Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

28. Emma

Chapter 28

Emma

W e have to take another passage out of the bunker and under the property of the Ashwood House. This portion is actually lit, thank god, but I still keep my hand in Achilles’s. I’m carrying Sidony now, while Achilles holds a pack of supplies over his shoulder. He keeps squeezing my hand, as if checking that I’m still here with him. I never hesitate to squeeze back.

It takes us several minutes to reach the end of the tunnel, where Achilles has to unlock a heavy metal door that leads us into a much smaller bunker room. He stops us for a moment, listening carefully, then guides me up a set of unfolded stairs and through a trapdoor into a shed. Fingers of grey light leak through the spaces between heavy curtains. Achilles peeks out of one. He seems pleased with what he sees, because he opens the door of the shed and finally lets us out into the sun.

I have to blink at where I find us- in the backyard of a tiny cottage in a row of tiny cottages. Achilles pulls me into the little garage attached to the house, where we find a sports car he climbs right into. I don’t want to let go of Sidony, so I sit in the back seat with her. As soon as we’ve clipped on our seatbelts, he pulls us out onto the street.

Sidony is, at last, crying too hard to be silent. I let her lay over the backseat with her head in my lap sobbing until she’s exhausted herself, her lilac penguin crushed to her chest. There’s a burning in mine that started the second I saw her first tear fall, and from Achilles’s white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, I know he’s feeling the same.

Rage, hot and pressurized as a newly born star.

Fantasia lashed out, just like I knew she would. And she didn’t care about who else got caught in the wake. To be so thoughtless for her own niece-

No, I can’t think of it. Not while I’m supposed to be comforting Sidony. I don’t want my hands, stroking tenderly through her hair, to twitch into fists.

Instead, I focus my eyes outside the car. The Ashwood house was situated outside the heart of London, but we still have miles to go before we leave the city behind. As long as there are cars around and behind us, I refuse to relax my shoulders even an inch. No matter how many times I look out the back windshield, I can’t confirm we aren’t being followed. Achilles keeps glancing in his mirrors too, checking for any vehicle that could be a tail.

Eventually, though, the metropolis does thin out, replaced by more trees and fields and smaller neighborhoods. The brown ribbon of the Thames winds in and out of the view, until at last we join a highway going north. And as the sky grows dark with stormy clouds and the rain begins to pour, we finally break free into the rolling green country.

Sidony’s salt-crusted eyes are finally closed, her breathing deep and even. I don’t stop brushing her hair with my fingers, terrified the slightest change to her environment will wake her again. Achilles, when he speaks, keeps his voice low as well.

“We’re going to be driving for a while. It doesn’t seem like we’ve been followed out of the city, though, so we can probably stop for food and a break in a few hours.”

“Where are we going?” I murmur.

“I have a safe house in Scotland,” Achilles says. “Edinburgh. It’s an Ashwood house.” He’s quiet for a moment before adding, “Fantasia knows nothing about it.”

I’ve always been an only child, so I can’t possibly understand what he’s feeling right now. Having your sister invade your house and try to kill or capture you and your daughter has to be one of the worst ways you can be betrayed by your own family. And I do understand being betrayed by family.

I wish I could comfort him by sharing something about my dad, something that can help him feel less alone… but I’m not Emma Clarke, daughter of a physically abusive father, right now. I’m Raleigh Warwick, daughter of an emotionally distant father who would never actually strike me. And I won’t make up some story like I am Raleigh, not right now.

I’m really starting to get tired of being someone I’m not.

Instead, I ask quietly, “What happened between the two of you?”

Achilles is quiet for so long that I think he’ll ignore my question. I really don’t want to spend several hours in a tensely silent car, but I also won’t force him to blurt out his family drama.

“Our mum,” he says, his voice full of bitter gravel. “That’s what happened.”

The mother that married into the Warwick family. Is there simmering resentment between Achilles and Fantasia based on their different fathers, or their different birthrights? Achilles immediately debunks this theory.

“Our mother, Veronica,” he says, clearing his throat, “was very young when she married my father, and loved him obsessively. To be honest, I don’t think she ever loved anyone as much as she loved him, not even her own children. He died in a raid by the NCA- that’s the British FBI, essentially- on one of our most profitable casinos in Whitechapel. His death wasn’t the goal of the raid of course, he just got caught in the crossfire. And who worked with insiders in the NCA to orchestrate that raid? Marcus Warwick, naturally.”

My mouth falls open. “But- didn’t your mother marry-”

Achilles nods, his mouth a tight pale line. “She did indeed. Not many other people in the Ashwood family cared about her late husband and the cause of his death quite as much as Veronica did. They were more concerned about the blow to their profit margin, and how to rebuild without drawing Marcus’s eye again. This completely alienated Veronica from her own family, and she took it upon herself to get her own revenge against the man who accidentally killed her husband.”

Achilles falls silent. I notice he’s said nothing about the toll losing his father- and his mother, in her own way- took on him as a child. I wonder if Veronica didn’t learn from the way her family’s neglect made her feel, and ended up projecting that same neglect onto her son.

“How old were you?” I ask, when his silence stretches out.

His brown eyes blink in the rearview mirror. “I was eight, I believe? It might sound monstrous of me, but I hardly knew my father when he died, or my mother for that matter. They were obsessed with themselves, and I was my grandfather’s heir. He kept me busy with my training, and I lived a fulfilling enough life being raised by him and my grandmother.”

“It doesn’t sound monstrous,” I say quickly. “ You don’t sound monstrous, I mean.”

I see his eyes squint a little, and know he’s giving me a wry smile. “You disapprove of my parents,” he says, without offense.

