Chapter 17
CASH
Victoria and Sienna are seated around the table in Caleb’s boardroom at the Wraith when I walk in. Bash is there too. And Kyle.
“What’s going on? Where is Remy?” I address my sisters-in-law.
There can only be one reason why they’re sitting here today, and it occurs to me that I’ve played this all wrong. Again.
“Sit down, Cash.” Kyle gestures to the seat next to my twin.
Victoria waits until I’m seated before she says, “Why weren’t you honest with her?”
“I have been.” I glance at Bash who looks equally as confused. “We told Remy what her ex is up to, but I thought we’d moved on from that. We know that she isn’t involved. Remy knows that we know.”
“You’re sure about that, are you?” Victoria presses.
My brothers are silent; they’re letting her do the talking. For now. Bizarrely, this is the most pressure I’ve ever felt during a family conference. I pour a shot of brandy into a glass and down it in one.
“Is that a trick question?”
Sienna sits forward. “Did you explain to her why she’s being followed around town by bodyguards?”
Shit. She knew Bash was having her followed before she told us that she was pregnant. I scour my brain for a conversation about protecting her and the babies and draw a blank.
“Try looking at it from her perspective,” Victoria says. “She’s a college student, not a celebrity. She’s never met anyone with a team of bodyguards at their disposal before, and now suddenly, she’s got men tracking her wherever she goes.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
Bash is still silent.
“We had to tell her.” Sienna rests both hands on the table, palms flat. “She was panicking. We didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and run away.”
Victoria steps in. “We all know what could happen if you lose her.”
She doesn’t have to spell it out. The two women seated around this table have both been abducted at the hands of our enemies. In Sienna’s case, it happened twice, and she almost died at the hands of her captor.
“How did she react?”
“She took it surprisingly well.” Victoria smiles. “She thought we were joking when we told her that her babies will be born into a mafia family.”
“She did?” Warmth spreads through my body chased down by guilt. This should’ve been our job. Bash and I should’ve prepared her, laid our cards on the table, and let her decide. Just like mom said.
“Then reality kicked in,” Victoria continues, “and we had to bring her back here before someone called the cops on us.”
“Where is she now?” I half stand up. If she’s here in the Wraith, why didn’t I know about it? “Let me speak to her.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“She’s fine,” Sienna adds. “But you’ve got a whole lot of talking to do when she wakes up.”
“I will.” I rub the side of the empty brandy glass. “We will.” I glance at Bash. “We’ll speak to her together.”
“The topic didn’t come up in conversation,” he says now. “Everyone knows who we are.”
I snort. “Remy didn’t know that we were twins; how did we expect her to know the rest of it when our own sister was oblivious until a year ago?”
A different kind of silence settles around the table.
Caleb keeps his eyes on the bottle of brandy. Kyle sits back in his seat and then sits forward again. Victoria’s gaze hops back and forth between me and Bash.
“What do you mean, she didn’t know that you were twins?” she murmurs.
Sienna is staring at Bash, her eyes glittering, the scars beneath her collarbone turning a shade darker. “Which one of you is the father?”
This is the thing with half-truths and withholding information.
It catches up with you eventually. Our mom knows the truth, but it isn’t her story to tell, so she has kept our secret close to her chest. When we spoke to Kyle about getting the real estate ball rolling, we let him believe that I was the father, not deliberately, but it was how the conversation organically presented itself.
And Caleb has been too focused on the threat from the Leone family to get involved.
“We both are.” Bash meets everyone’s gaze in turn, his chin jutting defiantly, and I instinctively lean towards him. Presenting a united front.
Caleb rubs his neat stubble and releases a long steady breath. “Does Mom know?”
“Mom told us to do whatever it takes to make Remy’s life comfortable. This isn’t about us.”
“Sounds like Mom,” Kyle says.
Caleb is watching us both closely. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“What is there to know? We didn’t plan it this way. Remy would never have… If she’d known that I wasn’t Bash in the first place…”
It doesn’t matter how many times I repeat the story inside my own head it still doesn’t get any easier. Or any less complicated.
