20. Ivy
CHAPTER 20
Ivy
L ike a fish out of water, I stand there gaping at the girl who just announced to the entire room—and to me—that she’s my twin sister.
I have a twin sister.
She looks exactly like me, save for the fact that she looks refined, genuinely happy and loved.
And why wouldn’t she, after hearing that speech, it’s obvious she grew up in a happy home.
Never did she have to cry herself to sleep wondering why she was abandoned.
Never has she had to run away to look for her parents and in doing so, killed her own grandfather.
She looks free, open, without a trace of burden or guilt on her shoulders…and she’s my twin sister!
Fool.
Idiot.
Dumbass.
I’m all that and more.
Samuel dissuaded me from doing this. Did he know that I had a twin?
Did he know that I would find this kind of heartache?
As the thoughts race in my head, an acute pressure blooms fully in my chest.
I start feeling like I’m about to choke, as if something is blocking my airway.
I grab my throat, but the invisible hold squeezes tighter.
My hands become clammy and hot.
My knees weaken even more and I stumble backward.
The spotlight is still on me.
Multiple eyes are still on me!
“Ivy, hello!” Melissa comes barreling towards me and engulfs me in a tight hug as if we’re reuniting.
“OMG! I’m so glad to see you! You look just like me!”
I stand there, wooden and frozen, staring at her.
“Melissa,” a hesitant voice speaks behind her, and then Governor Hughes is right in front of us.
“Daddy! You didn’t know but Mom actually had twins when she had me! This is Ivy, my sister!” Melissa says happily.
Governor Hughes stares at me, with an impressively schooled face.
He looks like he’s genuinely surprised and delighted, but his eyes are ablaze with fury.
At Melissa or at me, I don’t know.
“Oh, this is just…wow,” he starts and then he turns around as if to look for someone. “Honey, is this true?”
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
Don’t… but it’s too late.
My gaze follows where Governor Hughes is looking and land on a tall, strikingly beautiful woman.
Her brown skin is glowing as if it’s shimmering with diamonds.
Her curly hair is swept up in an elegant updo with a few tendrils at her temples.
Her high cheekbones, beautiful nose, and sparkling eyes are so perfect, she could be a model or a movie star.
The woman looks so much like Melissa, so much like me…and so much like Grammy and Gramps, the parents Beverly Irving dumped me to.
Jesus.
“Oh God,” the woman whispers shakily. “This cannot be.”
“Oh but, Mom, it is!” Melissa says gleefully. “I found my sister! The one you told me died at birth!”
Died at birth?
I feel sick to my stomach so much so that my forehead feels damp with a sheen of perspiration, and down my spine an intense wave of shudders are rolling through me as if I’m being electrocuted.
Oh no… it’s back.
I need to get out of here…
“E-excuse me…” I croak, but in front of me, around me, all I feel are stares of judgment, shock, and I think there are people filming me right now.
With wide eyes and fear drumming in my blood, I quickly turn around and start making my way toward the door I just used.
Each step I take feels like my body is being dragged back, weighted down by the quicksand I’m sinking in.
My entire body starts trembling.
I’m shaking so hard, I think I might wet myself or pass out or both.
“Excuse me,” someone says behind me, but I ignore them and keep going.
“Ivy, please wait!”
Trembling, I keep going.
Blindly, I go down a hallway, then I turn left on another, my feet stumbling against each other but I'm not fast enough.
I crash into someone holding a tray of champagne flutes.
They crash all over me and the cold liquid spills over the front of my clothes.
Instead of this waking me up, the squeezing in my chest only intensifies.
“Hey, are you okay?” Gorgeous Italian guy speaks. “Come this way.”
I feel a firm hand at the small of my back, then I’m being guided somewhere, but I can’t breathe.
“Oh dear, is she okay?”
“She just needs some fresh air.”
“She looks like she’s choking to death!”
“Melissa, shut up.”
“Also, who is that guy?”
“Melissa! What have you done?”
“What? Did you think I’d go along with everything without putting up a fight?”
The conversation drowns in and out but I know they are right behind me.
“Ignore them,” the Italian guy mutters in my ear, but it’s too late.
I’m falling apart.
I’m starting to wheeze, gasping for air.
“Should we call for an ambulance?”
