40. Liana
FORTY
LIANA
A mara held both my hand and her mamma’s as we moved inside. We made it through the luxurious foyer, Amara tugging us toward the back of the house.
“We’re moving this little gathering to the living room,” Emory explained with a tight smile.
We entered the cozy room in dual tones of light and dark brown, classical music playing from somewhere, but all my attention was on the two familiar figures on the opposite side. My twin sister and her dark-haired, dark-eyed lover, Kingston Ashford, who was nursing an amber-colored drink.
My next step faltered, my foot freezing in midair.
Our eyes met, shadows of the past dancing around us. Lou let out a strangled, gutting gasp, and then she was running toward me.
In the next breath, she was hugging me to her chest, stroking my hair, and somehow the past eight years faded away.
“You’re here. I can’t—” Her voice cracked. “I’m so sorry.” She was crying into my hair while she kept repeating the words over and over again. “I’m so sorry.”
And I fell apart.
I slipped my hand out of Amara’s and hugged Louisa tightly. I cried ugly tears for maybe the first time ever. All the pain, suffering, and loss of the past eight years unraveled me, or maybe it was walking away from Giovanni, from my first glimpse of happiness, that was my undoing.
“I’m sorry too,” I gasped out, broken words full of despair. If only she knew my sins, my betrayal, she’d turn her back on me. “I’ve made so many mistakes. Did so many bad things.”
“No, Lia,” she growled. She pulled away, shaking me lightly. “You don’t apologize. Ever.” She cupped my face, and it was like peering into a mirror. “We were just girls. You survived. We survived.”
I swallowed. “But you don’t know…” My eyes landed on the child hiding behind Kingston and it wasn’t hard to guess who it was. Their daughter. Another victim of the Marabella Agreements. “There’s so much you don’t know,” was all I could get out.
I was too cowardly to tell her the truth, and I had lost so much. I just wanted to hold on to this… Amara… Louisa… for a bit longer. Before everything was sure to turn to ash.
I got myself somewhat together and took a step back. “What are you doing here?”
“We were in New York, working up alliances, when Giovanni called us and said you might be coming to visit them.”
Of course he did, but that was the reason I loved him. He always did things to make me feel better.
“And we’ve been expecting you for a while now,” Emory chimed in.
I shot Emory a glance. “How so?”
“We’ve had eyes on you ever since you landed in Boston,” she explained, flicking an affectionate glance at Amara. “I suspected you might try to visit my— our daughter. Giovanni confirmed it.”
Pain pierced my chest at the sound of his name and I swallowed, focusing on now. “Yes, yours and Killian’s.”
Her eyes held mine, a look I couldn’t decipher in them. “And yours. I recognize that I owe you… we owe you her life. She wouldn’t have survived if not for you.”
My gaze lowered to her now, the greatest thing to ever come out of my life’s most painful events, and found that she was smiling up at me, her cheeks flushed. She looked so happy and healthy. A bright future was ahead of her. I could see it in her beautiful blue eyes. I could see it in her parents’ gazes that they would damn well ensure nothing—nobody—got in the way of her happiness.
“No, it was I who wouldn’t have survived without her,” I rasped, my voice breaking. “She saved me as much as I saved her. More so, probably. Because I would have given up a long time ago if not for this beautiful girl.”
I took a deep breath in then exhaled, my sister’s words finally registering.
My brow furrowed. “What do you mean you were working on alliances?”
“To kill that motherfucker, Giovanni,” Lou hissed, anger flashing in her eyes.
I stiffened, locked eyes with my twin, and my next words were like a whip against sensitive skin.
“You won’t touch him.” She flashed me a surprised look, and I took another step. “Promise me.”
Silence reigned in the room, the echo of Louisa’s breath catching in her throat as she watched me.
“I…” I didn’t know what to say or how to explain it all.
But finally Lou smiled, although slightly strained.
“You have my word,” she said. “If that’s what you want, he won’t be hurt.”
“Thank you.”
After that, the tension eased. Amara pulled me forward, making a beeline for the sofa, and we sank down, Emory on the other side of her.
Lou and Kingston sat with Lara between them, a girl they rescued from a trafficking ring. The DiLustro kingpins were strategically placed at each door and window, their wives close-by.
There was no point in taking offense. After all, I deserved it, my actions over the past few years were not exactly honorable.
I chose not to focus on the bad but instead memorized every line of Amara’s glowing face. I studied my sister’s happiness and the love that shone in her eyes. So many families and couples stood around here, their happily-ever-afters attained, and I felt grotesquely out of place. It cut too deep seeing them thrive in their love. The kind that I would never have.
