Chapter 38: Chapter 38

“I hope you take it black.”

I look up, slowly pulling my eyes away from Taylor’s sleeping form in the hospital bed to look up at Annika. She makes a face.

“I couldn’t find any sugar, and the milk in the nurses station looked…” She winkles her nose. “Well, curdled would have been an improvement.”

“Black is fine,” I grunt. “Thank you.”

She nods as she passes me the Styrofoam cup and sinks into the chair on the other side of Taylor’s hospital bed. Her eyes drop to her twin, a slightly worried expression on her face.

“You saved her life, you know,” I growl quietly. “Both of ours.”

Annika looks up, her mouth twisting. “Oh, I don’t know about that. You were Captain Hero jumping over fire with your damn organs practically falling out of a hole in your side.”

I smile wryly, glancing down at the bulge under my hospital scrubs top where the bandage is wrapped around my middle.

“You were there, though,” I shrug, glancing back up at her. “You pulled me back into consciousness.”

She nods, looking back at her sister.

“I’m not going to ask now,” I say cautiously. “But I do want to know at some point how it is you were there.” My brow furrows. “Not to mention⁠—”

“Nine thousand other questions?”

“Give or take a thousand, yeah,” I grunt.

She smiles wryly, her gaze dropping back to Taylor.

“She’s really going to be okay?”

I nod. “She is.”

“And we’re…” Annika glances nervously at the door to the hospital room.

“Safe here, yes,” I growl. “My men are positioned all over this building. And besides, the guys at the local police department are…friends.”

Annika smirks. “I bet they are.”

“What the fuck is going on,” I grunt.

She frowns. “I thought you weren’t going to ask your nine thousand questions yet.”

“Not eight thousand, nine hundred and nintey-nine of them,” I mutter. “But that one I need an answer to. And now would be best.”

Annika looks down, her lip catching in her teeth in—holy shit, a very Taylor way—as her fingers twist.

“Could you be a little more specific, then?”

“For starters…” My eyes meet hers. “Who the fuck did I marry fifteen years ago.”

She smiles weakly. “Happy anniversary, dear.”

My face darkens.

“For what it’s worth,” she says, “I had it annulled after I disappeared.”

“Good,” I grunt. A hint of smile touches my lips. “I did, too, actually.”

Annika laughs quietly.

“That’ll make for an interesting Christmas card.”

I smirk, shaking my head before I focus on her again. “What the hell happened to you that night? And Taylor⁠—”

“Tatjana,” she says quietly. She reaches out and slips her hand into her sister’s. “Her name is Tatjana. Or…it was.” Her lips twist as she looks up at me. “What you really want to know is how, right? How there’s two of us. How no one knew…”

“I think that might be a good place to start.”

She nods, sipping her coffee with a grimace. I take a swig of mine, and scowl.

Yeah, it really is terrible.

“Our parents—our father, especially—were really protective. And a little paranoid.” She sighs. “Okay, a lot paranoid. There were constant threats against our dad and his extended family, and I guess it only got worse when he and our mom got married. So when they had us—twins that no one expected—they made a decision to…minimize risk.”

Holy shit.

“They kept one of you a secret?” I murmur.

She nods slowly.

“When we were kids, it was a fun game, really. Some days one of us would get to play the princess, while the other stayed hidden out of sight. Other days, we’d switch. It wasn’t that hard: our family was fairly reclusive, and we had all those walled grounds. Only our parents, our housekeeper, and our dad’s most trusted second-in-command, Ruslan, knew. Nobody else guessed. That’s how good we were at it.”

She exhales slowly.

“But then you came along. Well, your family did. You were always our sworn enemies, and then suddenly one day, our father and yours were talking. We heard our parents discussing in hushed tones late at night about a truce. There was just one problem.”

“My father thought there was only one Brancovich daughter,” I grunt. “And if there was a second one…”

She nods. “Then your family would probably not go ahead with the marriage. Because another daughter⁠—”

“Meant another alliance, potentially to a family mine was still in conflict with.”

“See? I knew you weren’t just a tough guy.”

I smirk. Then my smile fades as I turn to look at Taylor. I reach out and take her other hand in mine, squeezing.

“What the fuck happened that night,” I growl. “And how is it that you’re fine, and she’s the one with no memory after the car crash?”

“For a start, there was no car crash,” Annika murmurs. “My sister was never on your island until you brought her there.”