by Nora Ash
“Never.” They spoke at the same time, the denial immediate and fierce. Louis’ stormy eyes turned darker, as if there mere suggestion was the deepest insult they’d ever heard.
“But if we let you leave, whoever was watching you will snatch you up,” Liam said.
“And trust us, they will hurt you, if for no other reason than to show us they’re serious. And we’ll never allow anything to happen to you,” Louis finished. He didn’t release my shoulder until I let my fingers fall away from the doorknob. And even then, he stayed by my side until I stepped away from the door.
As scared and angry and overwhelmed as I was, what they were saying was making too much sense to ignore.
As much as they’d lied to me, they’d come for me the second they’d known I was in danger. As I looked at them, these two men I’d never known as well as I thought, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they wanted me to be safe.
“Okay,” I said, folding my arms across my chest as I looked at them. “What do we do now?”
“We’re not doing anything,” Liam said, his eyebrows arching high on his forehead.
“Liam and I will make some phone calls. You’ll do nothing,” Louis finished. “Are you hungry? I think we have some bread in a cupboard or something.”
“I ate, thanks,” I snapped. My irritation with once again being pushed out of the loop was possibly irrational—it wasn’t like I’d have any idea what to do about rival mafia wars. Ignoring the both of them, I marched over to the couch and sank down in its soft plushness. It might be hideous, but at least it was comfortable.
“Feel free to watch TV,” Liam said. He leaned over to get me the remote and stroked a couple of fingers along my cheek as he did. He shifted away before I could move my head from his touch.
I flicked on the giant flatscreen and tried to ignore the longing jab that still went through me whenever either man touched me.
27
Liam
“Liam?”
My consciousness slowly seeped back at the achingly familiar voice speaking my name. For a moment, while the haze of sleep lifted, I thought I was back in Audrey’s bed, and the warm sense of completion that filled me made a lazy smile spread on my lips. “Mmh?”
“The bread’s moldy.”
I frowned, the comfortable feeling lifting as I became aware of the painful kink in my neck. I grimaced and stretched, feeling leather underneath me rather than my comfortable mattress. I wasn’t in Audrey’s bed—I was on the living room sofa, and the realization made last night’s events come rushing back like a flood of proverbial shit.
My eyes flew open and I looked up into Audrey’s pretty face. She had sleep-messy hair, but she was fully dressed in the same set of comfortable jogging pants and T-shirt she’d been in last night. I hadn’t stripped her when I’d carried her into my bedroom last night after she’d fallen asleep on the sofa to Two and a Half Men reruns, figuring she’d probably not appreciate being naked around either of us at the moment. Similar reasons was why I’d slept on the sofa. Normally, I’d have bunked with Louis, but that wasn’t in the cards at the moment. As much as we needed to work together to ensure Audrey’s safety, I hadn’t forgotten what he’d done. And I doubted I ever would.
“What?” I croaked, coughing to clear my throat.
“The bread—it’s moldy. I’m starving, and you literally don’t have anything else to eat in the house.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “I assume I’m not supposed to do a quick croissant run.”
“Oh, sorry.” I pushed the blanket off and sat up with a grimace at my stiff neck. “We usually keep something around, but…” But neither of us had had the mind to shop in the past week.
I rubbed my neck. “I’m just waiting for a call from our brother—he’s got some spies out, keeping tabs on Perkinson. Once he’s given us the all-clear, I’ll get some food for us, love.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice flat. With a sigh she sank down in the armchair to the right of the sofa. “You didn’t have to give me your bed. I could have slept on the couch.”
I snorted. Fat chance I’d make her sleep on the damn sofa. “It’s all right.”
She didn’t respond, but she didn’t leave, either. I looked over at her, and my chest tightened at the sight of her pretty face. I’d missed her so goddamn much, it’d been nearly unbearable. Only the promise I kept repeating to myself that I’d find her again once this shit with our dad was over—and somehow convince her to give me another chance—had made me strong enough to pull through.
When I’d seen her at Perkinson’s event, I’d been too floored by her unexpected appearance to do what I should have done—quickly diverted her to ensure Perkinson never suspected she was more than a distant acquaintance. But I’d been so wrapped up in the rush of emotion her nearness brought up, I didn’t manage to react. And when she’d told him we were together… I’d been too confused at her apparent disregard for the break up between us that I hadn’t kept a sharp enough eye on Brian.
A least her reaction to seeing me there was explained when I saw her in Louis’ arms moments later.
The acid fury in my gut returned at the memory of how utterly... How completely in love she’d looked as he held her close, the way I was supposed to. The way I had been, until I’d realized how much danger I was putting her in. I’d thought I could keep her away from my world, but I’d been wrong. So I’d given her up, because I couldn’t keep her safe any other way, even though it nearly killed me. I knew my text would have fucking broken her heart, and that I’d promised her… But I’d had no other choice.
And then Louis… My fucking twin—the one person I’d always been able to count on… He’d brought her right back into the danger zone for his own selfish, fucked up reasons.
She hated us both now. I didn’t know what lies he’d told her to get her to look past my text, but she sure as shit was blaming me in equal measure for his deception.
