Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

9. Emma

Chapter 9

Emma

W hen I wake, I have no idea where I am.

The Warwick house is all clean modern lines and minimalist aesthetics and floor length windows.

This room is straight out of a period piece. There’s elaborate molding decorating every square foot of the wood-paneled walls, even framing the ceiling! Tasseled Persian rugs cover the hardwood floor. And an honest to god fireplace sits along one wall, with a poker and everything.

It’s the chair in front of the fireplace that finally sparks a hazy memory. Me, sitting on the edge of the bed I’m now laying in. A man, sitting in that chair, who didn’t look at me at all.

The chair is empty now. So where the hell is Achilles not-Warwick?

I sit up, which is immediately a mistake. Despite the fire going in the fireplace, the room is cold compared to what I’m used to. Yet my feet feel weirdly stuffy.

The light from the leaded windows tells me it’s late morning. Through a cracked door that must lead to a bathroom, I can hear water running in a sink. And is that dim hum the sound of an electric razor?

As if on cue, both sounds cut off. Achilles himself comes in from the bathroom, naked from the waist up despite the chill with freshly trimmed stubble. He pauses when he sees I’m awake, but can’t seem to think of anything to say.

And suddenly… I’m not cold anymore.

He’s got the physique of a swimmer, long and lean, with a narrow waist and broad shoulders. There are no tan lines in his bronze skin, not even around his hips where his pajama pants are sitting dangerously low.

I’m not just warm anymore. I might be coming down with a fever. Do you need booster shots for anything before traveling to the UK? I have no idea, but it’s too late for me now.

“I told you those sleeping pills would be useful,” Achilles says.

And… I can feel the chill again.

I’m not here of my own free will, and this half naked man isn’t my friend. I’m a hostage in a foreign country.

And I’m going to get married today, or die.

I have no clean clothes to change into for my own wedding, so I put my black sweater and jeans back on. It’s just as embarrassing to get dressed in them under Achilles’s watchful eye as it was to take them off last night.

Maybe it’s fitting these clothes would work better at a funeral.

Achilles himself uses the walk-in closet to dress. He’s quick, but still manages to come out dressed head to heel in custom tailored finery.

Although his choices- a black turtleneck and blazer- are looking suspiciously funerary too.

He looks me over with blatant dissatisfaction, but there’s nothing to be done for me now. He towers over me, so none of his clothes would fit. Same goes for Fantasia, whose things I wouldn’t want to touch anyway.

Poor, poor Achilles. Embarrassing enough for him to be getting married to a peasant, but to have me look the part so obviously on our wedding day-

That sends a jolt through me. I completely forgot that I’m not supposed to be Emma Clarke here.

I’m Raleigh Warwick, a mafia princess. Definitely not a peasant, even if I might not be on the level of old English blood.

Before we leave Achilles’s room, he has me accompany him into Sidony’s. She’s still fast asleep, and he doesn’t seem keen to wake her.

The sight of her is another shock to my system. After today, I’m technically going to be this little girl’s stepmother.

Oh god. I’m not even twenty-one yet. I’m not ready for this . But I don’t have another choice, not after I botched my escape last night.

We return to Achilles’s room, but there’s no more stalling to be done. Without another word, Achilles leads us downstairs. It feels wrong to walk together with my groom, much less to do it in this kind of tense silence.

“Should I still try not to talk to Fantasia?” I ask Achilles. Just for the sake of saying something .

“That advice is valid at all times,” he responds. But he doesn’t look at me to share in the joke. He’s dead serious.

Downstairs, we go to the drawing room where we found Fantasia the night before. The sunlight from earlier has been replaced by rain spattering the windows, making the whole room look grimmer. Fantasia is there already, sitting on a couch with a stack of paperwork on the coffee table in front of her, and a grizzled old man in a traditional priest's habit.

At the sight of the man, Achilles stops and whirls on Fantasia.

“Are you fucking serious?” he demands, making the priest and I jump. “You didn’t even give me a chance to agree or not, you just hired the priest yourself?”

“I knew you wouldn’t actually say no,” Fantasia says dismissively. “Not with everything that’s at stake.”

My life, for one. All the money they’re after, for another.

Achilles looks like he desperately wants to argue this point, but he doesn’t. “At least just have us sign the paperwork, Fantasia- don’t dress this up like it’s something to be happy about!”

“This is still a wedding, Achilles!” Fantasia insists, with a grimace she’s trying to pass for a smile.

There’s a shrillness to her voice that makes me think she’s ready to call this whole thing off and start demanding my head again, but she doesn’t want to say anything too ruinous in front of the priest.

Achilles clenches his jaw. Maybe he’s also read her brittle mood, because he swallows the rest of his disgust.

“Ah, i-if you would, please,” the priest says, beckoning for us to stand before him. Achilles huffs a sigh and places himself on the priest’s left. My legs feeling like jelly, I step up in front of Achilles.

Fantasia settles herself back on the couch, like she’s about to be presented with a wondrous show. The crystal chandelier above my head might as well be a spotlight for how hard I’m starting to sweat underneath it.

