Trouble: (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) (Made & Broken Book 3)

by Nora Ash

  They’d obviously both done what they could to make me stop crying again, and there’d been peace in our little camp since then. They’d even cooked the fish together, most likely in an attempt at proving things were fine and I didn’t have to start blubbering again.

  My face heated from the shame of having broken down like that—but dammit, I couldn’t help it! My hormones were all out of whack, thanks to the unauthorized birth control break, and I had zero control over my emotions.

  All I cared about right now was to try and make my cramps settle down, and ideally not burst into tears again for the next four to five days. Earlier, Liam had sat down on the tarp where I’d been curled up with a massive case of cramps, put my head in his lap without asking, and started telling me stories like I’d been a little kid. A part of me had known I should be furious, that I needed to keep my distance, but… most of me had just enjoyed being cared for. So I’d let him stroke my hair and pretended like all the messed up things between us were just a bad dream. Despite the cramps, it’d been amazing.

  “You ready for sleep?” one of the twins—I thought it might be Liam—asked me when I started nodding off in front of the fire some hours after the sun had set.

  “Yeah,” I yawned—and then frowned when I remembered the still-wet sleeping bag that Liam had washed in the river this morning. It wouldn’t be dry for probably a few days. “But… what are we going to do about the sleeping bag? Did you bring any blankets?”

  He shrugged and got to his feet to stretch. “Nah, we’ll just share.”

  I blinked. “Share? All three of us? In one sleeping bag?”

  “Sure,” his twin said, a small smile lurking in the corner of his mouth at my obvious hesitation. “It’ll be nice and snug.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but quickly shut it again. I was the reason we only had one sleeping bag right now, and what was the alternative? Someone sleep on the bare tarp.

  “You might want to ditch the T-shirt,” the first twin suggested as he got out of his own pants and shrugged his top over his head. “It’s gonna get warm between us.”

  “Why do I have to be in the middle?” I grumbled, but I was too exhausted to put up much of a fight. It wasn’t like they hadn’t both seen me topless before, anyway. Heck, I’d even let Louis hug me while we’d both been completely naked earlier because there’d been nothing sexual in it. He’d just offered me comfort, and I’d been grateful for it.

  “Because you’re much nicer to hug than Louis,” Liam said with a teasing quirk of his eyebrow, confirming my suspicion of who was who.

  Louis snorted from the sleeping bag, where he’d already gotten comfortable. He opened the zipper and pulled back the top part, inviting me in.

  I slid out of my pants and, hesitating for only a moment, pulled my T-shirt off as well. To both twins’ credit, I didn’t catch them staring like they had the first time I’d been bathing in the river.

  Louis wrapped his arms around me as soon as I was laying down, enveloping me in warmth. His arms brushed against the underside of my breasts, and despite how incredibly unsexy I felt, it still sent a small twinge of the non-crampy variety through my abdomen. Up until now, my conscious closeness with either man had been very limited, but there was something undeniably intimate in snuggling up like this. Knowing he was awake while our bodies were intertwined, without much fabric between us for modesty. Flashes of the many times I’d been naked with one of them before, in my flat when I’d had no hesitations over being intimate, helpfully sprung to the forefront of my mind.

  It didn’t get any better when Liam slid into the sleeping bag and pressed his entire, gloriously hard body against my front.

  “Comfy?” he asked me with a wink when I flushed at being sandwiched between the identically sexy men I’d been so attracted to since first sight. Thankfully, my cramps kicked in before my body got too carried away, effectively quelling any and all desires for anything other than sleep.

  Instead of answering, I nuzzled my face in against his collarbone and closed my eyes. It didn’t take long before I was fast asleep, wrapped up in strong arms and the comforting scent of burning wood, fresh air, and man.

