I shook my head. What did that mean? But Mrs. Agnello answered before I could say anything.
“We gypsies are not always, what do you call it?” she said, eyes to the ceiling, thinking. “Yes that’s right, monogamous. Our culture, our society, is different from yours. Often we have passing liaisons, when the lightning strikes, when your blood boils, when the haze is here, you cannot control yourself, no? And so we embrace it, we take what it offers, what comes. And a baby is often the result, after the haze clears and the heart stills once more.”
I shook my head.
“But even if that is Roma culture, it’s from a long time ago,” I said, slightly exasperated. “When your ancestors traveled in caravans, selling goods and peddling wares, nomads really, they lived a different lifestyle and now your people are monogamous.” I wasn’t sure where this was going. After all, Mrs. Agnello had been married to Mr. Agnello for decades, so the proof was in the pudding.
But Mrs. Agnello shook her head, eyes twinkling.
“You know I have four children, all grown now, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Pietra, Pietro, Pietre, and Pietri. You mentioned.”
“And did I mention,” added Mrs. Agnello with a bit of spice in her voice, “that the four have different fathers?”
My mouth gaped open. We’d had multiple conversations about her children, about how perhaps her kids could help her through this difficult financial situation, lend a hand given the dire financial straits of their parents. I’d always assumed, because of their similar names, that they were full siblings.
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Agnello, as if reading my thoughts. “Four fathers, each one different.”
“Is one of them at least Mr. Agnello?” I gasped, before clapping a hand over my mouth. I didn’t want to be rude and pry.
But the older woman had a sassy answer.
“None of them are Mr. Agnello’s,” replied the older woman, eyes dancing, “although one possibly could be, but I don’t think so.”
And I suddenly understood so much more about the Roma lifestyle. There was a certain laissez-faire aspect to it, as if the people threw their cards into the wind and accepted how they lay, even if it was face down, backwards and scattered to the four corners of the earth. But at the same time, the Roma I’d encountered were happy, impulsive but gloriously satisfied with their lives, living them fully, with a sense of joy and delight.
“So are you saying that I should just accept things as they are?” I asked slowly, rubbing my tummy now, feeling that small but definite bump.
“Oh child,” said Mrs. Agnello, “I can’t tell you anything because you must feel for yourself, take where your heart leads you. But I can tell you that having three fathers is nothing, I have at least four,” she said with a wink.
And I shook my head, the complexity overwhelming me.
“But where are they now?” I asked belatedly, plaintively. “If none of them are Mr. Agnello, where are the four men?”
“How do I know?” she asked, shrugging. “Perhaps Spain, France, I heard one of them traveled to Iceland two years ago. What I’m saying honey, is that things turn out differently than you think, never give up on Lady Luck. I have very little right now after all, but Mr. Agnello and I, we’re very happy.”
And I sat back, still and contemplative. Because I could see, no feel, the steady waves of joy emitting from my client at each and every meeting, every time I encountered her, despite the setbacks, the obstacles which seemed impossible to overcome. At this moment in time, her business was as good as kaput, she’d just asked me to help her apply for food stamps, and she had no idea where the four fathers of her children were. And yet Mrs. Agnello was here, smiling at me, beaming even, a radiant glow emitting from that homely face, her scarf jaunty, her air vibrant. She was the definition of someone happy to be alive, happy with what the world had given her, the opportunities it presented, even if at the current moment, things looked down.
So I smiled tremulously back at her, taking a deep breath.
“I just don’t know where I’m going with all this, what’s going to happen,” I said in a small voice. “I’m so lost.”
“Honey,” said Mrs. Agnello, “we are all lost, at all times. It’s the human condition.”
And with that my mind cracked wide open. Because I knew what I had to do then … and it had nothing to do with the three men who had once been my centers, my heart, everything I lived for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Kristian
Six months after that …
Kato, Karl and I watched as the landscape puttered by, riding in the back of a tuktuk, a kind of motorcycle with an open cab attached in back. Granted the tuktuk barely had space for three massive men, tall and heavily muscled, our hard gazes taking in every detail, the rice fields, the lush greenery, the skinny white cows that seemed so prevalent in Cambodia.
