Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

Epilogue

Piers: One Year Earlier

I pull the bill of my baseball cap lower over my face and readjust my sunglasses as I board the plane, but I needn’t have bothered. No one is looking at me. Parents are keeping track of their children. The elderly are struggling to tuck their luggage into the overhead compartments. Businessmen are already on their laptops. And Fantasia Warwick-Ashwood stares vacantly out of the window beside her seat.

I pass within a foot of her and take the window seat behind hers, but she doesn’t even blink. From around her chair, I can see only the tip of her long nose, her slender mouth, and her pale chin.

She’s so close. I could lean forward and tap my finger against the tip of her nose. Hell, she looks so zoned out she might not even notice. I could whisper the question of what exactly she decided she hated so much about me when she ordered Achilles to kill me, and she might hear me.

But in the end, she might as well be an entire ocean away for all I do say to her as the rest of the passengers settle and the plane prepares to take off. Besides, she has two of Achilles’s guys with her, and I don’t want them to recognize me. Or, failing that, think that I’m some rando harassing her.

She seems so much… smaller than I remember her being. Now that Fantasia is no longer a mafia princess in any capacity, she can’t wear her mother’s dresses or her father’s authority anymore. Now she’s just a willowy, too-pale, too-tired, too-young woman sitting alone on a plane.

Our flight will take us from London to North Carolina, which will give me several hours to decide what my next step is. My friend Achilles certainly has a sense of humor. The city we’re flying to is apparently called Raleigh .

He’ll be irritated to find me missing, but not surprised, I think. Achilles will be the first to tell anyone that I act first and determine the consequences later. I should be staying in London, rebuilding my contacts and fortune and Wesley Hall itself. And I certainly have people I trust working on that, some of my former peers in the orphanage who have almost as much street smarts as I do.

But if Fantasia isn’t there with me, I honestly don’t know if there would be a point to any of that.

The problem is… well, she tried to have me killed. Clearly, her feelings for me aren’t what I thought they were. So I need to know what they are.

Thus, I’m going with her to North Carolina on a fucking whim.

Fantasia might not agree with this sentiment, but I see a lot of myself in her. My parents gave me up when I was three, and did Fantasia’s parents ever give a fuck about her at all? Yeah, she grew up wealthy, with Achilles trying to soften the blow of that negligence, and I grew up in a ratty orphanage, but the damage done to our hearts was the same.

How can you ever be enough for anyone or anything, if your own parents don’t even care about you? How can you stop trying to be more than you are, when the people who should love you unconditionally weren’t impressed?

No wonder she’s so fucked up inside. That’s something I could never blame her for, no matter what she tries to do to me.

Especially not after the last week, when she was so delirious from alcohol withdrawal that when I tried to visit her in her room, she didn’t even know who I was.

The plane rumbles to life around us. I catch the twitch of Fantasia’s hand in front of me as she clutches the arm of her seat. I can see the reflection of her expression in her window. She’s afraid, she’s miserable, but there’s something else behind her eyes. Something I’ve seen and admired since we were kids.

It’s her goddamn spite.

“Nervous?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

Fantasia jumps a little, her head turning, but unless she lifts up in her seat she can’t see me. I dip my chin, just in case, hiding my face in the shadow of my hat and sunglasses. She doesn’t seem to recognize my voice, thank god, or doesn’t properly hear it over the noise of the rest of the plane and passengers.

“No,” she lies stubbornly. “I’m just not used to planes.”

“Uh-huh.”

Her hand clenches on the armrest. She’s insulted by the doubt in my tone. It’s a relief to see she’s still got so much spunk in her, after the hollowed-out creature she became this past week.

“I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” Fantasia hisses, and I grin.

“You’re a fancy one,” I tease.

“And you’re being a pain-”

One of her chaperones, the one sitting right next to her, looks over the top of his seat at me. “Leave the lady alone, friend,” he says, in an impressive baritone that gets several nearby people’s attention. I’d completely forgotten about him, but he’s huge, with a bushy blond beard and a scar through one eye. His companion, a wiry man with eyes black as the void, watches me like he’s locked onto his next meal.

So much for not looking like a rando harassing her. I open my mouth to crack a joke, but Fantasia beats me to it. “And I’ll thank you ,” she says to the huge man, “to never speak for me again.”

The man’s eyebrow twitches, but he returns to his seat with a cool, “Yes, ma’am.”

Well, Achilles picked some terrifying men to watch after his sister, but at least they seem level-headed and obedient. I can hardly disapprove, even if it might make approaching her a little more difficult.

Oh, who the hell am I kidding? Getting close to her was always going to be the hardest part.

“If it makes you feel any better,” I say, a little more softly, “I’m not used to planes either.”

Fantasia gives a little huff. “Is that why you’re talking so much? Are you the nervous one?”

“Nah, I just like to run my mouth.”

To my surprise, that earns me the tiniest, prissiest laugh. Worth it.

“You’re honest, at least,” Fantasia says.

“I’m funny too. And a good singer.”

She huffs another laugh, and I feel like a fire is lighting in my chest. Of course, she’s only speaking to me instead of clawing out my eyes because she doesn’t recognise me. That’s fine, at least for now. I’ve got a ten hour flight ahead to figure out how to reintroduce myself so she doesn’t run away or bite me.

Another thrill goes through my chest as Fantasia says, “Just don’t expect me to ask you for a lullaby.”

“That’s all right,” I tell her, unable to hide the smile in my voice. “We’ve got plenty of time.”