  It took two days for the sleeping bag to dry, which meant two days of going to sleep and waking up completely entangled with both twins. They’d stopped arguing, even going so far to have small conversations now and then, but it was still obvious that there was some point of contention between them. The only place they seemed to shed it completely was when we were squeezed together at night. It was as if that time was sacred somehow, our one time of the day where we all pushed every stress and aggravation aside to just be. There was something about being embraced by them so intimately that helped calm both my cramping body and uneasy mind, and I found that for those hours, it was easy to forget how they’d tricked me and what they truly were.

  Once the other sleeping bag dried, I silently mourned the loss of our nighttime cuddling, but I needn’t have. Come evening, Louis moved the fresh sleeping bag across the tarp and opened the side up on both of them, allowing them both to hold me like they had for the past few days—just with a bit more breathing room. We didn’t talk about it, but deep down, I knew we all needed this small sanctuary.

  Days turned into weeks, and our lives in the mountain bothy became routine. The twins fished daily to stretch our supply of canned goods, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to do than wait for it to become Sunday. For one hour on Sunday night, one of the twins would turn on the old-fashioned phone they’d brought, and we would all wait in vain for it to ring.

  All that spare time gave me a lot of time to worry about what my parents were doing—if they’d declared me missing, if I’d been officially fired from my job yet… and what I’d do once everything got back to normal. If it ever would. For every day that passed, my resolve to not ask questions about what had brought us here withered away a little more. I might not have wanted to get involved with any mafia-related business, but the longer we were hiding out in the Welsh mountains, the more obvious it became that I was already in the deep end, whether I liked it or not.

  So on the third Sunday, after Liam came back from fishing further upriver, I finally caved.

  “We need to talk,” I told them as he walked into the stone hut we’d called home for three weeks now. It was a rainy day, so both Louis and I had stayed inside for most of it, tending the fire and watching the gray blanket of misery out the open doorway.

  “Sure. What about?” Liam threw the fish in the empty pot next to the fire and proceeded to strip down so he could towel off. He’d been soaked through while fishing, and his red hair was plastered to his forehead and making small rivulets of water splash down his face and back.

  “Everything,” I said, doing my best not to look at his perfect arse as he stepped out of his jeans. When I finally forced myself to look away, I saw Louis looking at me with a knowing smirk, and flushed predictably. Thankfully, he didn’t call me out on my perving.

  “Starting with why we’ve been hiding out from your dad, of all people, for the better part of a month. I want to know everything.”

  “Are you sure?” Louis glanced at his twin before he looked back at me.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that this isn’t just some nightmare that’ll go away if I just pretend like it’s not real for long enough. So I think I have to know—don’t you?” I sighed, steeling myself. “Please. I need to hear everything.”

  “All right.” Liam, now with a towel wrapped around his waist, sat down on the tarp opposite me, a few feet from Louis. “Our father, William Steel, has ruled London’s underworld for years. Our brothers and us… we grew up in it. About three years ago, our brother Isaac went to jail for what we thought was a drug deal gone wrong. It was unusual, because our Family has a lot of pull. He wasn’t supposed to get locked up, but he did. For twenty-five years, no parole. Has refused visitors ever since.”

  “Some time after that, our eldest broth
er Jeremy was sent to America to solidify business ties over there. Or so we were told. No one heard from him. Fast forward a bit, and Blaine and Marcus, our two remaining brothers, come across proof that our father’s behind it. He double-crossed Isaac to get him locked up, and… he killed Jeremy.” Louis shook his head, as if the memory of their father’s betrayal caused him physical pain. I couldn’t blame him.

  “We’ve been working with Blaine to try and find a way to get rid of our father once and for all,” Liam continued. “None of us are safe while he’s still around. But doing so isn’t exactly easy, especially because if he goes down while Isaac is still in jail, Isaac will rot his life away in there. The alliance with Perkinson was meant to give us the firepower we needed, but we still needed a way to save Isaac.”

  “And then the prick went and flipped on us,” Louis finished, disgust in his voice. “If we make it out of here alive, I’ll kill him myself.”

