Page 51 of Twins for the Mafia Heir

“I-I need to tell you something, Achilles.”

He waits, looking troubled and more than a little impatient now. “What is it, Raleigh?” he asks. I flinch at the name.

Tell him your real one.Tell him you’re Emma Clarke.You can make him understand, but first you have totell him.

I swallow dryly. “I’m not-”

A door slams downstairs, and I jump right out of my skin. I’m almost grateful for the interruption- until I hear a whole stampede of footsteps come through the house.

What-

A woman shrieks. The sound of a gunshot interrupts her. Achilles snatches my wrist, but I’m already moving.

Ashwood House is under attack.

Chapter 27

Achilles

Isnatch Raleigh’s hand and pull her into a sprint down the hall as doors start slamming open downstairs and shouts ring through the halls. My mind is racing with a thousand shocked questions, but above all of them I’m thinking of Sidony.

Sidony- Raleigh- the escape route.

I throw Sidony’s door open as the first goons start coming up the stairs. Bullets fire below our feet, and Sidony shoots up in her bed.

Her eyes are enormous and her skin is deathly pale.

I will never forgive Fantasia for this, not as long as I breathe.

Sidony reaches for me, but I’m already scooping her and the plush she won’t let go of into my arms.

“Be very quiet,” I hiss to her, even though my daughter has never had trouble with that in her life.

Raleigh is at the door, holding it closed. Boots stomp at the far end of the hallway, and doors start being kicked open. They’re heading for us, but they’re not here yet. “Your gun,” she mouths to me, and I react almost on instinct. I’d never hand my weapon over to another person when my own life is in danger, but more than that is at stake right now. My daughter is in my hands, and my priority is being her shield.

And Raleigh… Raleigh has proven herself more capable than I imagined she would be at every turn.

Before I release my gun into her hands, I ask, “Do you-”

She doesn’t let me finish. I’ve only ever seen her eyes this grave once before. The day we met, when I was the invader and she was ready to die for her own advisors. “Yes,” she says simply, and I believe her. And as soon as the gun is in her hands, she turns off the safety and cocks it without even looking. “Which way?”

Not out the front door, that’s for damn sure. More gunfire explodes below us, and I can only hope the men Fantasia sent into my home are just being trigger happy. The staff have their own escape route, and we’ve all drilled endlessly for raids, but mistakes happen.

“The wardrobe,” I whisper, and go ahead of her toward Sidony’s. Raleigh keeps the gun pointed at the ground, but her two-handed grip is informed and her steps are light and silent.

She’s been properly and extensively trained, and perhaps seen combat too. Even a person who knows a gun inside and out wouldn’t automatically be this cool-headed in the face of immediate danger.

I open the door of the wardrobe and press carefully against one of the wooden panels at the back. It pops loose, and I pull the back of the wardrobe open like a folding cabinet to reveal the wall behind it. Another prodding touch, and a door in the drywall swings open on a narrow path between the walls of the rooms. Sidony clings tight to me like a monkey, leaving both my arms free to carefully climb inside. Raleigh waits patiently, facing the door with the gun half raised.

A door slams open, and she flinches but doesn’t panic. From the sounds in the hall, they’re searching the room right beside ours. I’m in the wall fully and have stepped aside so she can climb in too.

“Raleigh,now,” I hiss. Obediently, she slips into the wardrobe as easily as a ghost, closing the door behind her and plunging us into total darkness. I hear her climb through the back at the same time the door to the room slams open, and I close the folding wooden panel and lock it with a sliding bolt just as the wardrobe is flung wide. Slowly, breath held captive in my chest, I quietly swing the drywall door closed, and lock it with a second sliding bolt.

Our footsteps in the wall might make a suspicious sound, like a rat scurrying through the building’s bones, so we have no choice but to sit and wait until the men searching the room move on. I keep my hand over the back of Sidony’s head, praying she’ll remain quiet when it most counts. I can feel her shallow pants against my neck, her little heart racing faster than a rabbit’s against mine. Raleigh is so quiet beside me that if I hadn’t heard her climb into the wall space before, I wouldn’t know she was here but for the heat of her.

A fist knocks hard against the back of the wardrobe. We all flinch, Raleigh pressing her body closer to my side. I run fingers down her arm until I find her hand, and she immediately clutches mine. My lungs feel like they’re going to explode, but I don’t dare breathe yet. The sliding bolt will keep the wardrobe panel from opening unless excessive force is used, but there should be no suspicion that this wardrobe is anything but an ordinary wardrobe. There should be no reason to break it open.

It’s just a wardrobe, you bastard, I think furiously.It’s just a wardrobe. Turn around and look somewhere else.

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