least some of his breakfast as he briefly reviewed Emily's plans with her.

"Give us a call, let me know where this bed and breakfast is, and once I know the kids and grandkids-"

God damn it I feel so old saying that.

"- are safe I'll swing by and check in with you. Either way, I'll call."

He embraced her, kissing her forehead before picking up his plate.

"Probably good for me to get some sleep. Take care of the girls, and I'll see you on the other side, Em. That's a promise."

Smiling, he headed back toward the house with Emily. Once there, he'd greet his family and find some bed out of the way to sleep. When he was rested, he figured that Aurora and Billy would be getting tired again. Someone, at least, would always be watching out.

As Emily disappeared, Aurora stared after her only a moment and then said, "I'll... be right back."  With that Aurora went up the stairs.

The moment her back disappeared upstairs, Billy tossled his daughter's hair and handed lil' Gav off to his Godmother and kissed Addie's cheek with little more than "Addie."  Giving her a knowing look that spoke mountains of worry for his wife.

Aurora had entered one of the rooms on the second floor.  She walked over to the wall she'd discovered was false the first time she'd come here.  After only a moment she'd opened a panel to reveal a small compressed space in which locked file cabinets were kept.  Without hesitation she produced her lock picks and went straight to work.

Billy got to the door silently, Aurora was engrossed in pulling out manilla files and reading their contents.  She was flipping through things fast, furious, clearly searching for something... but what?  What was even in this secret hiding place Billy had not discovered on his own trips here?  Billy crossed the room and came up right behind his wife to whisper, "Whatcha doin?"

Aurora lept out of her skin.  She prepared to pull her gun as she opened her mouth to scream.  Billy grabbed hold of her to prevent anything tragic from occurring.  Amazingly he muffled her scream preventing it from summoning the Old Wolf to her 'rescue' thus preventing his untimely demise.

After only an instant of struggle, Aurora realized who had her and her body relaxed inside her husband's arms.  His voice was soft, and amused as he whispered near to her ear, "On any other day ..."

He removed his hand from her mouth.

Aurora glared indignantly at him.  "On any other day you'd NEVER have been able to sneak up on me like that, you oaf!  Now put me down!"

"Oaf?"  He said putting her down.  "You wound me."

"Not yet I haven't."  She said kneeling down with a smirk to pick up the papers she'd dropped.

"So... what exactly are we looking for?"  He asked again.

"I found it."  She said putting the papers into the manilla folder.

"What?"

She met her husband's gaze, "The Ivory Tower."

Billy tilted his head to the side with confusion, "I fully admit that I'm an idiot... but I'd really appreciate it if you didn't purposefully make me feel that way."  He was only half-joking.

"Don Isabella Luciano's crew.  I was a baby back then.  Our father auth'd my mom but he didn't give her just any task... he gave her all this, a legacy.  A crew that had been in the hands of several women before her - a crew with a sordid history both glorious and somewhat infamous.  I knew it existed but I didn't know where.  Will searched Hollowpoint at one point for it, but when we came up empty handed I assumed that meant they'd given it all over to the DiCaprio family in Sicily or that it was destroyed."

She shook her head and explained, "Back when I thought Santino and I might be a thing, I wanted to know what we were going to be getting into.  I mean, if I was going to be his wife and he was going to come here to the USA and take over the assets of a crew that his birth mother started... well, yeah, I was curious.  Will and I were two bored kids with nothing but time on our hands to get into trouble with when Dad was off gambling."

She chuckled thinking of the trouble she and Will used to get into and then she found herself missing Hollowpoint again.

"Anyway, if we're going to be here, I wanted to know what assets mom had hidden around the city... things we could make use of and this, Billy, is the jackpot.  Mom always felt the Tower was her greatest failure, but maybe... maybe it wasn't?  Maybe she put all this together for someone else to use... namely, us.  For our family."

She put the folder back into the cabinet.

"I didn't have time to open this up the last time I was here, but I had to know for sure what I suspected was true.  My mom is ... was a packrat.  She never gets rid of anything and I was right.  I think it's all here.  Every asset, every contact's name... it's years old but some of this might be worth really digging into."

"A conversation for another time then."  Billy said watching her close and relock the cabinet.

Aurora nodded, "Soon."  She agreed.  Then, carefully she closed the panel to rehide the file cabinets and their contents.

_______________
 

Brigitte had pancake all over her face when she saw Grampa Gavin enter the house, "Grampa!"  she squealed.  "Aunt Addie made pancakes AND they are even better than ... "

"Better than what?"  Billy said coming down the stairs, his voice mockingly angry.

"Oh Lord."  Aurora sighed from behind him.  "Don't say it, Brigitte or we'll never get Papa to make breakfast for us again .. or worse he'll never stop trying to beat Aunt Addie and all we'll ever eat is breakfast."

To which Brigitte replies, "I like breakfast."

"And that,"  Billy chuckled, "Is how you know she's my daughter."

Gavin patted Brigitte on the back gently as he passed her by, his eyes weary and ready for sleep.

"Good night, Grampa."  Brigitte said with a mouth full of pancakes.

Seeing her father eyeing the bedrooms longingly, Aurora kissed her Dad's cheek.  "Sweet dreams, Dad."  Looking to Addie, "You'd better let me feed him or he's going to get pissed off soon.  He's as bad as his father when it comes to late breakfast.  Aren't you, my little Bambino?!?  He's a growing boy.  He's gonna be big and strong like his dad one day, aren't you!?!"  

Aurora chuckled and kissed her boy as she took him from Addie's arms, never remembering or realizing just how much her words and actions with her own son, echoed those of her mother's.