Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

19. Achilles

Chapter 19

Achilles

I can’t believe what I’ve done.

I can’t believe that I swore never to touch Raleigh again, and in less than a day I’ve already broken that vow.

Worse than that, I had no justifiable reason to fuck Raleigh tonight except that I wanted to . At least last night I was doing her a favor. But this time, I have no excuse with which to ease my own guilt.

I just wanted to.

Every minute of walking through London with her, I was thinking about touching her. Watching her grubby clothes be replaced by ones that highlight her body and her beauty, watching her interact with Sidony, who lit up at her every word, watching her wonder as she took in every shop and street and person around her-

At every turn I struggled not to reach out for her. I told myself it was sleep deprivation- or, more likely, sexual deprivation- and that I could master myself and not act on these cravings.

That’s all gone down the drain now.

I don’t even think I accomplished what I set out to do. I can tell myself I wanted to distract Raleigh from her questions about the Warwick’s fortune, but from the knowing glare in her eye as she climbed half naked into bed, I know she’s only biding her time to ask again.

The most embarrassing truth is that I was tempted by her. She didn’t even mean to tempt me- she was giving in to her anger. But I rose to meet it without sparing a single thought for what would come next. Because in the moments before I put her up against the wall, I wasn’t strategizing. I wasn’t thinking of maintaining family secrets or doing what was best for Fantasia.

I was just thinking about Raleigh, and how much I wanted to touch her and smell her and fuck her again. It was just as incredible the second time. No, it was even better.

And when she pressed her mouth into mine, tasting like honey lip balm, I almost lost my sanity entirely.

If I hadn’t pulled away at that moment, I would have been carrying her back to my bed. I’d have thrown away every inhibition and fucked her senseless until the sun rose. And she would have loved every second of it.

I’m too weak to banish the fantasy of it tonight. I’ve been awake for a truly barbaric number of hours now, and if this is the only way I’ll sleep, so be it.

I rest my head back against the top of the armchair and fall asleep recounting all the sounds Raleigh made when she came.

At least, I try to.

The fire is still going strong, and the sky is still dark outside the windows when I blink my bleary eyes open. I listen for a long time, wondering if something Raleigh did woke me up, or if Sidony called for me in the other room.

Raleigh’s still asleep in my bed, her breathing soft and steady. Sidony’s room is utterly silent.

I woke myself, if I was ever really asleep to begin with.

Fuck, not again.

This time, I force my wandering, sleep-starved body to avoid the drawing room. I’m in no condition to fight with Fantasia if she’s still awake. Instead, I wander the halls upstairs, just another one of the ghosts that have sprung up in the past year.

I can’t get Raleigh out of my head. Every time I pace from one end of Wesley Hall to the other, I feel my steps falter outside my own door. I could go to sleep in my own bed. I could pull her delicate body into mine and hold her as I lose consciousness, lulled by the pattern of her heartbeat. For the first time in days, I could get some fucking sleep.

But if I woke in the morning with her in my arms instead of Madeleine, would I survive it?

I walk the length of the house again, and again, and again. Every time, I pass by an old grandfather clock, its face splintered on the night I led the coup against the Warwicks.

If I didn’t shove a man into this old clock and break it with a bullet through the guy’s skull, I’d know what god-forsaken time it is now. Hindsight, and all that.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that if I took my daughter back to Ashwood House and raised her there, I wouldn’t be plagued by all these ghosts. I could inherit the master suite from my grandfather, a room Madeleine never once stepped in. Sidony could have her own suite too, with her own door out to the back garden and better windows to let in more light.

There wouldn’t be a dozen thugs wandering the grounds that I would have to keep an eye on. There wouldn’t be a perpetually drunk and distressed sister pacing around the drawing room either.

And if I took Sidony back to Ashwood House, in this glorious hypothetical of mine, I could bring Raleigh with us. She would prefer it there too, I think.

My feet pause outside a door, but it’s not the one I’ve been stopping outside of all night.

This room… I haven’t seen in a year.

Much like the grandfather clock in the hall, it was frozen in time when the coup happened and its occupant was banished forever.

I’m surprised to find the door unlocked, and wonder if it’s been repurposed without my noticing. Somehow, I doubt Fantasia would let that happen. And sure enough, when I open the door and flick on the light, Piers’s room is completely unchanged from the last time I stepped into it.

Unlike the tower room, this furniture isn’t even covered by sheets. I drag a finger over the nightstand, where a pile of heavy novels always used to sit, and find no dust. Does Fantasia keep it regularly cleaned? All Piers’s books are still crammed onto his shelves. I push open the closest door and find his old clothes still hanging up. The coverlet on the bed is even the same one that Piers and Fantasia and I would sit on for hours just to talk.

God, the guilt for my snide accusation last night is hitting me now, all too late-

“Piers?”

I whirl toward the door, which I left open in my exhaustion. It seems that even when I’m trying to avoid my sister, she’ll find me.

Fantasia stands there, her nightgown pulled around her too-thin body, her black hair mussed and her eyes in shadow. I can tell by just the shape of her shoulders that she’s disappointed to see me.

“Achilles- What are you doing in here?” she asks. Her words are a little fuzzy around the edges, but I’m inclined to think it’s because of sleep instead of alcohol.

I don’t have a good answer, or any answer at all, really. So I turn the question on her.

“What are you?”

Fantasia pulls her dressing gown even tighter. “I… was going down to the kitchen and I noticed the light.”

If she was actually heading toward the stairs from her room, she’d have walked in the opposite direction and never seen anything. I’m too tired to point that out to her, though. It’s obvious that she not only visits this room often, but that she has it looked after.

“Odd way to keep a trophy room,” I tell her.

“Where’s the trophy?” Fantasia asks, her tone instantly bittering. “Piers is still missing.”

“He’s going to stay missing, Fantasia. He’s not ever coming back. You won the feud, remember? It’s over .”

“It’s not over,” Fantasia insists, stepping into the room. “As long as another person who can claim to be the heir to the Warwick family is still alive, it’s not over . How do you not understand that, Achilles?”

For the first time, she sounds just as tired and desperate as I feel.

“He was adopted, Fantasia. You can claim the Warwick bloodline-”

“Tell that to my fucking father-”

“I can’t!” I snap, losing control of my temper at last. “He’s dead , Tasia. You killed him yourself, remember? You killed him, and then I had to clean up your fucking mess.”

She turns away from me and sits heavily on the edge of Piers’s bed. “Why did he pick Piers over me, Achilles?” she asks. Her voice breaks in a desperate plea, and despite my fatigue and my irritation and my confusion, I wish I could give her an answer.

There were probably a thousand reasons Marcus Warwick passed over his daughter to select a boy adopted into the fringes of the family to be his heir. I can guess at them, but unfortunately for Fantasia’s sanity, her father took those reasons with him to his grave.

“I don’t know, Fantasia,” I sigh. “Does it even matter anymore?”

“I don’t know,” she echoes. “Just leave me alone.”

She barged in on my childhood ruminations about my former best friend, but very well. There’s something else between her and Piers that I can’t even fathom, something deeper than friendship and even deeper than hate.

I close the door behind me as I step back out into the hall. For the first time tonight, I feel like my problems are not as bad as I thought they were.

After all, unlike the ghosts that plague my sister, mine are already dead.