Page 5 of Kingpin's Secret Baby

The two men look me over warily, then both blanche in recognition. I’m the head of the Warwick family now, meaning I’m on the same level as their own boss, Achilles Ashwood. No doubt they’re just as shocked as Fantasia to find me here, but I’m not interested in explaining myself to them.

“Mr. Warwick? What are you-”

“You don’t have police trailing you, do you?” I ask, trying not to sound too irritated at their interruption. If law enforcement is on the way, it’llreallyruin this reunion.

The bigger of the two men recovers first and shakes his head. “Not yet. We managed to get lost in the crowd before security showed up. There’s no way cameras didn’t spot us, though.”

“Fantastic,” I sigh. Police attention isn’t the end of the world, of course. It’s a regular aspect of life in the mafia, after all, and bribes grease most wheels easily enough. This does mean that Achilles will be made aware of my presence here sooner rather than later, though.

“Let’s keep moving then,” I tell the group. “I’d rather not be caught by cops on the side of the road.”

Fantasia pushes away from me, her indignation back in full force. “There is no ‘let’s’,” she says. “You’re not coming with us!”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d have been trampled back in that airport,” I tell her. To her guards I add, “No offense. But if you’ve got men coming after you two seconds after you’ve landed in a new country, I want to know why.”

“It’s none of your business,” Fantasia insists. “Noneof this is. Go back to London where you belong!”

I ignore her, tossing my duffle into the boot of the car, then hers after it. Her bodyguards watch in clear discomfort, but they can’t refuse me. Fantasia herself remains rooted on the sidewalk, as if she’ll refuse to get into the car if I’m riding in it.

Luckily, she’s getting better at recognizing futility when she sees it. I open the door to the backseat for her, and after holding my gaze for a rebellious moment, she climbs inside.

Chapter 3

Fantasia

The car we take to my new house- a car purchased for our use by Achilles, driving to the house Achilles has chosen for me- will be far too small with Piers inside of it. I keep my stare glued to my own window, not actually seeing the alien world passing outside, but I canfeelhim across from me. I can feel his eyes on me. My skin tingles so hard I want to start scratching at it to erase the feeling.

No. What I want is a drink. I’d give anything for a drink right now.

Raleigh might as well be the dark side of the moon to me. London is a monstrous, sprawling beast. Somehow though, it still managed to be suffocatingly claustrophobic to me. I didn’t often get to leave Wesley Hall to immerse myself in it, but whenever I did, I found myself completely overwhelmed by its sounds, its narrow streets, its endless movement. Eventually, I stopped leaving the Hall entirely for a number of reasons. One of them was avoiding the city outside the estate.

To reach the house my brother has bought for me, on the other hand, we don’t even enter the city of Raleigh, but drive around it at an alarming speed down the wrong side of an enormous, ugly, cracked highway. On either side of the highway, my view is blocked by tall, spindly trees, also ugly.

Everything is ugly here, washed out by the light of a glaring sun sitting in a too large sky.

“It’s so sunny,” Piers remarks. He sounds pleased. In awe, even. I grimace, whether he can see it or not.

It takes twenty minutes to get where we’re going, a quiet suburban neighborhood filled with trees. Lavish houses sit behind wrought iron gates, half hidden at the ends of long driveways that wind off into their own private groves. The house we arrive at is entirely invisible from the street, which immediately makes me like it more. I’d wondered about privacy now that I’d be living amongst strangers, and while I can’t escape my two guardians- or Piers, apparently- at least I won’t have people able to see into my windows from the gate.

At the top of the drive, my new home is revealed. I suppose it’s beautiful, in a quaint way. Nothing compared to Wesley Hall’s sprawling, manicured lawns and hedges, and its ancient Jacobean edifice. This house is three stories and covered in lightless windows and warm brown shingles.

No glow spills from the curtains, no silhouette moves beyond the glass. “Why is there no one to greet us at the door?” I ask, as we round the house and park outside a three car garage. “Is there no housekeeper?”

“I believe the housekeeper will be along at the end of the week, ma’am,” Barnes says. “Until then, we can order in.”

Cooking is the job of the cookstaff, not the housekeeper. But he doesn’t know that. And then I realize what he means.Onehousekeeper to see to all the needs of the house. It’s not all that large, but still, if Achilles thinks I’m going to be able to operate a vacuum cleaner-

“Will they also be tending to the landscaping and cleaning?” I ask. “Or will that be your job?”

Barnes turns off the car, but seems unfazed by my irritation. “There’s a cleaning service and gardening service that will visit the property twice a month.”

Twiceamonth?! And in the meantime, what? I have to sit in my own filth and watch the hedges explode-

“Don’t worry,my lady,” Piers says to my right. I spare him only a glance, just long enough to see his crooked grin. “I can teach you how to wash your own dishes.”

I open my own door with a jerk and get out, slamming it in my wake. Piers is already out on his side, and he beats me to the boot of the car. Before I can stop him, he takes my carry-on in hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demand.

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