Page 13

Chapter 13

Piers

W aking up the next morning is a trial, and not because I didn’t sleep well. My body feels rested and loose. The ache I was starting to feel behind my eyes last night is gone. Even my thoughts feel more crystalline.

It’s what’s in my arms that makes me want to stay in bed the rest of the day.

Fantasia is tucked into me so neatly, it’s like our bodies were crafted together, two parts of one whole. Her warm breath puffs against my collarbone, her soft hair tickling my nose and neck. I feel her fingers curled tightly into my shirt like the fists of a toddler clinging to a blanket. I smell the motel’s generic floral soap on her skin, and it makes me miss her usual floral scent, much softer and sweeter than this.

The temptation to tuck my chin so I can press my lips against her hair is powerful. I’m already hard, an unfortunate byproduct of waking up, and her legs tangled up in mine aren’t helping.

I need to get up before I wake her and do something stupid.

Something even more stupid than declaring I knew for a fact she’d be my wife someday.

I cringe out of Fantasia’s grip, taking minutes to extricate myself to be sure I don’t wake her. As long as I’ve known this woman, she’s been a light sleeper, but now she hardly stirs. As much as I’d like to stroke my own ego and say it’s because she’s so comfortable around me, it’s probably just a testament to how long yesterday was.

God. Did everything that happened yesterday really happen in less than twenty-four hours? That almost makes it feel less real. Like a nightmare I’m just waking up from.

Before I leave the room completely, I press the back of my hand to Fantasia’s forehead, checking for fever or clamminess. She’s warm, warm enough to almost convince me to climb back under the covers with her. But not unnaturally so. I want to check her wound too, but that would definitely wake her up. Later.

The morning air is chilly. Not nearly as cold as winter in Edinburgh, but it wakes me up well enough, and cures me of the last of my arousal. I take in two lungfuls and close my eyes. I’m standing outside a dingy motel room looking out at a weed-infested parking lot, but I already feel a little better.

I knew when I booked this motel room that we couldn’t stay here long. We haven’t put enough distance between us and Raleigh, or even the car we used to get here. The Crowes are almost definitely still on our tail, and I don’t know what resources are at their disposal. How long will it take them to get a hold of traffic cam footage which will tell them exactly where their stolen car ended up? It’ll be more difficult for them to trace us from that parking lot to where we are now, but what about the Ashwoods? What if they’re already anticipating that I’ll try to bring Fantasia back to London? Are there more of Harold’s people on the way, or are they choosing to lie in wait?

Either way, I need to find us a long term hiding place. Somewhere private, ideally remote, and low tech. Somewhere pre-stocked, or easily stocked, with basic necessities.

Somewhere Fantasia might like. Fuck knows she’s been through enough lately.

Unfortunately, I left England in a bit of a hurry. It’s not like I totally abandoned Wesley Hall. In fact, I left it in better hands than my own. But a more experienced mafia boss would’ve found a way to bring some of his network with him, and I didn’t do that.

Luckily, the best members of my network are just a phone call away.

I check the time. We slept late, but considering our endless day yesterday, the sleepless plane ride, and our jet lag, that’s no surprise. It’s creeping up to noon, which means it’ll be about five pm in London. Roger is a night owl, sometimes not even hitting his pillow until sunrise, but even he will be awake by this hour.

Sure enough, my pseudo-right-hand man answers on the first ring, his blaring trap music taking a moment to cut off before he speaks.

“Yo boss,” he says, and as usual, I can’t tell if he’s using the title sarcastically or seriously. He laughed in my face the day I tracked him down in his dingy apartment and told him I was a kingpin now, and I wanted him on my team. Three years behind me in our orphanage days, he saw it as a personal betrayal when I got picked up by a rich couple months before I was about to age out of the system. Until that point, we’d been like Robin Hood and Little John, running the other kids better than the imperial men who owned the orphanage. After I left, I tried to keep in touch with him, share some of the insane wealth that had just dropped into my lap. But he turned his nose up at it, and at me.