I flush anyway. I lost my father much later in life, but I suppose his death was a relief instead of a loss. “I… can’t judge,” I say lamely.

Achilles chuckles, but there’s a bitter edge to it. “Anyway,” he goes on, “my mother wormed her way into Marcus’s circle and began to whisper in his ear about an alliance between the Warwick and Ashwood families. She succeeded in seducing him- much to his brother, Thomas Sr.’s, chagrin. They split, which weakened the Warwicks all on its own before Veronica and Marcus even married. A couple years later, Fantasia Warwick was born. I was thirteen when she was born, and absolutely taken with her.”

For the first time, his voice goes rough with emotion. His parents might be distant or disappointing figures in his past, but there’s a deep well of feelings between Achilles and his little sister. Again, I can’t relate to the bonds between siblings, but I wonder if Achilles feels more parental responsibility toward Fantasia than even he knows.

“Of course, after Veronica married into the Warwick family, she did what she could to make Marcus’s life difficult without drawing too much of his ire. She spent wild amounts of his money, fixed his accounts so he stopped trusting his business partners were paying him the proper tithe, and poisoned several of his best generals until they died. But her favorite plan, the one she poured the most effort into, was her own daughter.

“I-” Achilles’s hands work over the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening again. “I knew our mum meant nothing good for her. My grandfather didn’t care to interfere- his daughter had managed to get Marcus Warwick off his back, which was more than he ever expected from her apparently. It was up to me to keep Fantasia grounded. I was her constant playmate, especially when she was an infant and Mum couldn’t be bothered. I practically displaced her tutors to make sure she got an education as expansive as my grandfather gave me. And I made sure she knew that she could tell me about anything, even things Mum did that upset her.”

Considering how Fantasia turned out and what their relationship looks like now, I can only assume his efforts failed. “What did she want with Fantasia?” I ask, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I know.

“To usurp Marcus,” Achilles says, with a stiff shrug. “What better use for a daughter you made with a man you hate? Fantasia Warwick, a woman of her own blood, would be Marcus’s replacement as head of the Warwick family. Of course, she would be a mere puppet that Veronica would rule through.”

His next words he speaks with no emotion whatsoever. Not grief or frustration or even black glee. There’s just a void where a parental figure could have been, but never was.

“Perhaps it’s for the best that she died suddenly of a brain aneurysm before her plans ever came to fruition. And Marcus had his own plans, of course. He chose someone else to be his heir, a boy who wasn’t even of the Warwick blood, but an orphan adopted by distant cousins. Piers.”

I shudder, my stomach roiling. Fantasia was nothing but a pawn to her mother… and a useless girl to her father. For the first time, I feel true sympathy for her.

Then the name he said clicks in my mind. “Piers- the man who went missing? The one she accused you of not catching on purpose?”

Achilles’s eyes are barely slits in the mirror. “The very same. That was the straw that broke her back. Losing her birthright to a man adopted into the family, after being raised her entire life being convinced by Veronica that she deserved it more than anyone… Even I couldn’t save her from what that did to her.”

He can’t possibly blame himself for Fantasia’s insanity. It sounds like she was old enough by that point to make her own decisions, wrong or otherwise. Of course, he’s made himself responsible for her, and I doubt that will change even now.

We’re silent for a long time after that. I can’t find any words that are meaningful but also comforting. What I do know for sure is that this betrayal has made my own honesty impossible for right now. Achilles is bringing us all to safety, and if he starts to believe that I’m a threat too…

My stomach sinks into my toes.

I don’t want to know what that would look like.

“You were brilliant,” Achilles says suddenly. I look up, and find his eyes on mine in the rearview mirror. “Again, brilliant. I thought it was strange when we first met and you were so… informal. I expected a princess, but you’ve turned out to be a warrior instead.”

Oh god. I gave myself away completely during the raid, didn’t I? It’s not like I could pretend to be useless while our lives were in danger though. I don’t want to lie anymore, I’m so sick of it, but I have to explain this somehow. And I certainly can’t tell him I raised myself on the streets because my dad was a drunken mafia thug.

“I-Iris and Paul made sure I knew how to defend myself,” I say.

“They did a very thorough job.”

“Yes,” I agree. Can he tell that I’m sweating? “I’m very grateful to them.”

That, at least, isn’t a lie.

Luckily, Achilles falls into his own thoughts after that, and I retreat into mine. Sidony wakes after an hour, and we make a stop for a quick meal and a bathroom break before getting back on the road. I make up hand games to play with Sidony to keep her busy, but the drive starts to feel endless far too quickly. Achilles refuses to stop until we reach our final destination, so as the sun goes down over the English countryside, Sidony falls asleep in my lap once again, and I find myself nodding off too.

I don’t realize I’ve actually fallen asleep until I jerk awake. There’s orange streetlamp light coming in through the windows, and the car is rolling to a stop in gravel. I push myself up in my seat, trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes, and see we’re parked outside a little cottage framed by overgrown hedges. The clock on the car’s dashboard tells me it’s well past three in the morning.

“We’re here,” Achilles says quietly. “You don’t have to wake Sidony. We’re going straight to bed once we get inside.” He opens my door for me and helps me pull Sidony out of the backseat and into his arms. I’m so groggy that I don’t want to be upright, but I trudge after him as he goes up the three steps to the bright red door of the house.

He knocks three times. Then two times. Three times again, then once. We wait in the chilly dark long enough that I’m sure whoever’s inside slept through his secret signal, but finally I hear locks clicking. The door cracks open, then swings wide, revealing a man around Achilles’s age with rust-red hair and shocking green eyes.

“Piers,” Achilles says. “Let us in, will you?”