  “Is it that easy for you?” I blurted. “Killing?” I didn’t know why, but the thought made me so angry. Or, strike that, I did know why. The two of them—they’d always seemed so full of life. The thought of them taking one without an ounce of mercy made the sense of betrayal flare up again. How much had been a lie? All of it?

  “It’s never easy.” Liam’s voice was soft. “Never. But sometimes, there’s no other way. This is one of those times. If we don’t, we will sign over our own lives, our brothers’. Their wives, and Blaine’s kid.”

  “Yours,” Louis whispered, regret plain as day on his beautiful face.

  My stomach lurched. “Mine? But I—” I was about to say I wasn’t involved in any of this, but then I remembered the two men who’d watched my windows late at night. I wasn’t hiding out in the wilderness for no reason. I took in a deep breath to calm myself. I’d asked to know everything, and throwing a tantrum would just convince them I wasn’t strong enough to handle the truth.

  “Have you killed before?” I asked. It was the one thing that’d looped in my mind over and over since they’d told me what they were.

  “Yes.” The pain on Louis’ face was mirrored in his twin.

  “The night I came to you, I had to kill a man.” Liam’s voice was so hollow, it made my chest ache. I’d never thought I could pity a killer before, but I remembered what night he meant. I’d never seen so much agony as I had on his face when he cried in my arms that night. They weren’t cold-blooded killers, that much was certain. Something I hadn’t realized had been coiled tight in my chest eased as I looked at the sorrow written across both men sat in front of me. They might have been mafia, but they weren’t ruthless. They were criminals, but they were still…

  Still what, Audrey? Still the men who tricked you into falling in love with a lie?

  “Why did you trick me?” I hadn’t meant to ask. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t give them another chance to lie to me, but seeing them like this… so open and vulnerable… it pulled on me with an urgency I could hardly grasp. I needed to know—I needed to understand how everything I’d felt for them could have been such a massive lie.

  Liam looked to his side, at Louis, his brow arched in challenge.

  His twin looked sick, but he raised his gaze to face me. “I was scared,” he whispered.

  “Scared?” Somehow that confession made the rage I’d felt when I’d first realized they’d tricked me come roaring up from the depths of my very core. That part of me who’d felt the betrayal the deepest cried out, and I scrambled to my feet. “You were scared? What the fuck kind of explanation is that?”

  “Let me finish,” he said. His voice was still low, but there was firmness in it. He glanced at his brother, then returned his focus to me. “Please.”

  I clamped my jaw shut, glaring at him, but managed a short nod.

  “Our father had someone watching us. He saw Liam with you, and I… The way Liam was acting, going to see your parents, behaving like a smitten teenager, I was afraid what would happen if our father threatened you. Our brother Marcus nearly got himself killed defending his girl, and I couldn’t…” Louis drew in a deep breath and shook his head as if to clear it of horrible images. “I couldn’t bear it if Liam got hurt because of some girl.”

  It hurt, hearing him call me that—“some girl.” I tried to ignore the irrational emotion as I stared at Louis. This wasn’t even the man I’d fallen in love with, not at first. Why did I care if he called me “some girl”?

  But that night on the cathedral balcony… that had been Louis. Not Liam. That night had changed everything.

  Who was I even in love with? The shock of that thought hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t know which of them my stupid heart ached for, because I’d fallen in love with both of them, thinking they were one man.

  “I decided to show him you were nothing special—just another girl,” Louis continued. “So I went to you and pretended to be him.”

  “When?” I rasped out. “How long did you pretend?”

  “Since Liam broke up with you. I was the one who convinced you to give me another chance. It’s been me since.”

  I shook my head at the onslaught of emotion. Somehow knowing was even worse. “Why? Why the fuck did you do that? He’d already… he left me. Why did you make me fall for you, too?” I faintly realized I was shouting, but I didn’t care. I stood over him, hands balled into fists, daring him to make excuses for what he’d done.

