Page 73 of Heart of a Villain

He smoothed her hair back away from her forehead. Considering he was found abandoned in a hotel as an infant and was subsequently raised by the housekeeper who found him, resisting the idea of twins immediately seemed foolish.

“What else did you find?” he asked.

“Tons of stories, contemporary and back in the day, and not only of twins adopted separately. In the United States, Spain, the South Pacific, the Caribbean—there were all stories about scandals involving babies.”

He stroked his chin, and the more he thought, the more sense it made. To everyone else, Ayesha and Sayeda were identical. According to the two women, they could see differences, though slight, in their appearances, but they were essentially identical.

“Baby, I’ve seen siblings who look a lot alike,” Ari went on, “but I have a twin. I know what it’s like to have a twin. I watch them. They move together. They gravitate toward one another. Hell, they even have the same taste in men. Dark-haired, good-looking, sarcastic goofballs.”

“Don’t let Joel hear you say that.”

She grinned.

“What about you and Mo?” he asked. “Do you think you look exactly alike, or do you notice small differences outside of,” he wrapped a curl around his finger, “the way you wear your hair?”

“We see differences. You don’t?”

“I mean, me and Giorgio can tell the two of you apart, but you’re still pretty much mirror images.”

“So, what do you think about my theory?” she asked. “Stupid?”

“Not even close. The thing is, if they’re twins, that would mean they have the same father and mother. Do you think that’s Mora Bentley or Eesh’s mother?”

Ari’s head slowly bobbed, the space between her brows bunching. “You know, I was going to say I didn’t know, but me and Mo had a conversation about something else related to Eesh and Sayeda. Well, technically, we talked about Mora Bentley. The way you’ve explained it to me, Mora has a deep, deep hatred for Aron Price. An ultimate betrayal type of hatred.”

“Because, as the story goes, he cheated on her with Eesh’s mother, the flexible yoga instructor.”

“But I was thinking about how I’d feel if you cheated on me.”

“Why?”

“For research.”

“I won’t.”

“Never say nev?—”

“Ari, don’t play with me.”

“So aggressive,” she said, giggling. “Okay, so hypothetically speaking, if you ever cheated on me and got another woman pregnant, I would be livid, yeah. But do you know what’s worse?”

She and Mo might have been twins, but he and Ari had been in each other’s lives, on a near daily basis, for over a decade. Much of that time, when they weren’t joined at the pelvis, they were joined at the hip. It was why, in moments like these, he could almost hear her thoughts.

“It would be worse if she found out that he was cheating while she was pregnant,” he finished.

She aimed an index finger at him. “Exactly. That kind of vitriol says, ‘That lying ass bastard. I’m going to get back at him. I’m going to fuck him up. Rip out his heart.’”

“By denying him access to his kids. Shit.” He stroked the soft hill of her cheek, and she lightly stroked his thigh, wrinkling his shorts. “But there’s a hitch. Eventually, he went to live with Eesh full-time. Why would he stop searching? If it was Thandie or Ty, I wouldn’t stop looking for them until I was dead.”

“Or you found out they were.”

“Shit, you’re right. I mean, she’s done it before. She lied about Sayeda being alive.”

“Because if Adrían knew Sayeda was still alive, he would have tracked and hunted her down,” Ari explained. “I’m sure, even if he didn’t find her, he would have believed Ayesha was Sayeda if it wasn’t for Theo and Josiah.”

“The DNA’s due back any day now.”

She took his hand, set it on the side of her face, and held it in place. “I bet the DNA’s a perfect match.”

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