I can hear people getting closer to me, but I can’t respond. I just stare at the blurry floor, trying to claw at my chest to restart my lungs as the pressure in my ears condenses and intensifies.
“No, we can’t afford a scandal,” a voice I can now identify as the governor’s says firmly.
“Why is nothing ever surprising with you, Governor Hughes?” a new voice speaks above the noise. This one is more sure, calmer, resolved, and easily dripping with power and authority that silences the room immediately. “You always can’t afford a scandal.”
As if my entire life has just been shocked, I pause.
Through a blurred vision, my spinning head and a furiously racing heart, I look up to see, to confirm, to make sure my maladaptive daydreaming hasn’t taken a new form of delusion.
Emmett stands there, in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing his thick, sexy, tattooed forearms.
The collar is open and he’s wearing black suit pants and simple dress shoes.
An outfit I know costs more than half the art on the walls of this mansion.
He looks casual, but because Emmett is a huge, muscular guy, he looks several degrees intimidating and dangerous… with an air about him that I’ve never seen before in all the years I’ve known him.
This is evidenced by the way everyone pauses, as if they’ve all stopped breathing.
A deadly silence falls over the room and even the hand at the small of my back belonging to the Italian guy has tensed up.
All of these reactions… at Emmett’s presence.
What the hell is going on?
Before I know it, I feel pressure closing in on me.
Then, a pair of strong, muscular arms go around me, and I’m lifted up bridal style like it’s nothing.
My body is pressed into a hard, solid chest. It’s warm. And the scent, Jesus… it smells so good, but my common sense comes back.
“Hey, stop,” I mutter. I can hear how weak my voice sounds. “Put me down.”
“Shut up, Angel.”
Angel…
Only one person in this world never calls me by name.
From the moment he decided to let me in his life, he’s called me Angel.
And that voice…
I glance up and notice his strong jaw that seems to be clenching and unclenching in staccato, almost matching the rhythm of my heart.
But I still can’t believe he’s here.
There’s only ever one test for me to confirm it’s him so with hesitation, and a split second away from passing out, I lean over and press my cheek and ear against the left side of his chest and…
Beat.
Silence.
Silence.
A long-ass silence.
Then a stuttering beat.
Like a tortured groan.
Slow, barely there, agonized but still with power.
“Emmett,” I mutter weakly.
“Even now, when you’re about to fucking die, you still want to know if that damn thing is still beating,” a terse, gruff voice says in my ear.
Yup. It’s the brooding asshole of Westbrook Blues all right.
“I told you…” I whisper. “I might die way before you ever do.”
Silence greets me at that, but I feel the hands around me clench, and I’m pulled even tighter.
“With what you’ve been up to lately, your self-prophecy will come to pass,” he murmurs against me and then he’s moving.
“You caused trouble again,” he continues in a deep voice as he stares at me.
When our eyes connect, his narrow just a bit.
“Mr. Easton—” Governor Hughes starts in obvious shock. “Y-you’re here!”
Is that excitement and a bit of trepidation in Governor Hughes’ voice?
“Isn’t that what you wanted, Governor?”
“Of course, of course,” Governor Hughes quickly says, slightly out of breath, as he follows after us.
“Cousin,” the Italian guy speaks, also right behind Emmett.
Cousin? Who the hell is he calling cousin?
My eyes almost bulge out of my sockets when I notice who the Italian dude is addressing, still clutching my chest, struggling to breathe.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here,” Italian dude continues.
“I never expect you to actually think ,” Emmett says coldly, then he gently deposits me on a warm leather seat in a car.
“She’s having a panic attack,” the Italian guy says calmly, but tightly.
“Is she?” Emmett counters impassively.
One moment I was standing beside the Italian dude and the next, Emmett has me in his car, and is now rummaging in my purse.
“You know this girl?” Governor Hughes asks, in shock, but Emmett only looks at me.
“Where is it?” he demands.
“What?” I croak above the buzz in my ear.
Emmett stares at me like he’s fresh out of patience and is not in the mood to deal with someone dumb like me.
I watch as he presses a button and then a perfectly hidden compartment softly opens.
He reaches in, pulls something out, and then he quickly starts shaking it.
Only when he opens it does my entire body freeze in the seat.
“How…”
I don’t have time to even ask when Emmett gets close to me, crowding my space, and brings the one thing I never thought he knew I needed, into my line of sight.
