Page 54 of Trouble

Blaine’s voice was stressed, and his toddler was fussing in the background, but the warning made it through my own frustration and anger like a bucket of icewater.

Dadknew.

I was on my feet and headed toward Louis’ room without missing a beat, pushing aside the sensation of marrow-shattering fear. We’d been prepped for this since Blaine and Marcus told us what our father had done to our two olderbrothers.

“Perkinson?” I asked as I pushed Louis’ door open. “Louis, get the gear. We’ve got togo.”

“Yes. He flipped. My guy said he’d been scared as shit you’d come for him and figured his only chance was going to Dad. I’m getting Aiden and Mira out. We’ll have to have radio silence for a while. I’ll contact you when I can—you still got the burner?”Blaine was all business. I could hear him moving around on his end, and Mira shushing their kid. Then the sound of car doors slamming and an engine roaring tolife.

“Yeah, we’ve got it. One hour, 10 p.m., everySunday.”

“Stay safe. Both of you.”Blaine’s voice cut out as the callended.

My twin sat up in the nest of blankets on his bed, his usual morning grogginess quickly wiped away as he looked at me. “Heknows?”

“Yes.” It was all I had to say. Louis was in motion, heading for closet with a look of determination writ across his features. One I knew perfectly mirrored myown.

I turned my phone off and shoved it back in my pocket—we’d have to wait until we were out of town to get rid of them—and jogged to my own room across thehall.

Audrey stood by the crossover between the living room and hallway when Louis and I came out from our rooms less than thirty seconds later, her arms wrapped around her midsection with her brows knitted in a frown. “What’s goingon?”

“We’ve gotta go, love,” Louis said. He put the arm not loaded down by a heavy trekking backpack around her shoulders so he could steer her toward the front door. “Right now. Get your shoeson.”

She did as he said, but the confusion was clear on her face as we herded her down the stairs, Louis’ arm never leaving her shoulders. He was protecting her, I realized, with a start that managed to make its way even through my grim sense of urgency to get out of London before our father’s right hand man got to us. And despite my anger with him, despite how fucking betrayed I still felt at what he’d gone, and fuckingfuriousI was at his claim to love my future wife… I found that right now, when the only priority was to make sure she was safe… it felt as right that he had his arm around her as it would have if it’d been myown.

28

Aubrey

The twins droveus North out of London in their Jeep, but after three hours of back road driving they finally pulled into what looked an abandoned farm. They still hadn’t explained what was going on, but after the revelation of what they were, I didn’t much care to push for details. The less I knew, the better my chances to make it outalive.

My perspective changed somewhat abruptly, until Louis jumped out of the passenger side and walked over to open the gates of what looked like an ancient barn that could topple over at any moment, and Liam drove the Jeep—with me still in the back—into its darkinterior.

“Is this where you’ll both reveal you’re also crazy mass murderers, and this has all been a ruse to lure me to your remote Farm of Torture?” I was only halfway joking. Sure, I still had an innate trust that whatever was going on, they were doing their best to ensure I’d make it through safe and sound, but come on… a fuckingbarn?

“I’m sorry, love,” Liam said as he put the Jeep into park and pulled the handbrake. “I know you must be confused as fuck. Just… let us get to safety, okay? We’ll explain, if you want us to, once we’re not runninganymore.”

I frowned at him. “We’re still running? We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one’s around formiles.”

He scoffed. “It takes a hell of a lot more to shake a man like ourdad.”

“Wait… yourdad?I thought we were running from Perkinson?” My hesitation at getting further involved was brushed away by the revelation that for whatever reason, we were running away from their father, of all people. “Isn’t he… I thought… Aren’t mafia Families supposed to be superloyal?”

I caught his grimace in the rearview mirror as he unbuckled his seatbelt and slid out of the Jeep. “This isn’t a TV show, love. My dad’s nothing that can be confused withloyal.”He spat the word out as if it tasted foul on histongue.

Seemed I’d hit a sore point. But then I guessed it would have to be, if they were actuallyrunningfrom their own dad. For the first time since they’d told me what they were, the creeping notion that being in a mafia Family perhaps wasn’t the happiest of lives niggled at the back of my mind. Even though they’d deceived me, I was pretty sure the vital, vibrant man—or men, I supposed—I’d fallen so hard for were real enough. At least partly. No one could fake the kind of aura that’d pulled me in like a moth to a flame. But that obviously wasn’t all there was to them. I’d seen that clear enough when Liam—or Louis, I wasn’t sure—had come to me so distraught I’d pushed my own discomfort aside to comfort him the only way I knewhow.

What would it be like for someone with the kind of light and warmth both twins carried at their cores to grow up inundated with violence andcrime?

I pushed the disturbing thought aside and crawled out into the barn. Right now was definitely not the time to think about suchthings.

Louis was waiting for me. He grabbed my hand before I could trip off the vehicle and lifted me down. Ensuring I didn’t fall, like he had the night we’d climbed St. Paul’sCathedral.

No, definitely not the time for suchcontemplations.

I stepped away from his grip and looked around the darkened barn. It smelled like damp, rusty metal and moldy hay. The gaps in the ramshackle walls let in enough light to let me see a few lumps underneath tarps scattered around between piles of old hay and ancient farmtools.

Liam walked to one of the tarp-covered shapes and pulled off the cover with a crinkly rattle, revealing a nondescript station wagon. It was the newest-looking thing in the barn by several decades, but it was still a sad downgrade from theJeep.

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