Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

35. Emma

Chapter 35

Emma

P aul’s hand on my shoulder feels like the only thing keeping me upright when I enter the meeting room first thing the next morning. My jet lag has the world around me seeming unstable, even though I slept for almost twelve hours when I finally collapsed into bed. Achilles’s emotionless face haunted every one of my nightmares, so whether or not I slept well is a different thing entirely.

Iris is already at the table with Thomas Warwick, along with Thomas’s wife Clara, Raleigh and her husband Derrick, and half the generals of the Warwick family.

You don’t belong here, Emma. You’re nobody compared to these people, and you always will be.

It’s an old instinct, but it’s one that has always served me well. If I remember that I’m nothing and no one, I’m always alert for what can go wrong and who is thinking about betraying me.

Today, however, I have to be more than what I’ve always told myself I am. I’m delivering an official report on my intel to Thomas and his generals, and while I do it, I need to make them believe everything I say. More importantly than that, I have to convince them that Achilles not only needs our help, but deserves it.

That’s just one of the things I decided to do during my long flight over the midnight sea.

Regardless of how our entangled lives were torn apart, I know Achilles and Sidony deserve a life of security, and that Fantasia as she is now will never be able to let that happen. Removing her from power has to be our priority, not only for the sake of our estate, but for Achilles’s as well.

I owe him that at least.

I’ve removed my wedding ring from my finger only to keep it in the pocket of my jeans. I won’t be discussing the marriage or my feelings for Achilles at this meeting, mostly because I can hardly think about them myself, but also because… well, it’s none of their business. My protective feelings for Sidony, a little girl who hardly knows me, and for Achilles, a man who wants nothing to do with me any longer, sound irrational even to me. I can’t imagine how they’ll be perceived by people who can’t possibly understand what the three of us went through together.

Paul guides me to the seat next to his on Iris’s right, then goes to the side bar for a cup of coffee for himself and a glass of water for me. Derrick and Raleigh are across from me, baby Roman in a bright orange onesie laid over Derrick’s shoulder. Raleigh makes a point to smile and wink at me. She must see how nervous I am, which… isn’t great.

When Paul gets me my water, I suck it down in one long gulp, then set the glass aside so he doesn’t feel compelled to get me another one. Paul chuckles.

“You don’t have to be nervous, kid,” he whispers, as more of Thomas’s generals file in. “It’s just like giving a report in school.”

“What makes you think I’ve ever been to school?” I reply faintly.

“Fair enough. Just tell it to me, then. Or Raleigh.”

I nod tightly. “I’ll try.”

The last of his generals sit down, and Thomas clears his throat to begin the meeting. “Let’s begin this meeting by first thanking and commending Emma Clarke for her service this past month.” He looks to me, and I want to shrink down into my seat at the intensity in his hazel eyes. “Your selflessness and bravery has left its mark on the Warwick family. It will not be forgotten.”

I am sure that my entire face is red. “Thank you. I-I mean, you’re welcome.”

I didn’t do this for praise. I don’t think I’ve ever been praised in my life, and now that it’s happening, I don’t think I like it.

No, that’s not quite true. Achilles called me incredible as we stood in his bedroom in Ashwood House, and while it was hard to look him in the eye as he spoke… it also made my heart feel warmer than ever before.

Perhaps I just like praise from a more specific source.

The meeting’s just started, and I’m already completely distracted by longing. Thomas is still speaking, but luckily, he’s addressing his generals now. When I tune back in, he’s just turning back to me.

“It’s admirable that you escaped unscathed on your own. I wish this had been an official mission, with a proper evacuation date. We were arranging the plane tickets for the team that was going to get you out-”

“You were?!” I blurt out, astonished.

“Yeah, kid,” Paul laughs, as if it’s the most obvious thing.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Raleigh snaps, her voice a little choked. “I wasn’t just going to let you martyr yourself for me. Thomas had to talk me down from being one of the people to come get you!”

I catch the exhaustion in Derrick’s eyes beside her. Clearly he had to put his two cents into that argument too.

“You had a hemorrhage,” Thomas says frankly, turning my blood cold.

“ Thank you , Thomas,” Raleigh says acidly. “You try being in labor for three days straight and then make logical decisions directly after waking up from surgery.” When she turns to me, though, her expression softens. “The way he’ll tell it, I was about to drag my hospital bed to the airport myself, but I couldn’t even stand. And Roman was in the NICU for two weeks after. It was… hell. I wanted to come for you immediately, but-”

“Oh my god, no !” I gasp, horrified. “You don’t need to apologize for anything, Raleigh. I was trying to protect you .”

“Don’t do that again, by the way,” Iris chimes in, leaning forward to look at me past Paul. “I lost ten years off my life when you threw yourself between that psychopath’s gun and me. I was wearing body armor, Emma. I was prepared to take a bullet or two.”

That might be true, but the office wasn’t that big a room, and Achilles was a real threat. Anything could’ve happened, and anything was more of a risk than I was willing to take.

I sit back in my chair, stunned by all this genuine worry for my sake. I never imagined Thomas would send people after me , much less that multiple people would line up to volunteer. I’ve had no place on the estate. Thomas was even still waiting for me to prove that he could trust me at all, a former street thug who’d threatened his little sister on multiple occasions.