An inhaler.
“Open up.”
I can’t help but hold his gaze. How did he know?
When did he even find out that I’m asthmatic?
And how did he know that I was having an asthma attack?
Angel!” he snaps.
My lips immediately part open and I hungrily pull the inhaler into my mouth.
Weakly, I reach up to pump it for myself but Emmett doesn’t let go.
Instead, with his cold, angry eyes still holding mine captive, he pumps the inhaler for me.
Once.
Then after a few seconds, the second pump.
“Deep breaths,” he mutters silently.
Chills and goosebumps form on my arms when he says that.
This is unnerving.
On one end, I can tell that something is seriously wrong here.
Emmett is usually blasé about a lot of things.
He simply doesn’t care nor does he ever waste time investing in anything that isn’t beneficial to him, but now, in this moment, even though this is an act of great kindness to me, there’s a palpable energy in the car.
I’ve been around the Blue Boys of Westbrook Blues enough to know the signs of impending danger…and I also know Emmett enough to understand that this is not usual.
And by this, I mean the complete and unadulterated anger that’s radiating from him in waves, it’s practically bleeding through his cold stare.
But still, he’s telling me to take deep breaths, after he just pulled me through an attack.
“When did you know?” I finally ask, as my heart continues to pound recklessly.
“About what, exactly, Angel?” Emmett fires back as he stands right by the open door, glaring at me.
I glance at the inhaler still in his hand.
“As far as I know, you don’t have a respiratory problem,” I mutter.
“Don’t I?”
“You know what I mean, Emmett,” I whisper. “How can you just… pull out an inhaler like that when I’ve never shared with you that I have asthma?”
“That’s another thing about you,” Emmett says. “You’re very secretive on top of being an idiot that blindly walks into an incinerator without a care.”
Those words completely pull my guard up.
Yeah, something is wrong.
“What?”
“I offered to help you. You refused me. Now, here you are,” he grits out angrily, still standing outside the open door of the car.
“One more?” Emmett murmurs, leaning in to speak against the shell of my ear.
I nod eagerly and he gives me another pump.
I realize then that he’s rubbing circles at the base of my back, soothing both the asthma attack and the anxiety attack.
Grateful, my body leans into him.
For safety or for familiarity, I don’t know, but in this moment of incredible fear, shock, and uncertainty, the guy who has sworn he’ll never feel the same way for me that I do for him, the same guy who has broken my heart over and over again, the guy I swore I’d have nothing to do with, he’s the one giving me the most profound comfort.
“This is a strange turn of events,” Governor Hughes says. “On the night I find out I have another daughter, I’m graced with the presence of the heir and the Consigliere of the Easton Family.”
Heir?
Consigliere?
Those are mafia terms… but who is he referring to?
What the hell is going on?
“As expected of Governor Hughes, business before honor,” Emmett says coldly. Goosebumps appear on my skin to which Emmett gives me a quick look.
“You’re being scary,” I mutter for his ears, but it seems the Italian guy hears me and chuckles under his breath.
“That’s because he is scary,” he says and earns a glare from Emmett.
“Gentlemen, why don’t we go to my office?” Governor Hughes says as he steps forward. “We can discuss our matter in depth.”
“You failed then,” Emmett says to the Italian guy, ignoring the governor.
“He wants more,” Italian dude answers in that same clipped tone.
“As you should’ve expected.”
“American politicians.”
They exchange a look which I’m sure is loaded with communication.
I chance a glance at Governor Hughes and the two ladies behind him on the stairs of the front door.
They are all watching, eyes wide and glued to the two men standing right outside the car in front of the open door.
For some reason, the presence of these two men dwarfs and makes the owners of this mansion seem insignificant.
It’s as if they own this mansion and won’t be rushed as they effectively ignore Governor Hughes.
“You know her?” Italian guy asks, but it’s more of a statement than a question, to which Emmett doesn’t bother answering.
“Why, this is a very fascinating gathering,” a new voice suddenly speaks.
Everyone turns around to look to the left, where shadows emerge from the dark like a scene out of a scary movie.
“It seems we don’t have to make the effort of disrupting as this works great,” the same older voice continues.
When the two shadows finally appear in the light, I feel Emmett tense, then his entire demeanor shifts completely.