“I meant,” Caleb says, “does she know that neither of you can give her up?”
The temperature appears to crank up a couple of notches inside the air-conditioned boardroom. I rotate my shoulders; the tension in them doesn’t ease.
Bash has withdrawn back into his cocoon, peering out at the rest of us from between the folds while the conversation progresses without him.
Eventually, I go with, “That obvious, huh?” No point trying to deny it.
Everyone around this table understands what love is. They don’t need a degree in psychology to know what this is all about.
“Fuck!” Kyle reacts first, sliding his tablet towards him across the desk and tapping the screen.
“We should pull Remy out of college. Move her into Cash’s apartment.
Or Bash’s.” His fingers pause flying across the keyboard momentarily, while he processes the added complication.
“On second thought, maybe it would be better if she stayed with you and Victoria.”
Caleb waves him back down to earth with both hands. “She’s already freaking out. What do you think she’ll do if you tell her that her life is in danger because she’s involved with the Murray family?”
His gaze travels around the table and settles on Victoria. They share something unspoken, and it literally glows through their pores. I don’t know how I never noticed it before; the exchange is both pillow-soft and titanium-strong. A partnership. Two people in love.
I look away. It feels wrong to watch them, like peering through their bedroom window while they’re being intimate. I want what they have. And I want it with Remy Jones. Only, I still don’t understand how Bash fits into the equation.
“You’re right,” Kyle mutters, powering down his tablet. “But with the Leone threat growing legs, what do you suggest we do?”
“We’ll do what we always do. We’ll keep her safe. Meanwhile, these two Muppets can get their asses into gear, man up, and show her that we’re not all bad.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Mom.” I refill my glass and sip it slowly now that Bash and I are out of the danger zone.
“There are worse ways to learn a lesson,” Caleb counters.
“You’re back!”
Remy approaches me in the foyer of Caleb and Victoria’s apartment like a warrior princess, her hair loose around her face, and her gray eyes flashing.
All that’s missing is a chariot and winged horses.
And damn! An image of her in a sheer gold robe bursts behind my eyes, creating a distraction that I could do without.
Remy is angry.
Understandable, given that she had no clue about our mafia legacy.
“Why can’t I leave? Is that it now? Are you going to keep me prisoner here forever?”
“Remy, calm down.” I suppress a smile. She’s even more beautiful when she’s angry, but I’m not so clueless that I think smiling will help diffuse the situation. “No one is keeping you prisoner.”
“So, why can’t I leave?” Her chest is heaving with the effort of controlling her rage at me.
I glance at the bodyguard tasked with keeping her safe and dismiss him with a curt nod. “I—we—wanted a chance to explain things first.”
“Don’t you think you should’ve done that sooner?
How do you think it felt to find out from Victoria and Sienna?
They thought I knew. They thought, strangely, that you and Bash would’ve explained your ‘family connections’ as a bare minimum, as we’re having a baby together.
Babies.” She shakes her head at her own mistake.
When she looks away, I move closer, keep my voice calm even though what I really want to do is hold her in my arms and promise her that everything will be alright. “You’re right, Remy. We should’ve explained sooner. We shouldn’t have assumed that you already knew this about us.”
“Well, I’m glad we got that sorted.” She barely makes eye contact. “Can I go now?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes. Maybe.” She stares at the window as if it might give her clarity. “I don’t know, Cash.”
Closer. “My little sister always says that if it isn’t a definite yes then it’s a no.”
She gives a small smile. “That could apply to staying too.”
“But you’re still here.” I reach for her hand and she pulls away.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Cash. You haven’t explained anything.”
“I’m sorry, Remy.”
“That’s a start.” The look in her eyes hits the target directly in the center of my heart.
She is putting her trust in Bash and me when we’ve given her very little reason to do so, and I feel floored. The list of ways in which we need to make things up to her keeps growing, while she continues to show up for us with nothing but affection.