  “I wanted to make sure… If he wavered, I needed him to know what he thought he felt wasn’t real.” Louis’ voice was still quiet in the face of my anger, but he kept his gaze locked in mine despite his obvious regret.

  “That’s so cruel.” I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. They fell down my cheeks, and I wiped at my face, as the hurt echoed through me. “I was so fucking broken, and you pretended to… You pretended to be him, to want to make amends, just to… You slept with me and held me while I cried…” I shook my head, unable to continue.

  “I know. And I am so sorry, Audrey,” he said, his voice finally raising from a whisper. “I was scared and I was cruel, and I am so fucking sorry.”

  “I didn’t know he was pretending to be me,” Liam said. “If I had, I’d have put a stop to it.”

  I swung around to level my glare at him. “How fucking noble of you,” I hissed. “You dumped me with a one-line text after you promised… I thought you apologized to me and tried to make it up, but it was your brother. Your twin, who was just using me to protect you, was the one to apologize for how absolutely fucking cruel that was!”

  Liam paled in the face of my anger, but didn’t relent. He got to his feet too, towering over me. “I was trying to protect you! Dad had to believe you meant nothing to me, or you would’ve been in danger.”

  “And I? Did I have to believe I meant nothing to you, too? Because that’s exactly what that stupid text made me feel.” He reached for me, but I pulled away. “You could have done it gently—you could even have bloody told me what was going on. But no, you broke my fucking heart, you absolute prick!”

  Despite my tears as I shouted at the man who’d hurt me so gruesomely, it felt good to finally get it all out. Even while I’d thought he’d come back to me, the lingering mistrust for what he’d done still festered in my chest.

  “I would have come back—once you were no longer in danger.”

  I scoffed. “That’s really nice, Liam. And, what, you’d have expected me to just take you back? How long would you’ve been out of my life for at that point?”

  “I did it because I fucking love you, Audrey!” Liam was shouting too now, the frustration and hurt plain on his face. “I thought he might hurt you, and I panicked, okay? Being away from you… it wasn’t fun for me, either. All I wanted was to crawl back and beg you to forgive me, but I couldn’t. If the choice was between never being with you again or seeing you hurt because of my Family, I had to choose to leave.”

  “You could have told me,” I insisted, wiping harder at the tears that kept falling faster and thicker down
my cheeks in rivulets.

  “Told you what? That I am in the mafia? You wouldn’t have fucking run, if you’d had a choice?”

  I opened my mouth to deny it, but then I remembered my horror when I’d finally found out what they were. Yeah, I probably would have run.

  Then what he’d said finally sank in. He’d said… he loved me.

  I’d thought he’d told me before, but that was Louis. I turned to his twin, eyebrows knitted in a frown as I took in the emotion in his eyes. “On that balcony…”

  “I meant every word,” he said, his voice quiet but rough. “I’ve loved you since our first night together. I didn’t admit it to myself at first, because it was fucking ridiculous—I’d known you for mere hours. But I know you’re meant to be mine, Audrey. There’s only you, and there only ever will be, regardless of what you choose.”

  Regardless of what I choose. I blinked when the implication finally set in.

  They wanted me to… choose between them?

  32

  Audrey

  “This is crazy—choose? Are you really asking me to choose between you?” I stared from Louis to Liam, mouth open. The tears finally stopped from sheer stupefaction.

  “I love you,” Liam said, softly this time. “I know you’ve felt our connection since day one, too. And if none of this bullshit would have happened, there would be no doubt in your mind. You would never have been with Louis—you would have been with me.”

  “But it did happen,” Louis said, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder. I was too numb with shock to brush it away this time. “And I was the one you said you loved. Me. I know you saw me, even if you didn’t realize at the time. Like I saw you. I love you, Audrey.”

  I shook my head. “What even gave you the thought I’d be with either of you, after what you both put me through? You had your reasons, I get it, but you tricked me—” I pointed at Louis, and then turned to his twin. “—and you broke my heart. And you’re both fucking mafia! What—mmph!”