Page 84 of Twins for the Mafia Heir

While I help Sidony build an ambitious sandcastle, Achilles walks Jamie a few inches into the surf, bent almost in half so he can hold our little boy up firmly under the arms. Jamie squeals and kicks his feet at the slightest touch of the water, and Achilles laughs with him, and every sound sends a pang of happiness through my chest. Simon sleeps sound as a rock in a sling against my chest, his silky auburn hair and head protected by a little bonnet.

It took all of two minutes for Achilles and I to decide we didn’t want a traditional honeymoon with just the two of us after our official wedding. Sidony had always been a part of our relationship. In a way, I’d bonded with her first and more easily. It was letting her into my heart, letting my inner child heal through her, that allowed me to even consider my feelings for Achilles. And as for Achilles, he’s been inseparable from all three of our children. I’ll find him in his office with the twins in his lap as he works, or napping on the couch covered in kids. Every day his smile brightens and the shadows in his eyes are chased away by them. As much as we enjoy each other’s intimate company, taking a trip without our kids didn’t feel right.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t taking our quiet moments when we can, of course.

When the kids are tucked into their beds at the end of the day, exhausted from playing in the sun and the sea, we’re able to slip away. A personal nanny- one of our trusted staff- keeps a careful watch over the sleeping children, ensuring that they’re settled and content in the comfort of the bungalow. Achilles and I go back out onto the beach with a bottle of wine and two glasses between us. The sky is so huge over our heads it’s almost overwhelming. I could lay in the sand and count the stars forever, but I’d rather be pulling Achilles’s body over mine and kissing him until I can no longer breathe.

“Emma,” he murmurs against my lips. “Thank you for coming back. Thank you for saving me.”

Not just from Fantasia’s dungeon, but from the sorrow he couldn’t find his way out of, from the doubt he couldn’t let go of.

“Thankyou,” I whisper back, “for giving me a place to belong to.”

He smiles into our kiss, his breath cool against my skin in the heat of the night. I turn to clay in his hands as he traces every curve of my body with his fingertips and claims my mouth with his tongue.

Under the Caribbean stars, we kiss and drink wine until the moon falls and the sun just begins to rise over the ocean, bathing another day in our new life with golden light.

Epilogue

Piers: One Year Earlier

I pull the bill of my baseball cap lower over my face and readjust my sunglasses as I board the plane, but I needn’t have bothered. No one is looking at me. Parents are keeping track of their children. The elderly are struggling to tuck their luggage into the overhead compartments. Businessmen are already on their laptops. And Fantasia Warwick-Ashwood stares vacantly out of the window beside her seat.

I pass within a foot of her and take the window seat behind hers, but she doesn’t even blink. From around her chair, I can see only the tip of her long nose, her slender mouth, and her pale chin.

She’s so close. I could lean forward and tap my finger against the tip of her nose. Hell, she looks so zoned out she might not even notice. I could whisper the question of what exactly she decided she hated so much about me when she ordered Achilles to kill me, and shemighthear me.

But in the end, she might as well be an entire ocean away for all I do say to her as the rest of the passengers settle and the plane prepares to take off. Besides, she has two of Achilles’s guys with her, and I don’t want them to recognize me. Or, failing that, think that I’m some rando harassing her.

She seems so much… smaller than I remember her being. Now that Fantasia is no longer a mafia princess in any capacity, she can’t wear her mother’s dresses or her father’s authority anymore. Now she’s just a willowy, too-pale, too-tired, too-young woman sitting alone on a plane.

Our flight will take us from London to North Carolina, which will give me several hours to decide what my next step is. My friend Achilles certainly has a sense of humor. The city we’re flying to is apparently calledRaleigh.

He’ll be irritated to find me missing, but not surprised, I think. Achilles will be the first to tell anyone that I act first and determine the consequences later. I should be staying in London, rebuilding my contacts and fortune and Wesley Hall itself. And I certainly have people I trust working on that, some of my former peers in the orphanage who have almost as much street smarts as I do.

But if Fantasia isn’t there with me, I honestly don’t know if there would be a point to any of that.

The problem is… well, she tried to have me killed. Clearly, her feelings for me aren’t what I thought they were. So I need to know what they are.

Thus, I’m going with her to North Carolina on a fucking whim.

Fantasia might not agree with this sentiment, but I see a lot of myself in her. My parents gave me up when I was three, and did Fantasia’s parents ever give a fuck about her at all? Yeah, she grew up wealthy, with Achilles trying to soften the blow of that negligence, and I grew up in a ratty orphanage, but the damage done to our hearts was the same.

How can you ever be enough for anyone or anything, if your own parents don’t even care about you? How can you stop trying to be more than you are, when the people who should love you unconditionally weren’t impressed?

No wonder she’s so fucked up inside. That’s something I could never blame her for, no matter what she tries to do to me.

Especially not after the last week, when she was so delirious from alcohol withdrawal that when I tried to visit her in her room, she didn’t even know who I was.

The plane rumbles to life around us. I catch the twitch of Fantasia’s hand in front of me as she clutches the arm of her seat. I can see the reflection of her expression in her window. She’s afraid, she’s miserable, but there’s something else behind her eyes. Something I’ve seen and admired since we were kids.

It’s her goddamn spite.

“Nervous?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

Fantasia jumps a little, her head turning, but unless she lifts up in her seat she can’t see me. I dip my chin, just in case, hiding my face in the shadow of my hat and sunglasses. She doesn’t seem to recognize my voice, thank god, or doesn’t properly hear it over the noise of the rest of the plane and passengers.

“No,” she lies stubbornly. “I’m just not used to planes.”

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