Page 25 of Kingpin's Secret Baby

Fantasia glares at me, but even she can’t argue with that.

She sighs, her shoulders dropping slightly in resignation. She walks over to the bed and opens her duffel bag, pulling out a silk robe. After changing out of sight in the bathroom- nevermind that I’ve already seen her naked- she emerges at last ready for sleep.

I watch her realize, far too slowly, that there’s only one bed.

And that it’s very, very small.

To her credit, or maybe just owing to how tired she is, Fantasia doesn’t complain. She doesn’t try to order me to sleep on the floor. Instead, she pulls off the silk robe quickly, her cheeks flushing slightly, before gingerly climbing onto the mattress, wincing as her side bends and twists, and folds herself under the covers.

Trying and failing to think gentlemanly thoughts, I turn out the light and climb in after her.

Chapter 13

Piers

Waking 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.”

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