Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

32. Achilles

Chapter 32

Achilles

I don’t feel present in my body, even as I move around the room collecting my clothes. Raleigh- Emma- whoever the fuck this woman is- is still talking, but I can’t hear her anymore.

I don’t want to hear a goddamn other word anyway.

I tell her to get dressed, and her mouth finally closes. She obeys, collecting her underwear, her shirt, her shoes and socks, but she can’t find her skirt. I don’t see it either. The fact that it’s been so hopelessly scattered by our unrestrained fucking finally makes the haze over my mind clear. Perhaps that’s worse, because now all I feel is fury.

Raleigh- Emma - lets out a shuddering sob, and it tears through me. I have to turn away from her- I can’t fucking look at her without seeing a stranger. I’m half tempted to just leave, just leave her in this room and send hotel security up to grab her, but when I storm over to the elevator and open it, I finally find her skirt and coat, abandoned when I couldn’t wait to strip her on our way up here.

That already feels like something that happened days ago.

I snatch up the clothes and hold them out to her, but don’t bother to look at her. Her trembling fingers brush against mine as she takes them.

There’s something rising up my throat, and I don’t know if it’s bile or a roar.

The worst part of all of this? I don’t even know who I should be angriest at, and who I am angriest at. This woman- this stranger - crying silently now as she finishes pulling on her coat? Fantasia, who first sent me to Thomas’s door?

Or myself, for being the man who brought Raleigh- Emma- whoever the fuck- into my own home, into my own bed, showing her my belly and still being surprised when she struck it.

What was I supposed to expect when I married a hostage?

I don’t speak to her in the elevator as it takes us down to the ground floor. I don’t say a word as I wave down a cab. And I definitely don’t open my mouth during the ride to the airport. Our cabbie seems to want to ask what our holiday plans are or something else equally friendly, but takes one look at my furiously set jaw and Emma’s tear-streaked face and wisely decides to hold his tongue too.

It takes us barely ten minutes to reach the airport, but it feels like ten years in the stewing silence of the cab. Emma has stifled her sobs, but tears are still free-falling down her face.

I don’t know what she has to cry about now. She’s been trying to escape since she arrived almost a month ago, and now she’s finally going home.

Nevermind that the sight of her tears makes me want to put my fist through the cab’s window. I jump out onto the curb in front of Edinburgh Airport before the vehicle even fully stops, desperate for a breath of air that isn’t soaked in misery and rage.

Logically, I should’ve done this the second we got to Edinburgh, before I showed her the safe house. Before I showed her my heart. What purpose did it serve keeping Raleigh- keeping Emma - in my custody after Fantasia turned on me? I wasn’t the one who wanted Thomas Warwick’s money. Having his sister as a hostage and then as my wife was all part of my sister’s machinations, not mine.

I’m just the one who has to deal with the fallout, as per fucking usual.

Emma follows in my shadow as I storm through the airport, which I appreciate despite everything. If I had to drag her wailing to my secondary jet-

I… don’t know if I could go through with this if she did that to me. It feels strange, in the middle of all my fury and confusion, to be grateful that she’s so compliant, but I am.

Needless to say, summoning my crew for a surprise transatlantic flight to the states two days out from Christmas means we have to wait almost an hour for them to arrive before we can board. We don’t speak during our wait in the private terminal. I don’t even look at her. Despite my best efforts to ignore her though, the world feels like it’s dropping out of existence, my awareness narrowing to her quiet sniffling and the heat of her at my side.

I won’t have to be aware of her for much longer. Once the crew is on board and the plane is being fired up, it’s time for Emma to go. I turn to her, about to order her onto the plane. But when she looks up at me, her grey eyes glassy and hopeless, her hands gripping the front of her coat like it’s the only thing holding her together, I know I don’t need to bother.

She’s resigned herself to this punishment. Perhaps she even understands that she deserves it.

Did she wait to tell me this because she knew I’d send her away, and she didn’t actually want to go?

No, I can’t consider that. If I do… Well, I can’t consider it.

My eyes catch on the flash of the wedding ring on her finger.

I consider demanding it back. She hasn't even worn it for a day, but the idea that she’d go home with it makes me feel sick. It’s just a reminder that I’m technically still fucking married to this woman- well, no, I’m actually not. Now that I think of it, she signed the wrong name on our marriage license, which means it’s null and void.

Emma isn’t my wife, and she never fucking was.

That… makes me feel more bereft than anything else up until this point. I don’t actually know Emma, and I’m not actually married to her. Nothing between us is real except for the rage and pain aching in my bones.

Her jaw works, her mouth opening and closing a few times as she searches for words. I expect an excuse, or a plea, or even an accusation. What she finally does say is far worse.

“I-I love you, Achilles.”

How dare she. How. Fucking. Dare . She. I said the words first, and I said them to a woman I didn’t even know throwing them back in my face after getting to know me better than she ever should-

Before I turn my back on her forever, I tell her the only thing I can bear to say.

“I never want to see you again.”

Outside the airport, I don’t bother to call another cab. It’ll take me over half an hour to walk back to the safe house, but I don’t care. I need to breathe this freezing night air to remind myself that I’m alive. I need my feet to keep moving, one in front of the other, or I’ll rattle out of my own skin.

I need to walk away from Emma of my own will, or I’ll turn and run down her plane.

I forgot Sidony’s Christmas presents in my private room back at the hotel, and I hate that I have to go back through the lobby alone where the man at reception clearly saw me with a woman. He knows what’s good for him, though, and he doesn’t say a word as he opens the elevator for me. I try not to think about going up this elevator with Emma in my arms, try not to remember how warm she was as I peeled off her clothes, how sweet she tasted, how entrancing the sounds she made-

Sidony’s gifts sit on the carpet near the elevator, just inside the room where I left them as I pulled Emma toward the bed. The mattress is still dipped where our bodies pressed into it, the coverlet rumpled from our passionate writhing.

I tear my eyes away from the bed and retrieve the packages. On the street outside the hotel, my gaze strays to a public trash can sitting on the curb. For one, horrible second, I consider stuffing the wrapped packages into it. The things inside were picked out by Emma, Emma who lied to me and lied to my daughter and wormed her way into our lives and then-

But I have nothing else to give Sidony for Christmas. And even though the world feels like it’s tumbling down around my head, there’s still a chance she’ll be able to enjoy the holiday. Despite everything, I can’t take that away from her.

Tucking the packages back under my arm, I stuff my hands into the pockets of my coat, fiddling with the wedding ring on my finger, and trudge back through the Edinburgh streets toward the safe house, alone.