Luckily for me, his lease was up, and pickpocketing and reselling phones like he did as a kid, along with the occasional IT gig, wasn’t enough to pay the new rent. He, along with our other friend, Arthur, agreed to slum it at Wesley Hall in exchange for being my guys in the chair- and made themselves pretty damn comfortable within the week despite a fuckton of mocking and moaning.

“Boss,” he says, music now faded into the background. “What’s the occasion? You don’t usually call this early.”

“It’s five,” I remind him, leaning against the motel’s dirty brick wall.

“Exactly. It’s early.”

“How’s everything back home?” I scan the lot- empty pavement, a lone sedan parked by the office, the faint hum of a delivery truck a few blocks over. Quiet, but quiet never means safe.

“Dunno if you’ve checked the group chat, but the chandelier in the main hall fell down.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Fuck.”

“Yeah, smashed right through the dining table during breakfast. Scared the hell outta everyone. Nobody hurt, though, except maybe Grady’s pride.”

“Grady Garrow? The stable hand?”

“Not anymore. Now he’s the closest thing Wesley Hall has to a janitor, plumber, and therapist rolled into one. Arthur’s been handling the repairs. He’s been busy- focusing on the staff and getting everything in line since we got here. Arthur's got a knack for getting things done… his way. When the kitchen staff ignored his new cleaning rota, he didn’t just have a meltdown- he took matters into his own hands. Made sure they wouldn’t forget who runs things around here. He had a few of the staff ‘reassigned’- nothing too dramatic, just a reminder that there's only one way to do things under his watch. If they didn’t want to follow the rules, he threatened to replace them with kids from the orphanage. They sure as hell straightened up after that.”

I blink, ignoring half of what he said. “Why the fuck is Grady a therapist now?”

“Apparently, he and his missus, the housekeeper, have been the go-to for people needing to vent about the Warwicks since, well, forever. Claims they’ve listened to everything from love confessions to murder plots. Says he keeps a bottle of whiskey handy just to get through half of it.”

“Holy shit… since when has Ms. McAllister been his wife?” That’s news to me. I’ve only ever known her as the sharp-tongued housekeeper who could shame even the most hardened mobster with a raised eyebrow.

Roger grins. “She’s Mrs. Garrow now. Oh yeah. And here’s the fun part- they’ve been hooking up for years. They got married a few months ago. Grady swears she bosses him around at home and at work, but the way he talks about her? It’s clear he wouldn’t have it any other way. Yep, between the two of them, they know more Warwick secrets than all the skeletons in the family crypt. Grady’s a walking encyclopedia of Warwick dirt.”

I shake my head. “And you’ve learned all this in what- three days?”

“Two and a half,” Roger corrects. “Grady likes to talk when you refill his flask.”

“Anything else I should know about?” I ask.

Roger’s voice takes on a more serious tone. “Yeah, Achilles has been blowing up all our phones. You wanna tell me why?”

I grimace. “How much do you know?”

“That you followed his sister to America and now you’re both in the wind. Did you really kill two of his men?”

“They were trying to kill her first,” I say, probably a bit too defensively.

Roger whistles low. “Wild. So what do you need from me?”

“I need somewhere to lay low. Somewhere nice enough that Fantasia won’t completely hate me for dragging her there.”

“And remote enough that no one can find you,” Roger adds. “Give me a minute.”

I hear his fingers flying over his keyboard.

The creak of a door makes me glance down the row of rooms. A woman steps out, tugging on her too-short skirt and cursing under her breath. Her heels click loudly on the cracked concrete as she turns back to the man lingering in the doorway.

“You think fifty’s gonna cut it?” she snaps, hands on her hips.

“You got what you came for,” the man drawls, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Yeah, a sore back and a bad time,” she fires back. “Double it, or I’m going straight to the manager.”

“If you know what’s good for, you better get outta here or I’ll call ICE on you.”

