All Chapters of Twice You: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

I descend the stairs of the mansion the next morning with the matte gold ring burning in my pants pocket. I didn’t slip it onto my finger—not yet—but I also couldn’t leave it behind in the room. The metal seems to pulse against my leg through the fabric, an invisible anchor pulling me toward a reality I’m only just beginning to accept.The smell of strong coffee and frying bacon drifts through the stone corridors, guiding me toward the kitchen. But what actually stops me in the doorway isn’t the aroma.It’s the sound.Laughter. A child’s bright, crystalline giggle intertwined with a deep, hoarse male laugh. The kind of sound I never heard echoing off the cold marble walls of the penthouse in Boston.I push the swinging door open slowly, and the scene I find completely steals the air from my lungs.Declan is at the stove, flipping pancakes in a cast-iron skillet. Barefoot, wearing only a pair of gray sweatpants that hang dangerously low on his hips. No shirt.It’s the first time I’ve se

The remorse arrives like high tide—slowly at first, then all at once.It isn’t immediate. In the first few minutes after Declan leaves the room to check something with Conor, there is only the heavy silence of the mansion settling and the ghostly echo of what we just did hanging in the air. My body still pulses with residual waves, muscles remembering his weight, the way he marked me with teeth and primitive possessiveness.I lie there staring at the ancient stone ceiling, the sheet pulled up to my chest, trying to process the intensity of what happened. There is no regret for the act itself—my body recognized his with a devastating honesty that transcends conscious memory. But something darker is moving at the edges of my awareness, something that has to do with loyalty and betrayal and six years of psychological architecture that doesn’t simply disappear because I’ve discovered the truth.Harvey.The name lands in my mind like a stone dropped into still water, creating concentric rip

I step out of the bathroom with the matte gold ring still clenched in my fist and walk to the window in the hallway.Dublin is out there—gray, honest, imperfect under the constant rain. Old stone that doesn’t apologize for its cracks, narrow streets that weren’t planned by architects, the impossible green that only exists in Ireland and that no designer could ever replicate. I rest my forehead against the cold glass and let the contrast hit me with full force.Six years. Six years of a life that now, seen through Evie Callahan’s eyes, looks like a very expensive movie projected especially for me.The memories of Boston don’t arrive like the sharp flashbacks from Dublin—those that stab through me, physical and visceral. The memories of Beatrice Prescott arrive softly, polished, wrapped in silk and champagne and perfectly calibrated lighting.They arrive like a very well-told lie.Boston. Always Boston.The penthouse on the fifty-second floor of Prescott Tower, with its panoramic view th

Two days have passed without me being able to sleep properly.Forty-eight hours of Declan sharing the bed with me with that presence that occupies more physical space than any body should. He sleeps little—I can tell by the rhythm of his breathing that changes at three in the morning, when he gets up and stands at the window for hours, looking at Dublin as if the city were a tactical problem he hasn’t yet figured out how to solve.We don’t talk about Harvey. We don’t talk about the conditioned reflex of breathing, about the small devastating smile he gave me as he walked out the door, or about the seed of doubt he planted with surgical precision that has been germinating at the back of my consciousness like a silent tumor ever since.We sleep on the same side we always slept on—I realize this in a flash of terrifying clarity when my body settles on the left side of the bed with the naturalness of someone who never had to learn it. Declan, on the right, his large calloused hand always f

Two days have passed since the conservatory, and Declan’s marks on my skin still pulse like constant reminders of claimed ownership.The entire mansion walks on eggshells around us. Claire feels the tension—children always do. She spends more time in the library with me, less hanging on her father’s neck. Luka and Zion speak in even more closed codes than usual.The false peace lasts until the morning when the sound of multiple engines cuts through the Irish rain like a declaration of war.I’m in the kitchen trying to make pancakes without burning them—a task at which I fail miserably—when Zion enters without ceremony.“He’s back,” he says, his gaze direct on me. “And he brought company.”I run to the corridor window that overlooks the main entrance. It isn’t one car this time. It’s four black SUVs parking in perfect military formation in front of the electronic gate. Men in dark suits descend in coordinated sequence—eight, ten, twelve. All with that posture that isn’t mall security. T