There stands an older man with a cane and beside him, is another older man in a wheelchair.
“Grandfather!” Melissa gasps as she looks at the man with the cane.
“Father,” Governor Hughes says as he steps forward. “I… I wasn’t expecting you here.”
“Well, seeing as you can’t even handle simple business and need a push all the time, I had to come,” the older man who Governor Hughes just called father says sternly, his eyes glancing in our direction.
“So, it’s those two then,” Melissa’s grandfather says to the man in the wheelchair beside him.
“Gentlemen,” he starts, addressing Emmett and the Italian guy. “Your grandfather Armando and I, we’ve had a very productive talk and we’ve come up with a more pleasing agreement.”
The man in the wheelchair who I think is called Armando sits calmly, with a very potent aura of power that is almost overwhelming.
But most of all, he looks just like…
I whip my head up to look at Emmett.
He’s staring at the older man in the wheelchair. And the Italian dude is not just staring, he’s glaring.
“Emmett. Vaughn,” the older man says in a deep, rumbling voice.
Suddenly, both Emmett and the Italian guy who I now know is named Vaughn, bow their heads but with a bit of rebellion to the act.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON NOW?
“Sir,” they both say at the same time.
“You’re both here. Good,” the older man says, but no one responds, meanwhile it feels like my head is spinning.
“Your son has two daughters,” the older man in the wheelchair says when his eyes track to me. “Either way, our new agreement still stands.”
“Agreement?” Governor Hughes finally says, as he steps forward. “We agreed to deny.”
“Well, Armando and I drafted a new agreement,” Governor Hughes’ father speaks, stepping closer to where everyone is gathered around the front doors that are now closed shut, likely to keep the guests inside, unaware of what’s happening right outside.
“What new agreement?” Governor Hughes demands
“The original one was amended to match your current standing, so for your political advancement as well as my empire, in five days, your daughter will marry the boss of the Easton Outfit.”
Wait, what?
“Ewww, I won’t do it!” Melissa suddenly shrieks loudly. “I’m not going to marry the boss of the Easton Outfit! I’ve heard the rumors! He’s old and disgusting and he’s a beast! A ruthless, violent old man that kills anyone! I won’t do it!”
A shudder powers through my body when her eyes suddenly track to me.
“She’ll do it!” Melissa shouts, pointing at me. “I tracked her down and brought her here just for this. She’ll do it!”
Everything in me freezes.
“You tracked me down and approached me… for this?” I ask quietly, almost brokenly, silently begging her to change what she just said.
“Yes, of course! The agreement between the Hughes and the Eastons was made when Mom was pregnant twenty-seven years ago, so I’ve since known that I’ll have to marry into their vile family, so I found you. After all, Mom kept you tucked away just for this.”
“What?” I mutter, looking at the woman who’s holding Melissa’s hand.
The closeness and intimacy between mother and daughter is very obvious.
“Tell them, Mom!” Melissa urges her mother. “Tell Grandpa the plan you put into effect!”
I stare at the woman, but she doesn’t bother looking at me.
“Mel is right,” the woman says. “With Teddy’s political future, we have to keep things clean and perfect for Melissa. After all, she’ll be the first daughter soon, so we kept the other girl alive for other business dealings.”
My entire world collapses on top of my head.
A ridge-like gap widens in my soul as I hear how clear those words are.
I turn to look at Emmett.
He’s already watching me and I realize then that he also knew about all this.
It’s not a lie. This is all true.
Oh God.
“So yeah, there you go, Grandpa!” Melissa says happily. “Two birds, one stone.”
“Melissa, that’s enough,” Governor Hughes suddenly says but when he turns to me, coming down the stairs, getting closer to the car, he has a glimmer in his eyes.
As if in sync, Emmett and Vaughn suddenly stand up at their full height, Governor Hughes halts to a stop immediately, as if intimidated.
He peeks at me. “You, what’s your name?”
I remain mute.
“Ivy,” Melissa speaks up. “They named her Ivy.”
“Yes, Ivy,” Governor Hughes says. “You will fulfill our agreement with the Easton Family. So your wedding will be in five days.”
I stare at him, then suddenly, I giggle.
“Y-you must be joking,” I say, giggling louder as I stare at him.
The giggling fit turns into laughter.
And before I can try to stop it, the laughter is now full-blown hysterical.