Her eyes flash. “Fuck you!” she snaps. “I’ve had worse threats than that, but I’m still here, still breathing.”

The man shrugs, unimpressed. “Just sayin’... if you don’t want to end up back at the border, you should probably get lost.”

“Cheap bastard,” she mutters, storming off toward the beat-up sedan in the lot.

Shit. Their romance novel gone wrong jogs my memory about my bigger problem: staying under the radar. “Roger, forge me whatever paperwork I need to pass as a U.S. citizen.”

“No problem, boss. And Fantasia?”

“Nah, she’s good… courtesy of Achilles. And make it quick,” I mutter, keeping my voice low. “This place is crawling with problems I don’t need.”

“Alright, alright,” Roger grumbles as he continues clacking on his keyboard, punctuated by the occasional curse under his breath. “You know, for all the genius-level IT work I do for you, I should be living in luxury. Instead, I’m stuck at Wesley Hall, choking down the chef’s weird experiments.”

“Hey, it’s part of the perks of being my guy in the chair. Besides, it’s a hell of a lot better than pickpocketing to make rent.”

“Pickpocketing?” Roger scoffs. “I wasn’t just pickpocketing, alright? I was reselling phones. Big difference. And yeah, I’d much rather be doing that than eating goat cheese with edible flowers that I swear is trying to give me a headache.”

“Better get used to it,” I say. “Chef Rocco’s not one to tone it down for complaints.”

“Fantastic,” Roger mutters. “I’m gonna die of starvation in a damn castle. A tragic end to my legacy.”

I chuckle as I quietly open the door to check on Fantasia. She's still curled up in bed, but has shifted onto her other side.

“Got something,” Roger says. “It's a bit bougie, but that's what you wanted, right?”

“What is it?”

“Rental cabin in the Appalachian mountains. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, private chef service available. Fully furnished, including a hot tub. Best part is it's totally isolated. Nearest neighbor is two miles away.”

It sounds perfect. Almost too perfect. “What's the catch?”

“Price tag's steep.” He groans, and I hear the sound of shuffling papers. “But, let me tell you- Marcus left you in a better position than I thought.”

Roger rattles off numbers- bank accounts, liquid assets, safehouses, resources- and it’s staggering. Despite the chaos the Warwick family has endured, there’s still enough to build an empire. Enough to keep Fantasia and me off the radar.

“You’ve also got that cabin in the Highlands, but it’s not exactly accessible right now.”

“Book the Appalachian cabin,” I tell him. “For the rest of the year if you can.”

Roger snorts. “Someone's optimistic. Alright, give me a sec.”

“And we need a car,” I add, glancing toward the parking lot.

“Already ahead of you,” Roger says, his fingers tapping furiously. “I’ll send you the address and details. It’s about twenty miles from your location. There’s a bus stop a couple of blocks away- take it most of the way, then grab a cab. I’ll smooth things over with the dealership, so you won’t have to flash a single piece of paper.”

I’m about to respond when movement snags my attention. A sleek black car rolls into the lot, its engine purring low like a predator on the hunt. The tight knot in my stomach twists as the doors swing open, and three men step out.

I freeze. My blood turns to ice as recognition settles in.

Two of the men are from the airport.

They’re dressed down, no visible markers of allegiance, but I’d know those faces anywhere. Even without their signature white handkerchiefs with the gold stripe, they’re unmistakably Crowes.

“Did you know you also have a yacht? I mean, of all the- ”

I cut him off, my lips curling into a humorless smirk. “Remind me to name it Lucky Bastard if I survive this,” I say quietly.

“Something up?”

“You could say that. Gotta go, Roger.” I hang up and tuck my phone away, watching as the men head straight for the motel office. The desk clerk looks up, pale and nervous, as they start asking questions. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but it doesn’t matter.

We’ve been made.

I push off the wall, adrenaline spiking.

We need to leave.

Now.