Do we deserve it? Perhaps not. But if this were a fight to the death, and winner gets to spend the rest of his life making Remy feel loved, I would enter that arena with my head held high.
“I’ve learned things from you that I never expected to learn,” I begin.
“Such as?” At least she’s curious enough to stay and listen, and I’ll take that as a win.
“I’ve learned that our reputation means nothing to the people we care about, and neither would I want it to.
I’ve learned that our lifestyle is a privilege that’s easy to fuck up without even realizing.
But most importantly…” I pull her into my arms. “…I’ve learned that I would give it all up for you, Remy Jones. ”
“You’re serious.”
“More serious than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“You know I would never ask you to do that for me.”
“I know.” I press my lips to hers. “But I do want you to do something for me.”
“Did anyone ever tell you how demanding you are?”
She’s teasing me, and I would fist-pump the air with joy if it didn’t mean having to let her go. “Frequently.” I kiss her again. “I want you to come and see the Titan.”
Victoria and Sienna take over. They take Remy into Victoria’s walk-in closet and tell me to go away and come back in an hour.
I never adapted well to taking orders even as a child. My mom would take one look at my school report and mutter under her breath that the teachers should know better than to try molding me into a one-size-fits-all student.
I brew coffee.
I sit on the floor and stack magnetic tiles with their daughter Holly until she complains that I’m doing it all wrong because the door doesn’t go at the bottom of the house, it goes at the top.
I watch Caleb scoop her into his arms and carry her through to her bedroom, blowing raspberries against her tummy and making her squeal with laughter.
That will be me one day, I think. Me and Bash.
And it scares the life out of me. What if we get it wrong?
Reading story books at bedtime is one thing, but raising your kids to be decent human beings is quite another.
Before I can spin circles around myself with what ifs and maybes, voices reach me from the hallway.
My heart thuds inside my chest. It’s Remy, I remind myself.
The woman I fell for when I saw her getting accosted on the casino floor.
The woman whose body I could recreate with my eyes closed. The woman who is carrying our babies.
So, why am I acting like a teenager rocking up on a first date?
Then, Remy is standing in front of me wearing a sapphire-blue dress that looks as if it has been poured over her, accentuating the swell of her breasts and hips, and turning her gray eyes to the color of the ocean on a summer’s day. Her hair is draped over her shoulders in soft honey-blonde waves.
She smiles at me tentatively as Sienna and Victoria stand back.
“Is it too much?” she asks. “I can change into something a bit more casual.”
“No.” I shake my head without fully comprehending what I’m saying no to. “It’s… You look perfect.”
She lowers her gaze, and I sense the doubts creeping in.
I go to her and take her hand. “Remy, you don’t need me to tell you this, but I’m going to say it anyway. You’re beautiful. You could wear a sack, and you would still be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“We already told her this,” Victoria says from somewhere close behind.
“What are you worried about? Talk to me.”
She licks her lips and swallows. “That people will know I’m a fraud.”
“I told her that she’s looking at the biggest fraud right here,” Victoria adds. “Fake fiancée. Fake bride-to-be. But none of it matters.”
“No one could ever mistake you for a fraud.” I squeeze her hand. “Because you’re true to yourself.”
I touch her left breast right above her heart and realize that I now have to adjust my pants. Her nipples harden through the soft fabric, and I can’t resist. I brush one with my knuckle, and her lips part.
“Is that a chat-up line?” Remy murmurs.
“Did it work?”
“Okay, time for us to leave.” Sienna sidesteps around us and winks at Remy as she heads toward the elevator.
Victoria retreats discreetly to her daughter’s bedroom.
“We could always postpone the Titan.” I pull Remy against me.
She smiles. “Save it for later, Mr. Bigshot. If we’re doing this, I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
“Everything, huh? Could take some time.”
“I’m not in any hurry.” Remy slides her hand into mine, and nothing has ever felt more natural.