Because we’d followed our best girl here, the brunette who’d driven us into a frantic hunt to the edges of the Earth. The three of us had landed back in St. Venetia a month ago, only to find her gone, disappeared.
“What the fuck?” roared Kato, looking around the empty apartment. It was clear that Tina had been gone for months. Mail was piling up by the slot in the door, the plants were long-since dead, the closet looking ghostly and sad, empty but for a few limp items. “Where is she?”
Karl looked around, confused.
“We told her we’d be back, Halliburton was shipping us off, sure, but we’d be back,” he rumbled.
“Halliburton?” I interrupted dryly, hearing the name of the embattled defense contractor. “What the fuck? Or should I not ask?” The company was a shadow hand behind the American military, notorious for doing dirty work that not even SEALs or Green Berets could do, or should do.
And Kato shot me a look that would have killed a lesser man.
“Yeah, we work, Highness,” he spat. “We didn’t grow up in the lap of luxury like you, we work for a living.”
I could have said something scathing, lobbed pure poison in the air, but held my tongue instead. After all, Kato and Karl were my brothers now, and not just half or step or any of that bullshit. We were full siblings and seeing that I’d never had brothers before, I chose to keep the peace, hold my tongue and let it go.
Besides, my skill as a politician, as a negotiator, told me there was value in keeping an even keel around these men. First, you never knew what they knew, it was better to watch, listen and learn. Second, the two dudes were fucking huge and enormous, with a deadly look in their eyes. The twins were lethal after all, professional soldiers, and who knew what shit would go down if you got them roiled up? I didn’t want to find out, given that Kato had a not-so-subtle bulge under his left armpit, and Karl was currently strumming his fingers against the cheap countertop as if itching to pull a weapon.
So yeah, Kato and Karl had gotten jobs as mercenaries, given their skill set. Fuck, the way the world was now, they were probably paid up the wazoo to head out to war zones, the ability to tote a gun, hunt shifty prey, shoulder a combat load, these were attributes valued by various governments, all on the sly of course. Most likely if they were captured, they’d be disavowed, unacknowledged, corpses burned, left in the desert to die.
So not the right guys to piss off on a good day. But I had my own bomb to drop as well.
“That’s funny because I’ve been hired by Halliburton as well,” I said smoothly. “You know, confidential shit.”
And the twins’ jaws dropped.
“What the fuck?” asked Karl, disbelieving. “You’re royalty, no way they’d take you.”
That was true, a lot of military outfits were reluctant to accept anyone of fame or notoriety because it’d draw attention to whatever squadron they were in, making it doubly or triply vulnerable. But that was only the beginning of my bomb.
“I gave up the crown,” I said without a blink. “Call me Kristian now, no ‘Highness’ needed.”
And the tw
ins positively fell on the floor then.
“You … disavowed the throne?” Karl muttered with disbelief, exchanging glances with his brother. “Is that even possible? Who’s the Crown Prince then?”
I shrugged, disinterested.
“Fuck if I know,” I said. “Fuck if I care.”
And it was the truth. I realized I’d never been interested in being Prince, certainly not the ceremonial kind. And that’s what my duties had been, those of a dilettante, always dabbling but never really getting in deep, skimming the surface but never knowing what was really happening. And I was through with that shit, just over it. I wanted in on the good stuff, leveraging myself in whichever way was most effective, my contribution to the world meaningful, with real ramifications and follow-up.
And so I’d joined an American defense contractor. It was twisted, I admit, Halliburton doesn’t exactly have a great reputation as a moral, upright corporate citizen, but at the same time, we weren’t fighting a straightforward, simple war. Shit was twisted these days, the unbelievable now a reality, the enemy a dark, shifty, shadow that could scatter into a thousand cells before coagulating once more into a coherent being, even more lethal than imagined.