“You acted for the good of the estate,” Thomas says, regaining everyone’s attention. “At this stage, that’s hardly something you can be faulted for. Regardless , a dressing down is not the point of this meeting. Go ahead, Emma, please walk us through what you’ve learned.”

I swallow, but my throat is already dry again. “The first thing is that these people aren’t Warwicks. Not primarily, anyway. The boss, Fantasia, is the daughter of your uncle, Marcus Warwick, and a woman named Veronica Ashwood. She was a member of the Ashwood family, a rival gang in London. Achilles is- was- the heir to the Ashwood name before his mother remarried into the Warwick family and Fantasia reached maturity. Then he gave her control over the Ashwood businesses, and she led a coup against her father.”

Just saying his name hurts my chest, but I force myself to stay focused.

“Since then she’s been struggling to hold onto the family’s resources. From what I could gather, she hired a lot of outside muscle rather than trusting her supporters in the Ashwood or Warwick families, and in the end only really leaned on Achilles. All the men I saw in the house- in Wesley Hall- seemed to be men that weren’t actually connected with either family.”

I shudder as I remember my run-ins with the men in the hedge maze, and again on the terrace. “They were… volatile. I don’t know how much control Fantasia actually has over them. She also seemed regularly drunk and paranoid herself. She wanted your money so she could keep hunting down a man named Piers, who was adopted into the Warwick family and chosen by Marcus to be his heir.”

Raleigh sucks air in through her teeth. “Instead of his own daughter. That’s fucked up.”

I don’t disagree, but there’s more to it than that. “Fantasia was poisoned against her father by Veronica from a young age. She would’ve turned on him eventually- even if he chose her as his heir, she would have killed him to claim that inheritance sooner rather than later.”

“And then as soon as she got it, she squandered it,” Thomas muses.

I nod. “She was never really trained to rule the family. Her mother was using her for petty revenge and her father neglected her. Only Achilles-” No, I don’t want to share something so close to Achilles’s heart. I adjust my wording to something less emotionally vulnerable. “Only Achilles really supported her.”

“Is that a connection that we can take advantage of?” one of Thomas’s generals asks. The question repulses me, but I don’t let it show.

“No need,” I say instead. “Fantasia eventually turned on him too. Achilles never killed Piers, and Fantasia eventually decided that he’d disobeyed her deliberately and could no longer be trusted. He also… he also didn’t approve of the way she let her men have the run of the place. He tried to return to his residence at Ashwood House, but Fantasia raided the place and he was forced to go to a safe house he maintained in Scotland. In Edinburgh. That’s… where he let me go.”

I don’t want to mention Sidony, that her safety was the crux of the dissolution between Fantasia and Achilles. She shouldn’t have any part in this. And as much as I don’t want to mention my… my… well, the entanglement between Achilles and I, I do need to make these people understand that he’s a sympathetic party in all this, despite also being the one to show up and hold some of us at gunpoint.

“He let you go?” Iris demands.

I nod, my throat tightening so bad I have to clear it to speak again. “He was… kind to me, despite everything. He stepped in when Fantasia wanted to hurt me, and he brought me with him when he quit Wesley Hall, even though I was technically his sister’s hostage. And when Fantasia raided Ashwood House, he could’ve left me behind then too, but he didn’t. He was… committed to my safety.”

What a lame way to describe what happened between us. But I can’t bear to expose any more of my heart, even to people whose motivations I trust.

Raleigh is watching me too closely from across the table. So is Thomas. I ignore both of their searching gazes. “A-Anyway, after we reached Edinburgh, he bought me a plane ticket and sent me back here. There wasn’t any point in me staying, after all, since Fantasia was the one who cared so much about getting funds from you. Achilles doesn’t mean us any harm, and doesn’t care about a tithe from us. He’s more than provided for by the Ashwood fortune his grandfather left him, which Fantasia was explicitly left out of.”

The table is quiet at that, considering. I push forward, my heart beating so hard I imagine the whole table can hear it. “We should take this chance to remove Fantasia from power. If Achilles is reestablished as the head of the Ashwood family and the London Warwicks are allowed to die out, we won’t have to worry about a threat from them ever again-”

Before I’m even finished speaking, Thomas is shaking his head. “From what you’ve told us about Fantasia, it sounds like she has very little real control over the people in her employment. And if she’s low on funds and their loyalty is to her money, she’ll be eaten alive soon enough. It seems Achilles was the man keeping the entire exhibition running. To be frank, I doubt we have anything to fear from them now that he’s no longer in her employ. I see no point in going back across the ocean to speed things along.”

I open my mouth. Close it. My thoughts spin and panic.

No, no, no , I have to help Achilles. I have to stop Fantasia. I have to go back. But I can’t do it alone.

Still, how the hell do I explain my urgency without tearing my heart out and holding it out on a silver platter? Thomas doesn’t operate based on emotion, not like Achilles. Even if I told him I loved Achilles and was determined to help him, it wouldn’t convince him to use his own resources to help me.

Thomas’s generals have been taking notes this whole time, but at the dismissal in their boss’s voice, they start straightening their papers and preparing for the end of the meeting. Thomas sips his coffee, his focus already turned forward, toward the rest of his day.

That’s it, then. I failed.