Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

36. Emma

Chapter 36

Emma

M y stomach is turning itself inside out as I walk out of the meeting room. Raleigh’s hand touches my shoulder. She wants to get my attention, but I’m fighting just to keep breathing properly.

That was my last chance to see Achilles again.

I didn’t realize I thought that until Thomas told me we wouldn’t be interfering. I had a fantasy set up in my mind, of flying back to England and reclaiming Ashwood House for him, removing Fantasia from power and leaving Wesley Hall to rot, showing up on the doorstep of his Edinburgh safe house and telling him I love him and I want to stay his. That insane dream is swirling down the drain now, leaving me dizzy.

“Emma, hey.”

I look up. Raleigh’s standing in front of me, holding both my shoulders. Behind her, Derrick is rocking Roman in his arms, cooing to his little boy. I tear my eyes off of them and focus on Raleigh. “I’m sorry- what did you say?” I stammer.

Raleigh frowns, her hazel-green eyes clear and hard as gems. “I said we’re eating breakfast together,” she declares.

It’s not a request or an invitation. It’s an order. And I’m too numb to turn her down.

Raleigh sets us up on the large table on the back porch and asks the housekeeper to bring us out some breakfast. I can’t imagine how I’m going to eat a bite of anything, but the breakfast is clearly just a ruse, because as soon as the older housekeeper is back inside the house and we’re alone, Raleigh plants her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands and says, “So. Tell me what actually happened.”

I swallow hard. Open my mouth.

And it all comes pouring out.

I tell her how terrified I was for her and for Paul when Achilles first arrived at the estate. How I didn’t actually have a plan when I offered myself as a hostage, just that it was the only thing I could think of to do. I tell her about the plane ride with Achilles, including my mad idea to seduce him into letting me go and my total failure to do it. I tell her about Fantasia threatening to kill me, and then threatening to kill me if I didn’t marry Achilles. I tell her about the rushed, awkward ceremony and the botched paperwork. I even tell her that we consummated the marriage and assure her that Achilles was kind to me through all of it. More than kind.

More than I ever could have wanted.

To her credit, Raleigh doesn’t interrupt at any point. Her face is unnaturally emotionless as she listens to me vomit up all the feelings I’ve endured over the last month. Even as my eyes spill over with tears and my words become more babbling, she doesn’t try to shut me up.

Not until I arrive at that heartbreaking night in the hotel, when the truth finally came out.

“That bastard,” she hisses violently. I blanche, and she shakes her head. “Achilles sounds like a fucking idiot. Sorry. You love him, obviously, and he clearly loves you too, but that’s not going to stop me from shitting on him when he deserves it.”

I’m stunned, not by the vitriol in her words but by the plain and simple way she says that Achilles loves me . The last thing he said was that he never wanted to see me again. And the last thing he did was put me on a plane that took me an ocean away from him.

He can’t love me. He doesn’t even know me.

Raleigh must see the disbelief on my face, because she rolls her eyes up to the sky. “Emmie,” she scolds gently. “You made a hell of a gang leader. But there is only one of me in this entire world, and I’m her. You didn’t make a single decision that I would have made, and you didn’t react to a single thing the same way that I would have.”

“Not even the seduction part?”

Raleigh throws her head back and laughs. “ Especially not that. I’d have spent the entire nine hours chewing the ear off of any bastard that decided he was going to take me hostage, especially if I had even the slightest reason to believe I was too valuable to harm. Just ask Derrick.”

I smile, but it feels too weak and wobbly to be believable. Her words should be encouraging, but they just make me more confused about what real feelings Achilles has for me.

Can he really… Is it possible that he does- or did , at one point- love me?

A staff member pushes a breakfast cart out onto the terrace. The second the smell of bacon and eggs hits me, I have to fight down a fresh wave of nausea. It’s all I can do not to rush away from the table as the man doles out plates of food to everyone around me. It’s not that the food smells bad- it smells completely normal. But either I’m more anxious than I thought about the outcome of this morning’s meeting, or my body has decided it never wants to eat breakfast again.

Raleigh digs right into the spread, leaving plenty for me. I make an effort to grab some toast, but as soon as I open the glass butter tray, I have to slam it closed and take a sip of water instead.

What the fuck is happening?

Across the table, Raleigh notices my discomfort and pauses. “Is it not what you’re used to now?” she asks. “I can see if they can bring something else-”

“No,” I manage, “it’s not that. I think I’m just… I’m probably just tired.”

“You look green ,” Raleigh says frankly. “Fuck, we should’ve given you a check-up before anything else as soon as you got back. God knows what you could have caught on that plane in the middle of winter.”

“Maybe,” I agree weakly, but my mind is churning. Now that I think about it, I felt nauseous when I landed in the states too, but it was far more mellow than this and I had been crying for hours, so it didn’t surprise me that I felt sick.

A memory strikes me suddenly. Or rather, it’s the absence of a memory that is immediately suspicious to me.

At no point during my month-long stay in London did I have my period. And I would’ve remembered it, surely, if I had to ask Achilles where the sanitary products were kept in Wesley Hall. According to my mental clock, I should’ve had a period at least a week after I arrived. But it never happened.

Oh god. Nausea is rising in my throat, and I take another sip of water to force it down.

This isn’t happening. This cannot be happening.

“I… I’m late,” I say, my voice so small I expect Raleigh not to hear me. But she does. And again, to her credit, she understands immediately.

“ Shit ,” she says simply. It’s such a sincere and horrified reaction that it almost makes me laugh.

Almost, but I’m still fighting hard not to puke.

“You should take a test,” Raleigh says. “Just to be sure. You could still have bird flu or something. And you were stressed as hell- I mean you were a hostage . That’ll affect your period too.”

I nod, but I don’t have much hope that she’s right. I can tell she doesn’t either. But she still comes around the table and puts the back of her hand against my forehead to test my temperature.

“You feel… fine, I guess,” she says. Her hazel eyes search my face, and I realize she’s pointing her motherly concern at me for the first time. Raleigh is such a freewheeling person that it’s sometimes hard to imagine her as a parent. But when she focuses her concern or her judgment on you, she’s truly a fierce caretaker.

“Let’s find you a test,” she says, gently pulling me up from my chair and into the house. “I don’t have one but, Clara might have a spare.”

Once we’re away from the smell of breakfast, my nausea eases, but a new kind of anxiety twists in my stomach. Raleigh leads me at a brisk pace to Thomas and Clara’s room. Inside, she calls out to Clara, who digs through a drawer and pulls out a test. “Thank goodness they come in twos,” Clara says, handing it over with a small, encouraging smile.

Raleigh leads me through the house to her room at a faster pace than I want to go, but I force myself to keep up with her. And once we reach her old bedroom, now converted into a guest bedroom for her and Derrick whenever they visit the estate, and she leads me to her bathroom, I feel true panic close over my head. Raleigh must see it, but mercilessly, she holds the test out to me anyway.

“You’ll feel better when you know, one way or the other,” she tells me, pressing the test into my hand.

Numbly, I close myself in the bathroom and take the test. Raleigh knocks on the door to be let in, and together, we wait on the cold tile floor for the results.

For the entire two minute wait, I can’t even be sure what I want the result to be, I just know that I wish Achilles were here to see it with me.

But when two pink lines show up on the tiny test screen, it’s only Raleigh there to hold me as I start to sob.