But Karl and Kato couldn’t believe it, that we were on the same team.
“Halliburton doesn’t hire non-Americans,” Kato ground out. “How the fuck did you work that?”
I gave them a cold smile.
“Halliburton doesn’t hire non-Americans within the United States,” I said smoothly. “Elsewhere, anything goes. Besides, how’d you get hired? You gave up your American citizenship, as far as I remember, to become Legionnaires.”
“That’s right,” said Kato slowly. “But we were reinstated by the State Department when the company petitioned for expedited naturalization.”
WTF? What was expedited naturalization? I’d never heard of that and it sounded mighty shady.
But Kato just shrugged.
“Anything goes, brother, in war anything goes.”
And that brought home his point because it was true, anything could happen in this fucked up place. From the circumstances of our birth, to discovering that we were brothers, to the fact that we’d been living a lie of sorts this entire time, our world filled with the depths of poverty, the heights of unimaginable wealth, and finally the machinations of the Rothschilds, the Venetians, Violet, Georg, and finally, the Sterlings. Because where was Tina? Our calls to her parents had been frustrating, to say the least.
“Stay away from our daughter!” shrieked Lady Sterling into the phone. “Stay away! Christina was our only hope and now, now! Robert, get over here, I’m going to …!”
The phone dropped, probably because of the woman’s overwrought hysterics. But the receiver crackled once again and a man’s voice came on.
“Leave my daughter be,” Lord Sterling snarled into the phone, “If only she’d never met you. We never should have put her into Miss Carroll’s, we should have kept her right here with us, kept an eye on her.”
And I’d just shook my head silently, disgusted. Tina was a grown woman, my encounter with her had been the best of my life and I was positive she’d felt the same, even if everything was different now.
“Sir,” I said into the receiver courteously, careful to keep the impatience out of my voice, maintain an even tone. “Where is your daughter? What do you know?”
But the voice of the screaming woman grew louder in the background, making any reasonable conversation impossible, Lady Sterling’s wails like a banshee, and a couple hard thumps rang out, like she was banging her head against a wall.
“Mary, stop, stop!” called Lord Sterling, trying to halt whatever his wife was doing. But suddenly his voice dropped to a low growl.
“Tina’s in Cambodia,” he spoke quickly into the phone, under his voice. “Siem Reap last I heard.” And then the receiver went dead.
And so the three of us were here now, crammed into the back of this rickshaw thing, in the middle of this barely developed country looking for our girl. Where was she? My heart stopped in my throat as I looked over the thatched roofs of the village houses, the dilapidated cars, the dusty animals plodding by. Where was our beautiful brunette in all of this?
CHAPTER THIRTY
Karl
I can’t say that I’m proud of what’s happened. Because instead of sticking it out, staying by our girl, my bro and I took off, leaving her on her own. Because yeah, we knew Tina was upset, that Kristian was gone on some official business, and that the brunette had nowhere to turn, no one to talk to about the dramatic revelations of the White Gala. And as ashamed as I am to admit it, my bro and I didn’t stick around either.
But my feelings were mixed. On the one hand, we had to leave. We had no jobs after all, and money would have become an issue sooner or later. It’s nice to live in la-la land, but Kato and I can’t stay there for long, it’s fucking wrong to let your best girl support you while you sit on the couch.
So we had to get ourselves jobs and to our surprise, had been hired immediately by a para-military outfit. I guess it makes sense. My twin and I are soldiers with specialized skills and anything goes in times of war, they’ll pay a pretty penny for ruthless dudes who know how to wield a fist.
But I still felt guilty about leaving, and I know my twin did to. We’d hightailed it out of St. Venetia with a thousand questions unanswered, leaving our woman nowhere to turn, forcing her to figure things out on her own. That was no way to treat a sensitive, nineteen year-old girl, especially since the ending had been so dramatic, filled with incredible ups and downs straight out of a movie.
