Page 38

Chapter 38

Fantasia

M y throat is raw from screaming, my muscles burning as I thrash against Piers’s iron grip.

“Let me go, Piers!” I sob, digging my nails into his arm, twisting and kicking as hard as I can. “Please! He’s got her- he’s got my baby!”

Piers’s arms tighten around me, pinning mine to my sides as he hauls me backward across the gravel.

“I can’t leave her!” My voice cracks, a jagged, ugly sound that scrapes up my throat. “Let me go!”

I wrench hard, my heel slamming into his shin. He grunts under his breath but doesn’t let up, just keeps dragging me toward Achilles’s car. My shoes skid across the gravel as I claw at his hands, his sleeves, anything I can reach. My vision is blurred, tears pouring freely down my face.

“You’re letting him take her!” I sob.

The car door swings open, and before I can twist away, Piers shoves me inside. My shoulder slams into the seat, pain jolting through me. I barely have time to scramble upright before the door slams shut, sealing me inside.

“No!” I lunge for the handle, my fingers closing around it just as the locks click. “No, no, no!”

I pound my fists against the window, my cries turning frantic as the car jolts forward.

“Stop the car!” I scream. “Please!”

“Fantasia—”

“Let me out!” My voice breaks, raw and desperate. I throw my shoulder against the door, twisting the handle again and again even though I know it won’t budge. “I have to get to her! I have to?—”

“Fantasia!” Achilles’s voice cuts through the chaos, sharp and commanding. “You need to listen to me!”

I whip around, breathless and shaking. “I don’t need to listen!” I snap, tears still streaming down my face. “I need to get to her before it’s too late!”

“You won’t get to her if you run out there alone,” Achilles says, his voice gentler now but no less firm. “We have a plan. We’ve taken precautions.”

I shake my head violently, chest heaving. “You don’t understand,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “He’s going to hurt her- he’s going to?—”

“She’s alive,” Achilles says firmly. “And we’re going to keep her that way. But you have to trust us.”

Trust? How can I trust anyone right now when Harold’s carrying my little girl further away with every second that passes?

“Please,” I choke out, my voice crumbling into a sob. “Please, just… let me go.”

“Fantasia, stop,” Piers growls, his voice low and strained. “You’re not helping her like this.”

I freeze.

It’s his voice- only... it’s not. The words are softer, the accent thicker- a rich Irish lilt that curls around my name in a way I’ve never heard before.

Slowly, I turn.

Piers- or the man I thought was Piers- is watching me from the other side of the car. His face is familiar, so painfully familiar. The sharp line of his jaw, the intense dark eyes, the copper-red hair that curls slightly at the ends. But now that I’m really looking, I see what I missed before- the faint scar along his cheekbone, the way his brow creases just a little deeper when he frowns.

“You’re... not him.”

“I’m not,” he says quietly.

It hits me- the memory I’d buried, blurred by panic and exhaustion. The night we ran through the forest, stumbling blindly in the dark with Harold’s men and the Crowes closing in. This is the man who, instead of dragging me back, let me go two years ago, the man who could only be Piers’s identical twin.

“You,” I whisper. My voice trembles. “It was you.”

His gaze softens. “Aye,” he says. “It was me.”

I stare at the man across from me- the man who isn't Piers.

But that means…

Piers didn’t come.

He didn’t come for me. Didn’t even try.

After everything- after Valeria, after Harold- I thought... I thought if anyone would show up, it would be him.

But he didn’t.

He sent someone else.

The man- Piers’s mirror image- shifts in his seat. Our eyes meet, and in that suspended heartbeat, I see it- the hint of understanding, maybe even pity. He sees it. The heartbreak I can’t hide, the way it’s bleeding out of me no matter how hard I try to swallow it down.

His face softens, the hard lines around his mouth easing.

For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, just watches me like he’s weighing his words. Like he knows that whatever he says won’t be enough.

“He’s with Harold,” the man says gently. “Following him.”

I blink, trying to process his words.

“We couldn’t risk a fight with Valeria so close,” he explains. “Too many guns. Too many chances for something to go wrong.” His voice dips, steady but weighted. “We needed Harold to believe he had control. So we let him think he won... long enough for Piers to track him back to wherever he’s hiding.”

My breath stutters. “You’re... you’re saying you let him take her?”

“We’re buying time,” he says firmly.

I shake my head, unable to process what he’s saying.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it,” he says quietly, “but Piers is doing everything he can to bring her back safe.”

“You’re telling me you just let him walk away?” My voice cracks, raw and disbelieving.

“We didn’t let him do anything,” Piers’s twin says, his voice calm but firm. “We played him.”

I scoff bitterly. “Sure didn’t feel like that.”

His eyes narrow slightly, his patience thinning. “If we’d fought him here- in a castle crawling with his men- how do you think that would’ve ended?”

I open my mouth, but no words come.

“You think Harold wouldn’t have used her against us?” His voice softens again. “You think he wouldn’t have put a gun to her head just to prove a point?”

A cold shiver snakes down my spine, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

“We couldn’t risk it,” he continues. “But now... Harold thinks he’s won. He thinks we’re scrambling to come up with his money, that we’re desperate and out of options.”

“But… you can’t…,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “You can’t know he won’t hurt her first.”

“We know Harold,” he says quietly. “He won’t risk harming her until he’s gotten what he wants. Piers will wait until Harold’s away from his men- when he’s just some overconfident bastard who thinks he’s got the upper hand. That’s when we take her back.”

I shake my head, my eyes burning. “And if you’re wrong?” My voice shatters on the question.

He doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is low, almost apologetic.

“That’s why Piers went,” he says. “Because if something goes wrong... he won’t let Harold lay a hand on her.”

I let out a shuddering breath and close my eyes, clutching the seat beneath me as if it could anchor me to something solid in this chaos. “How long?” I ask, the question slipping out before I can stop it.

“Not long,” his twin answers, his voice softer now, less commanding, almost apologetic. “We’re working fast. We just need you to trust us a little longer.”

I don’t know how to answer. My trust in Piers- my trust in everything- feels fragile, like it could break apart if I breathe too hard.

But as we continue to drive, heading toward some unknown destination, I close my eyes and hold onto one thing: the hope that Piers will keep his word. That they’ll bring my daughter back to me.

I just have to hold on. Just a little longer.