“I didn’t know he went to you,” I said.
She gave me a dark look. It spoke of so much mistrust, it made my chest ache.
“I didn’t know he was pretending to be me,” I said. I needed her to know.
“I’m sure. That’s why you never called to straighten it out after I found out, right? Makes perfect sense.”
God, she was so hurt. It was clear to see, through her armor of anger. She’d been hurt so fucking much, and as much as I wanted to blame Louis for it all, I knew it’d started with me. When I left her, after promising I wouldn’t mess her around. Then what she’d said set in, and I frowned.
“I called you. Multiple times.”
“You didn’t.” She fished out her phone and lobbed it at me. “Check the call records, why don’t you? Neither of you called.”
I swiped right to open her phone and pressed her call logs. There were no incoming calls from my number this prior week. I bit the inside of my cheek when it occurred to me that she didn’t have a PIN on her phone.
He wouldn’t have…
I navigated through her phone until I got to the list of blocked numbers. Mine was the only one on there. When I checked, I recognized Louis’ number by my name under her address book.
That absolute piece of shit—
My own phone chimed, pulling my attention from the renewed surge of betrayal rising in the pit of my gut. One glance at the display revealed Blaine’s name. Finally, some news. I answered with a swipe of my thumb.
“Dad knows. Wesley’s on his way. Get out—now.”
Blaine’s voice was stressed, and his toddler was fussing in the background, but the warning made it through my own frustration and anger like a bucket of ice water.
Dad knew.
I was on my feet and headed toward Louis’ room without missing a beat, pushing aside the sensation of marrow-shattering fear. We’d been prepped for this since Blaine and Marcus told us what our father had done to our two older brothers.
“Perkinson?” I asked as I pushed Louis’ door open. “Louis, get the
gear. We’ve got to go.”
“Yes. He flipped. My guy said he’d been scared as shit you’d come for him and figured his only chance was going to Dad. I’m getting Aiden and Mira out. We’ll have to have radio silence for a while. I’ll contact you when I can—you still got the burner?” Blaine was all business. I could hear him moving around on his end, and Mira shushing their kid. Then the sound of car doors slamming and an engine roaring to life.
“Yeah, we’ve got it. One hour, 10 p.m., every Sunday.”
“Stay safe. Both of you.” Blaine’s voice cut out as the call ended.
My twin sat up in the nest of blankets on his bed, his usual morning grogginess quickly wiped away as he looked at me. “He knows?”
“Yes.” It was all I had to say. Louis was in motion, heading for closet with a look of determination writ across his features. One I knew perfectly mirrored my own.
I turned my phone off and shoved it back in my pocket—we’d have to wait until we were out of town to get rid of them—and jogged to my own room across the hall.
Audrey stood by the crossover between the living room and hallway when Louis and I came out from our rooms less than thirty seconds later, her arms wrapped around her midsection with her brows knitted in a frown. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve gotta go, love,” Louis said. He put the arm not loaded down by a heavy trekking backpack around her shoulders so he could steer her toward the front door. “Right now. Get your shoes on.”
She did as he said, but the confusion was clear on her face as we herded her down the stairs, Louis’ arm never leaving her shoulders. He was protecting her, I realized, with a start that managed to make its way even through my grim sense of urgency to get out of London before our father’s right hand man got to us. And despite my anger with him, despite how fucking betrayed I still felt at what he’d gone, and fucking furious I was at his claim to love my future wife… I found that right now, when the only priority was to make sure she was safe… it felt as right that he had his arm around her as it would have if it’d been my own.
28
Aubrey
The twins drove us North out of London in their Jeep, but after three hours of back road driving they finally pulled into what looked an abandoned farm. They still hadn’t explained what was going on, but after the revelation of what they were, I didn’t much care to push for details. The less I knew, the better my chances to make it out alive.
My perspective changed somewhat abruptly, until Louis jumped out of the passenger side and walked over to open the gates of what looked like an ancient barn that could topple over at any moment, and Liam drove the Jeep—with me still in the back—into its dark interior.
“Is this where you’ll both reveal you’re also crazy mass murderers, and this has all been a ruse to lure me to your remote Farm of Torture?” I was only halfway joking. Sure, I still had an innate trust that whatever was going on, they were doing their best to ensure I’d make it through safe and sound, but come on… a fucking barn?
“I’m sorry, love,” Liam said as he put the Jeep into park and pulled the handbrake. “I know you must be confused as fuck. Just… let us get to safety, okay? We’ll explain, if you want us to, once we’re not running anymore.”
I frowned at him. “We’re still running? We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one’s around for miles.”
He scoffed. “It takes a hell of a lot more to shake a man like our dad.”
“Wait… your dad? I thought we were running from Perkinson?” My hesitation at getting further involved was brushed away by the revelation that for whatever reason, we were running away from their father, of all people. “Isn’t he… I thought… Aren’t mafia Families supposed to be super loyal?”
I caught his grimace in the rearview mirror as he unbuckled his seatbelt and slid out of the Jeep. “This isn’t a TV show, love. My dad’s nothing that can be confused with loyal.” He spat the word out as if it tasted foul on his tongue.
