Page 70 of Twins for the Mafia Heir

That’s the look he gives me before he does something absolutely insane.

“I’m going back to London,” he announces.

I saw this coming, of course. His old mum was the only thing that kept his ass planted in this safe house for the last year in the first place. Otherwise, I’m sure he would have come up with some poorly thought out plan to sneak back into Wesley Hall and confront Fantasia.

Unfortunately, I’m in the same situation- displaced and on Fantasia’s bad side. That doesn’t hurt any less now than it did several weeks ago, but the pain has begun to distill itself intosomething new. The inklings of a plan Piers would certainly be proud of.

I might not be able to fix what I did to Emma, but there is something material I can do about my sister.

“I should go first,” I say, and Piers’s head whips toward me.

“Wait- you’re not going to tell me no?”

“I never told you that you couldn’t leave,” I say tightly. “I just said it would be very, very stupid if you did. But now…” I look down at the churned up dirt beneath our feet. We’re three feet into a six foot hole, with hours of work left to go. Piers looks out over the horizon, eyes squinted against the wind, his usually vibrant emotions hidden from me. A muscle ticks in his jaw.

Now, there’s nothing keeping him here anymore. And while I could deepen my roots here in Edinburgh and start a new life with Sidony… I don’t think that’s what either of us wants.

Every day, she asks me where ‘Raleigh’ is and when she’s coming back. Every day, she asks when we’ll be able to go back to Ashwood House. Time might eventually dull how much she misses the person and the place. How muchImiss them. But just the same, to live our lives in hiding wouldn’t be worthwhile either.

Sidony deserves to live a life free of fear. And I deserve… to live.

I clear my throat. “I need to catch up with my contacts, first and foremost. Many of the people in London know me better than Fantasia, and I can only hope they’ll be glad to see me. Then I should check on the status of Ashwood House, and if it can be used as a viable meeting place.”

“For who?” Piers asks, then grimaces a little. “Where the hell are the other Ashwoods anyway?”

It’s my turn to grimace. “Many of them were happy to overthrow the Warwicks. They were less happy to accept Fantasia as their new leader. Most of them scattered backto their own residences around the country, or left England altogether. I’ve kept in contact with them, but whether they’ll come when I call is an entirely different story. And how to get them into Wesley Hall without Fantasia being aware-”

I look over at Piers, suddenly searching. “What do you want, Piers?” I demand. His eyebrows raise at my sudden urgency, and I clarify. “Do you even want the cursed place?”

He looks back to the horizon, thoughtful. Piers isn’t like us, like Fantasia and I. He didn’t spend the first seventeen years of his life being raised to rule a mafia house. He could walk away from this world and leave it all behind with relative ease. He’s charming, stubborn, and capable, and would probably land on his feet no matter where he went.

But there’s a glint in his eye that tells me he was never going to pick the easy route. When he turns back to me, he flashes a savage, crooked grin.

“Yeah, I do.”

Well then, for better or worse, that settles that. “You’ll be nearly bankrupt, you know,” I tell him. “And you’ll have to rebuild your following from scratch.”

“There you go again, underestimating me,” Piers says good-naturedly. I’m not happy that it reminds me of the day Emma accused me of underestimating her.

“Fine, then,” I say tightly. “I’ll fly back to London for information. You’ll stay here with Sidony.”

Piers opens his mouth to argue, but closes his mouth without a word. “All right. But you’re not talking to Fantasia without me.”

I heave a sigh. That’s only fair. Unfortunately for Piers, I’m lying to him when I say, “I’ll hold off, don’t worry.”

Chapter 38

Emma

Life doesn’t go back to normal, not even when December turns into January, with February close on its heels. How can it, when I’m not only mourning the loss of a bright future and trying to plan for an entirely new one?

I can tell Raleigh wants to return to her beautiful country home with her husband and child, but she delays so she can help me find my feet. As if I didn’t owe her enough, she helps me shop for prenatal vitamins and schedule doctor’s appointments. She sympathizes with my morning sickness, rubbing my back as I brace myself against another wave of nausea. She says mine has been far worse than hers as she brings me ginger tea, saltines, and cold compresses, constantly checking in to see if anything helps, even if only for a moment. But what helps most is that she never gets tired of me bursting into tears in her arms.

Still, I can’t settle. My place in the Warwick family was already up in the air before I left, but now? It seems I’ve gone from being a former street punk mystery to being lauded as some kind of hero for the ‘sacrifice’ I made, but that doesn’t do me any good. I didn’t want to be a hero, I just wanted to do my part. My accidental ‘undercover work’ had impressed even Thomas, but that does me no good now. Risking my life to domore of that kind of work for the estate with a baby waiting at home is out of the question.

So… what now? Do I learn bookkeeping and make myself useful in Thomas’s accounting department? I never finished high school, so I can’t imagine I’d excel there. I’ll do whatever I have to do, of course but… do I evenwantto be an accountant?

No. I want to go back to-

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