With a deep breath, I jumped to my feet, startling everyone. The kingpins’ hands flew to their weapons.
“Umm, I have to go,” I muttered. “I just wanted to see Amara before—” I took a deep breath before exhaling slowly. “I just wanted to make sure the surgery went fine.”
“Stay, Mother Liana.”
My eyes lowered to the little girl who was my entire world. “I can’t, my treasure. But I hope—” I flicked a glance to her parents. “I hope I can visit you again.” Emory nodded, although judging by her husband’s expression, he wasn’t thrilled. “Thank you for taking care of her. Be good to her.” It seemed silly to thank her parents, but I couldn’t help it. I still thought of her as mine.
I lowered to my knees and wrapped Amara in my arms, agony searing me. I didn’t want to leave her behind, I didn’t want to spend any of my days without her, but I didn’t know what fate had in store for me. It killed me to admit it, but this was where she belonged.
“You’re so loved, precious. Just as I knew you would be. Be strong and happy, Amara.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Whenever you need me, you call me. Okay?”
Amara nodded somberly. “How will I call you?”
I gave a resigned chuckle. I would miss this clever little thing.
“That’s right. I’ll give your mamma my number.” I looked up to Emory and Killian. “Is that okay?”
“Yes, of course,” Emory agreed before Killian could say otherwise.She dug into her pocket and handed me her phone. “But Killian and I want to remain in touch with you too. I want to know everything that has happened to my daughter for the past five years.”
It would be a difficult, painful conversation, and not one that we would have now or around Amara.
So I just nodded my head, punched my number in her cell phone, then offered it back with a small smile. “There you go, now you can message me anytime.”
Another tight hug, then I stood up, resisting the tears that threatened to spill. I left, fearing I’d embarrass myself and fall apart. It wasn’t until the cool night breeze hit my face that I inhaled my next breath.
I rushed down the driveway and was almost at my car when Lou’s voice came from behind me.
“Running, Lia?”
A cold mask firmly on my face, I turned around and met her judging eyes.
“I’m not running,” I lied.
“Then why not stay? It’s clear you want to spend more time with her.”
I turned around, reaching for the door handle. “Because I’m a busy woman, and I have places to be.”
“Eight years apart,” she scoffed, clearly not impressed. “Silly of me to think you’d want to spend time with me. With Kingston.”
I whirled around, words flying out of my mouth without my permission.
“Why didn’t you come for me?” I rasped, my chest trembling. All these emotions were starting to be too much, yet it seemed impossible to avoid them. “I waited and waited against hope that after I took your place, you’d come for me, yank me from that hell, but you were nowhere to be found. You were enjoying your happy life while I withered away.”
My lungs flared with that old feeling of betrayal, but I ignored it.
“I would have searched for you if I knew. If Kingston and I knew, but we didn’t.”
We were identical twins, yet we couldn’t be more different. But that was the beauty of it. What she lacked, I had. What I lacked, she had. We were perfect pieces to the same puzzle. Yin and yang.
“What?” I scoffed. “You two strode off into the sunset and thought I found paradise? My own happily ever after? Nobody is that naive, but definitely not you, Lou.”
“I thought I was you.” My brows furrowed. “Our mother… Sofia tortured me, used specific torture techniques until I truly believed, to my core, that I was you. Liana. I forgot about Kingston, didn’t even recognize him when I saw him again a year ago. Kingston .” She opened her mouth to say more but a sob was all she could manage. Not that it mattered. I knew what it meant that she’d forgotten the boy she fell in love with when we were still too young to understand how precious and fleeting that was.
She reached for her phone and scrolled through images until she found what she was looking for. When the video started playing and my eyes zeroed in on the screen, the scene sent a fresh wave of horror through me.
“What’s that?” I rasped, but I already knew. It was the video of Dr. Freud’s sister’s torture.
“I thought you were dead. Mother showed me this video over and over again.” The screen in front of my face accused me of all the wrongs that had happened because of me. “I blamed myself. I blamed the entire world, searching for those responsible and killing them one by one.” Her voice cracked. “But if I knew you were alive, I would have been searching for you. I promise you, Lia, I would have scoured every inch of this earth to find you.”
My sister’s voice was breaking my heart. I finally met her eyes, felt the corners of my mouth lift up of their own accord. “You’re not the Lou I remembered.”
“Ditto.”
Tears ran down our cheeks, two bodies feeling one pain, and then we fell into each other’s arms, holding each other for all that we’d endured during the past eight years.