So we were determined to do right by her now, find her in this jungle that was Cambodia. But WTF, why did she choose Cambodia? The answer only became too clear when we got to the hotel.
Because the Meridian was quite fancy, a French outfit left over from colonial days, an ivory-colored building which subtly resembled the White House, pillars at the entrance, a grand foyer and marble lobby. The café served afternoon tea, the concierge spoke perfect English, and it looked like there was a lavish gift shop off to the right.
“Is a Ms. Sterling staying here?” I asked the front desk. We’d been tipped off that there was a foreign girl here, a white girl with brown hair who was using the Meridian Hotel as her residence.
And instead of hemming and hawing, refusing to reveal the name of a guest due to privacy issues, the man at the front desk gestured to the left.
“Over there,” he said with a smile. “In that room.”
Really? That easy? The three of us looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Well, this was a foreign country, and when in Rome, do as Romans do.
So we made our way to the room, bursting in unceremoniously, our massive forms filling the small space, overfilling it given that the office could only fit a desk, two chairs, and a few occupants at its max.
And I was about to open my mouth, bark at the visitor, tell him to get the fuck out when we stopped in our tracks, stunned, unable to believe our eyes. Because Tina had stood up, revealing her figure … and she was pregnant, so beautiful, so fertile and gorgeous, that suddenly I knew everything would work itself out. No, scratch that, we’d make it work. No matter what the cost.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tina
It was a surprise when the three men came storming in, tall forms dominant, arrogant, arousing still despite everything that had happened. I’d forgotten how magnetic they were, Kato, Karl and Kristian, the charisma rolling off them in waves, their hard, muscled bodies filling up the space, blue eyes taking in everything within seconds.
“Um, excuse me Annelise,” I said with a murmur. “Would you mind waiting outside for a moment?”
And the small woman nodded, eyes wide, slipping to the door.
“Miss Tina, you take as long as you need,” she said in broken English before disappearing, the door clicking shut behind her.
And I sat back down, letting out a small sigh of relief. Because I’m
swollen with pregnancy, my belly huge at this point, and it’s tough to stand sometimes, my ankles are sore, my feet ballooned to the point where they look like they belong to a Cabbage Patch kid.
So I took a sip of water, letting the cool liquid trickle down my throat before turning to the men.
“What brings you here?” I asked civilly. My eyes scanned their stunned expressions, the way Karl’s pulse throbbed at his throat, how Kato reflexively clenched his fists over and over again, Kristian’s ominous frown.
“You’re working too hard,” growled Kato immediately. “How many hours a day are you putting in? Twelve? Thirteen? You’re pregnant, you shouldn’t be on your feet.”
“This place isn’t safe,” added Karl. “This a third world country, our baby can’t be born in Cambodia. We’ll take you back immediately, I’ll call the chopper.”
And Kristian was last.
“What the fuck, Tina,” he growled. “What the fuck,” was all he managed.
And I could see the rage, the shocked surprise, all mixed with a dose of elation on their faces, that they were going to be fathers.
“What, is this a surprise?” I said archly. “You know that we never used protection, ever. And we were going at it all the time, day in and day out, you’re virile men, I’m a fertile woman, this is an expected outcome.”
And the trio had nothing to say because it was true. Furthermore, I suspected that they’d wanted this all along, wanted me pregnant, to see me bloom with a child within, the fruit of their seed, their desire, their unquenched lust for me. And I threw a curveball next, something they never anticipated.
“I’ve gone to the doctor for a couple ultrasounds already,” I added, “and we know it’s two girls. Isn’t that wonderful? Twins again, just like I thought might happen.”
And now the three men were really surprised, the looks on their faces astounded, taken for a loop. Because although it’s not proven, it’s likely that twinship is a genetic trait, passed on through the generations. So yeah, Kato or Karl’s sperm could have caused the zygote to divide. Or even Kristian, as the brother of twins, could have spurted the semen that made the little girls, his sweet cream taking hold inside of me.
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