Page 85 of Trouble

The thing about returning after several weeks of being a missing person is that your parents tend to get prettyclingy.

Not that I could blame them, or minded, when they asked if it “wouldn’t be better” if I moved home for a little bit. I’d predictably lost my job after not giving them any notice about my extended absence, and with no income, I’d happily accepted moving back home with my parents for a little bit while I figured out what to donext.

It’d also been nice to have someone doting on me while I tried to get over the heartbreak I’d caused myself. They weren’t particularly understanding about that part, having decided that “that boy” was the reason I’d gone missing. Both my mother and father got in a huff just at the mention of Liam’s name, so I didn’t talk about him. Or Louis. At least it made not thinking about them, and how much I missed them, a littleeasier.

However, I hadn’t been back a week before both my parents began trying to push me back into my old job. My old life. The old Audrey-mold they’d so carefully crafted while I was a kid eager to please everyone around me. And I… I found it no longerfit.

The Russian had been at least partly right—one thing that’d come out of my brush with London’s underworld was that I knew I no longer belonged in an office. I didn’t belong in the corporate world, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life bending over backwards to please people who would never respect me or mywork.

“For the six-hundred and twentieth time, Mum, I’m not going back to my old job. I wasn’t happy there. And I very much doubt unemployment causes nausea.” I pushed my bowl of half-eaten cereal away and got up from my seat at my parents’ breakfast bar to clean it up. Iwasfeeling pretty terrible, and I really wasn’t in the mood to argue about my future yet again. It was hard enough to try and figure out what the hell I was going to do about my life now, when everything I’d thought I wanted was a career that no longer meant anything to me. Having to fend off my concerned parents on top didn’t exactly help matters. Nor did the persistent nausea I’d been waking up with for the past fewdays.

“I’m just concerned about you, Audrey,” my mother said as she watched me with tented eyebrows. “We both are. And your sister, too. You were so happy in that job—and you were working on a promotion. And then you just up and leave with that… that young man, only to come back… It’s like you’re a different person. What happened to my sweet Audrey? The one who was so focused on her career and knew what she wanted inlife?”

I closed my eyes for a brief moment, focusing myself. This had been a long time coming, and it was about time that she heardit.

“I’m not a different person, Mum. I’m exactly who I’ve always been. It’s just that I was never really allowed to beme.I was supposed to be this mini-version of Mel, and I tried. I really, really tried. But I wasn’t happy, not at all. I hated that job, I hated having to suck up to superiors who never valued my inputs and constantly overlooked me when it was time forpromotions.

“I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I know it’s not going to be anything like it was before.I’mnot going to be like that. This is me—the real me. I’m not perfect, and I probably won’t be much to show off at the golf club, but I hope I’m good enough. At least, I’m good enough for me.” I gave my dumbfounded mother a smile and kissed her cheek before I turned to rinse out the bowl and put it in thedishwasher.

When I went to leave the kitchen, she called after me. “Audrey.”

I turned, hand on the doorframe.

“You’ll always be good enough for me.Always.”

I clung to that, and the love in her eyes as she said it, when later that evening I sat on the bathroom floor staring at a pregnancytest.

A positive pregnancytest.

41

Louis

Three weeksafter we took over London, things were finally starting to run smoothly. Or as smoothly as it can when you’re dealing with criminals andthugs.

Thankfully, the brutality of our takeover seemed to have brought the other Families to heel. What took the longest was weeding out those of our own men we could still trust from the ones who’d been loyal to ourfather.

Wesley was the biggest problem. Even our stepmother accepted the death of her husband meekly enough and got on the train to Scotland we put her on without a complaint, probably thanks to the several million we wired to her bank account. She might have been our father’s wife, but none of us had any beef with her. She’d mostly been a quiet, shadowy background figure since the day she married into the family, obviously having no interest in her husband’s kids but no ill will toward useither.

Wesley,however…

The list of his crimes committed on behalf of our father was long, and none of us felt particularly comfortable knowing he was still breathing London air. But hehadkilled him, in the end, and that counted forsomething.

When we presented him with a one-way ticket to the States and told him what would happen if he ever returned to British soil, he accepted it without a word. Liam and I made sure he got on the plane—and that was the last loose end from our father’s reign tiedup.

William Steel’s presence had been cleansed from the city, his body buried in a cemetery across town from where our mother rested, and only his memory remained to haunt us. But as deep as the scars he’d inflicted upon us were, and as unrelenting a stain as he’d put on our name, it was still so much easier to breathenow.

Except itwasn’t.

I could see it on Marcus’ and Blaine’s faces; the relief that they no longer had to look over their shoulder, that their families were safe. And on Isaac’s, when ransacking our father’s files brought up the evidence we needed to have a judge open his caseagain.

But for me, there was no relief. Not really. Despite our victory, despite all of us being as safe as you could be when ruling a major city’s underworld, I felt nothing but emptiness. Emptiness, and a dull pain in my chest every time I looked at mytwin.

I knew he felt it, too. He didn’t say anything, neither of us did, but we both knew. Seeing Blaine and Marcus reuniting with their wives, congratulating Evelyn on the small baby bump clearly visible on her stomach when Marcus proudly announced her pregnancy… it hurt so fucking much I could hardlybreathe.

I’d never have that. I’d never be whole—never be happy. How could I, whenshewasgone?

He felt it, too, Liam. My other half, and the reason I couldn’t go to her and tell her she was mine, whether she thought so or not. Neither of us felt relief at our father’s passing because there was no relief to be had without Audrey. For either ofus.

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