I’m not supposed to be here. I know I agreed to this last night, but now?! Now that I’m facing Achilles with a priest standing to my left and I’m supposed to be vowing my life and future away-

I was just supposed to be buying time until I could find a way out. I was just trying to keep anyone else from getting hurt. But…

I can’t do this. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t-

Achilles’s hands reach out, grasping my trembling ones. “It’s too late for cold feet now,” he says tightly. He’s gritting his teeth so hard I can see muscles jumping in his jaw.

It’s too late for that, and he can see it. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll make a run for it, or maybe he’s trying to tell me we’re in this together, but he squeezes my hands tightly and doesn’t let go as the priest begins his speech.

My vision is swimming and my ears are ringing so hard I don’t hear a single word of it. Not until Achilles’s mouth starts moving, and two impossible words come out.

“I do,” he says, defiant and hard. The words might as well be poison he’s spitting out.

“I do,” I immediately echo, too afraid I’ll miss my cue to actually wait for it.

There’s an awkward silence. I can actually hear the priest swallow before he clears his throat.

“You… You may now kiss-”

“Get out,” Achilles snaps, making the priest and I both jump again. The old man is all too happy to obey. He closes his Bible with a slap and scurries out the door without a look back.

I wish I could run too, but Achilles is holding my hands so tight he’s almost grinding my bones together. Abruptly, he drops them and turns away from me.

“Don’t be such a spoilsport,” Fantasia huffs, standing from the couch.

“ Don’t ,” Achilles warns, pinching the bridge of his nose. The rain pounds harder against the windows behind him, like the sky itself is protesting what’s just happened.

Fantasia glares at him, her patience for his righteous indignation waning. “Go buy some rings tomorrow,” she orders, turning toward the door. “The wedding banquet is at five tonight.”

As soon as she’s left the room, I stagger over to the couch and finally let my legs collapse underneath me. The adrenaline is leaving my body, sending a tingling through my fingers and brain.

I did it. I married a man who hates me under the eyes of a woman who would’ve been just as happy to kill me as she was putting me through this farce.

I fight to take a long, slow breath, then another. Achilles is dealing with this trauma by pacing the entire length of the drawing room and back. I wish I had any feeling at all in my lower body so I could do the same.

Then again, I might just start running instead of pacing, and never ever stop.

Eventually, Achilles does have to sit down so we can sign the stack of legal forms Fantasia left behind. I put pen to paper- and my hand spasms, leaving a jagged slash of ink.

I almost gave myself away again by writing my own name.

Bizarrely, I’m relieved by that. This didn’t happen to me. Not really, not technically . This happened to Raleigh, who’s already married to the love of her life. Every paper I sign with her name is meaningless.

And I’m relieved all over again that Raleigh has never taken an active role in the management of the Warwick estate. There’s no record of her signature anywhere to give my forgery away. I’m shaking too hard to properly copy anything anyway.

Achilles’s impatiently drumming fingers pause. He’s noticed my hesitation. I quickly scribble a line of flourishes that vaguely looks like Raleigh’s name, then pass the certificate and pen over to Achilles. He signs his name with a much neater row of spirals before he shuffles the paper aside and grabs the rest of the stack.

And that’s our marriage license, signed. According to that single piece of paper, Achilles is married to an already married woman he’s never actually met. I try to hold that truth close to my chest, but it gives me little comfort when I’m still the one physically here, playing out the role.

The rest of the papers on the table belong to a prenup, with a date already written at the bottom that claims it was signed days ago. I wonder if I can use any of these documents for my own good later down the line. Once we’re done signing them, Achilles folds them savagely and tucks them into an inside pocket of his blazer.

“Let’s get some air,” he says.

Without waiting for an argument, he stands and hauls me up along with him.

He leads me across the ground floor of the manor toward the back of the house, and at first I think we’re going for the kitchen and the route we took in last night. Will Fantasia still punish me if it’s Achilles who decides to run off? Something tells me she would. But Achilles would never leave Sidony of his own volition. I’ve seen them together barely twice, and I know that in my bones.

Instead, we end up on the back porch of the house. I thought the lawns and hedges at the front were extensive, but back here there’s also room for a duck pond crowned by an enormous fountain, a grove of trees, and a tangle of paths leading off into a garden. Beyond all of this green, the metropolis of London sits, looked over by a turbulent sky.

It’s still raining, and it’s so cold that it cuts straight through my light sweater and into my marrow. I shrink back toward the house, but Achilles pulls off his blazer and wraps it around my shoulders. I’m shocked, but I don’t pull back again.

Even in the depths of his anger, he was mindful of me.

And that mindfulness makes me think of something else.

“Did you… tell Sidony about me?” I ask. “About us?”

Achilles’s broad shoulders stiffen. “I didn’t. I can’t. Not today. She’s with her tutor anyway.”

He’s quiet for another few minutes, and I can’t think of anything to say that will reassure him. I’m afraid of being his wife, and I’m afraid of how that connects me to Sidony too. But it’s too late now.

“You deserve so much better than this,” Achilles says at last, looking out at the lawn and London and the sky. “I don’t even know you, but I know that much.”

I don’t know what possesses me to say it. Maybe it’s the soft scent of his cologne left on the blazer, or my desperate fear of this new future, but I say,

“So do you.”