Seemed I’d hit a sore point. But then I guessed it would have to be, if they were actually running from their own dad. For the first time since they’d told me what they were, the creeping notion that being in a mafia Family perhaps wasn’t the happiest of lives niggled at the back of my mind. Even though they’d deceived me, I was pretty sure the vital, vibrant man—or men, I supposed—I’d fallen so hard for were real enough. At least partly. No one could fake the kind of aura that’d pulled me in like a moth to a flame. But that obviously wasn’t all there was to them. I’d seen that clear enough when Liam—or Louis, I wasn’t sure—had come to me so distraught I’d pushed my own discomfort aside to comfort him the only way I knew how.
What would it be like for someone with the kind of light and warmth both twins carried at their cores to grow up inundated with violence and crime?
I pushed the disturbing thought aside and crawled out into the barn. Right now was definitely not the time to think about such things.
Louis was waiting for me. He grabbed my hand before I could trip off the vehicle and lifted me down. Ensuring I didn’t fall, like he had the night we’d climbed St. Paul’s Cathedral.
No, definitely not the time for such contemplations.
I stepped away from his grip and looked around the darkened barn. It smelled like damp, rusty metal and moldy hay. The gaps in the ramshackle walls let in enough light to let me see a few lumps underneath tarps scattered around between piles of old hay and ancient farm tools.
Liam walked to one of the tarp-covered shapes and pulled off the cover with a crinkly rattle, revealing a nondescript station wagon. It was the newest-looking thing in the barn by several decades, but it was still a sad downgrade from the Jeep.
Louis covered the Jeep up with the tarp, then proceeded to pull out his phone and smash it with a rusty hammer he’d picked from the floor. Liam handed him his phone, and he repeated the process until there were two small piles of plastic and glass next to each other in the hay.
They both looked at me, and I inadvertently pressed a protective hand to the pocket that held my phone. My last anchor to a life that’d never involved made men or a need to flee the city. “Surely that’s not necessary?”
When we crossed the border to Wales in a third car somewhere close to midnight, but only after having crisscrossed a good part of England to throw off anyone still on our trail, I was feeling pretty damn dejected. It might have had something to do with the fact that I hadn’t had anything to eat other than three power bars all day, but I’d kind of given up holding it together since the twins made me surrender my phone. It was as if seeing my last connection to what I’d thought was reality smashed to pieces in front of me had finally made me realize how utterly and completely terrifying my situation was. I was far away from home, with two men I might trust to try and keep me safe but honestly didn’t know—two criminals, no less—and the mafia on our trail. The fact that neither Liam nor Louis said more than a few words to me or each other, and how their wildly uncharacteristic brooding filled the car with nervous energy, made it perfectly clear that they were worried too.
We drove into the mountains along completely dark, winding farm roads for what felt like forever until finally, Louis pulled the car to a stop deep into what turned out to be dense woodland. When I crawled out, wincing as I got to stretch my cramping legs for the first time in hours, I could hear rushing water somewhere to my right, but I couldn’t see more than a hand ahead of me. Even the stars were blocked out by the heavy canopies above us.
Both twins flicked on a flashlight each. Liam handed me his, before he pulled out his heavy rucksack from the boot of the car and held out his free hand to me.
I hesitated to take it, and he snorted at my reluctance.
“The river you can hear to your right is at the bottom of a steep drop, and it’s got some nasty rocks around this bend. You familiar enough with the area to know where to step to avoid falling to your death?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but relented. I wasn
’t much of a hiker on the best of days, let alone in pitch darkness after the most distressing day of my life. “I don’t even know where we are,” I muttered as I slipped my hand into his. The warm, safe sensation that coursed through me when he closed his fingers around mine was as comforting as it was unwelcome.
It didn’t take more than ten minutes hiking through the uneven terrain for me to become grateful for Liam’s hand. Not that I saw anything of the supposedly deadly drop somewhere to our right, but his firm grip saved me from more than one twisted ankle. Roots and rocks seemed to pop up from the ground every few inches. Both twins moved across the uneven ground like damn mountain goats, even weighed down by their heavy packs, and I got the distinct impression that buildings weren’t the only thing they climbed in their free time.
Free time from their criminal day job. Christ.
It felt like we’d walked for-absolute-ever when the woods finally opened up and the twins slowed to a stop.
The stars spread out above us like the most stunning patchwork ever, and despite my exhaustion and general unease, the sight of it made me gasp in in awe. I wasn’t much of a camper, to put it mildly, and it’d been a very, very long time since I’d seen the night sky without city lights dimming its jaw-dropping beauty.
“We’re here,” Liam said. He gave my hand a small squeeze, and I pulled my gaze from the stars above to settle on the clearing in front of us. I couldn’t see it all in the illuminated cone from my flashlight, but it looked like we were standing in front of an ancient shack consisting of uneven rock walls and a patchy roof with a small chimney sticking up. It could have been taken straight out of the early Middle Ages—even though I was pretty sure they had doors even back then. This little shack just had an opening in the side with nothing to cover it.
A sinking feeling settled in below my ribs. “We’re where, exactly?”