Page 4 of Kingpin's Secret Baby

I look her over again, more slowly this time. Fantasia has always been pale, kept inside more often than not, and when outside she was usually running around under the grey London sky. But now she’s practically translucent. I can see the fine blue veins under the skin around her eyes. The bones in her slender face are too prominent, the bags under her eyes too dark. She’s tall but painfully thin, wasted away by a diet of alcohol and insomnia.

God, she’s still so beautiful, but now it hurts to look at her. Like a renaissance painting of a woman who ended up killing herself by drinking arsenic.

Fantasia blinks and her gaze slides away from mine. I immediately miss it, and I almost take hold of her chin to reclaim it. But our bus is slowing now, and people are standing around us, preparing to depart at the station. I put an arm around Fantasia’s waist to keep her close. She leans away, and for a second I think she’ll jerk away again, but she seems to realize it’ll throw her right into the way of other people. Reluctantly, she stays at my side as we disembark.

But as soon as we’ve hit the sidewalk, she steps deliberately away from me and starts marching off down the street- going where, I have no idea, and I don’t think she does either. We’re not actually in Raleigh yet, but a smaller sub city that looks like it’s made out of parking lots and motels. Fantasia seems to realize that too, because her steps slow quickly enough. She looks all around her, taking in the wide streets, the strange buildings, the cars going the wrong direction.

I see in painful clarity the moment it hits her that she really, truly, isn’t in England anymore. I watch her mourn in silence the loss of everything she’s ever known. And I see the wall come down over her heart when she remembers that I’m still here, standing mere feet away from her.

She glares over her shoulder at me. “Well? We’re alone now. Tell me what you’rereallyhere for, Piers.”

I almost admire the fact that there’s no apology in her tone for what she did to me. I’ve known her thirteen years, since she was nine and I was seventeen, and yet for all I know she called for my death without any regret.

All I’m here for, all I want to know, iswhy.

But I’m not ready to ask that question just yet, not here on the side of a random road- traffic roaring past us and our duffle bags sitting at our feet. Instead I take her in once again, admiring the curling strands of dark hair escaping her bun, the set of her slender mouth, the way the light of the sun changes her eyes from pale green to gold.

“I’m here to talk to you,” I tell her honestly, taking a few steps closer.

Her dark brows rumple. “What could you possibly have to talk to me about?”

“We used to talk all the time, didn’t we?”

She flinches at that, which I’ll take as a win. Not because I want to hurt her, but because it’s confirmation that she feelssomething,anythingfor what was lost between us.

I take a few steps closer. “I’ve missed you, you know.”

“Missedme?!” Fantasia repeats, incredulous. “Are you insane? I tried to have you killed!”

She doesn’t even deny it. Another thing I can admire her for.

I shrug. “I must have forgotten that part,” I joke.

Fantasia blinks, looking almost angry now. “This isn’t funny, Piers.”

“Who’s laughing?” I ask. She’s an arm’s length from me now. I could reach out and touch her face, and I would if I didn’t think it would make her disappear forever. “I’m just telling you the truth.”

Fantasia’s shoulders are trembling. “The truth that- I tried to have you killed, and you just don’t care?!” she demands.

“Oh I care,” I assure her. “It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park being under house arrest in Scotland for a year. At least I got a lot of reading in.”

Fantasia shakes her head, but before she can ridicule me again I tell her plainly, “I buried my mother in the backyard of that safe house.”

Her mouth falls open, her eyes darting up to my face and then away. Susan Warwick, the woman who adopted me, was one of the few Warwicks that survived Fantasia’s uprising. Her health had been declining irreparably for years, especially after her husband’s heart attack and sudden death. Living the last of her life in hiding wasn’t what she deserved.

That, I care about. That, I do resent Fantasia Warwick for. I can forgive most crimes committed against me, for better or worse. But causing distress to the woman who saw me, a teenage boy about to age out of the system, in an orphanage and chose to give me a family? For her, I want answers about what went wrong.

To her credit, Fantasia finally looks shaken more than angry. “What happened?” she asks quietly.

Interesting. If she regrets that, then perhaps she also regrets ordering me to die after all. I open my mouth, finally ready to ask-

A sleek black town car screeches to a stop beside me, and I grab Fantasia by the shoulder and pull her behind me on instinct. To my astonishment, Fantasia’s two bodyguards leap out of the car.

“Ma’am!!”

“Miss Fantasia!”

I’m not surprised they found us, only disappointed that they caught up so quickly. I can’t imagine Achilles sending his little sister overseas without placing some kind of tracker on her person or in her luggage.

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