I see Maeve wince, but I know she knows I’m playing her game. Playing right into her hand to get us out of the mess we’re in.
“What in the fuck is happening right now? Are you with him or is she with him? Who is the guy on the ground?” Stavros’ thick accent cuts through the moment and I want to throttle him. Maeve silences him with a look.
“How can I trust you?” Rena says, voice shaking. She’s breaking down. Like I used to when I would see her. Before I knew what actual love resembled. “I left you, and you moved on. Why would you forgive me?”
I could never. Would never forgive her. “Because that’s what you do when you love someone.”
“You have to tell me, though. Tell me if you know why you fell for Maeve Ahern.”
I narrow my brows. Now is not the time to go down the laundry list of reasons of why I’m in love with the other woman.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I say, honestly.
Maeve is stooped down next to Chonk holding a towel stained red with blood against his head. She’s also trying to mouth words to Stavros, but that idiot isn’t catching anything she’s trying to convey. Rufio, for all his drug cartel glory, is still knocked out cold from Rena’s sharp hit.
“Maeve, do you want to tell him?”
Maeve’s head whips toward Rena. She crinkles her brow. “Tell him why he loves you.”
“Uh, I’m not sure,” Maeve replies.
Rena turns her drugged-out eyes back to me. “She’s my fucking biological sister, Linc. She’s my sister. Of course you fell in love with her. That’s what I keep telling myself. Over and over as to how someone else could wiggle their way into your heart. If anyone was going to do it, it was going to be my fucking, conniving, evil sister.” Rena looks like she might vomit when she turns her gaze back to Maeve. I use this time to enter the living room and position myself between the women, so I can see both. I keep the gun behind my back.
“Surely, you’re mistaken,” Maeve says. “I’m an orphan.”
Rena snarls. “Ding, ding, ding, we have a fucking winner. I was an orphan, too. What’s her prize?” She looks down at Rufio. “Well that bastard was your prize, but he can’t even stay upright after being pistol-whipped, so maybe you deserve something better. A prize befitting family. My family.”
My heart sinks as I look at Rena and recognize features. Things I never thought twice about when I was falling for Maeve. The set of their eyes is the same. Their lips. It hits me swiftly, like a punch to the gut. I lose my breath. Maeve sees the shift first and looks at me, eyes questioning. I didn’t know. She has to know I had clue. How could I? Is Rena right? Was that the crazy fucking draw from the beginning?
Maeve’s fists ball by her sides. “How can you be so sure?”
“The last time I went to rehab, Mom sent me this dumb DNA kit to find out my heritage. She thought it would be interesting for me to connect with people in my biological family, and to see my heritage. What she didn’t count on was me discovering I was a fucking fraternal twin.”
Maeve’s shoulders slump as she listens to Rena—as she hears the truth inside her words. I can’t do anything to help. I can only stand here shell shocked, trying to control my racing heart.
“Come on, you didn’t think he fell for you because you were just… you.”
“You’re bullshitting,” Maeve says. “I found one cousin on there. Nothing else.” Her face contorts with confusion.
“Our cousin Aria?” Rena fires back. She’s holding conversation surprisingly well for being as high as I think she is. “Yes, I found her, too, but never contacted her.”
“That’s not how this works. All the results are the same for everyone. They’re not going to show you family members and not me. If we were, are… twins, that would surely be something I’d be privy to.”
Rena laughs and looks at me for the first time since the conversation began. “Can you believe her? Thinks she has rights or something.”
She walks a few more steps to get closer and I see Maeve flinch, eyeing the gun in her hand. Chonk growls, and Rena kicks him. I grind my teeth together. “I can get anything I want. I have more money than you’ll ever have. I got adopted and you went into the system. How fair is that? I got the information from the company by buying it. Everyone has a price. With money, you can always find someone who will give you what you want.” If this is in fact true, I think it’s plenty fair because they both ended up in totally different places.
I clear my throat. “Okay fine. I’m with Maeve because I… recognized something in her that was similar to you. The love of my life.” I don’t even believe myself in the way my voice shakes.
“Time to go back to the original,” Rena says, taking a step back.
I see Maeve relax a touch. Stavros is on the couch watching our exchange like he’s tuned in to a fucking soap opera—trying to decipher everything that’s being unpacked. At least he’s entertained enough to keep his fucking mouth shut. “I’m off the powder, Lincoln. You have to believe me. I’m clean now.”
I laugh internally. Bullshit. “I know you are. Let’s go then. We’ll take off. Together.”
“Right now?” Rena asks. It almost makes me feel guilty how gullible she is when it comes to me. Almost.
“Right now,” I parrot.
We’re almost out of here. Free
