Hiding His Twins From The Underboss

I saved a man bleeding out in the snow. He had no memory, so I called him Ben.

We lived in a cabin, fell in love, and married by firelight with no witnesses but the ghosts of my parents.

Then one day, he disappeared.

Two years later, he returned. Not as my husband, but as Bernard Logan, the ruthless Underboss of the city's most dangerous crime family.

And he didn't remember me.

He brought his cruel new fiancée to my clinic and treated me like a stranger.

When she threw my father's antique music box into a cactus display, he watched as I tore my hands apart trying to save it.

He called our past a "drug-induced hallucination" and threatened to destroy me if I spoke up.

Worst of all, I found out I was pregnant.

He cornered me in the hospital room, his eyes cold and devoid of the warmth I used to know.

"Is it mine?"

I knew if I said yes, he would turn my child into a killer like him. Or his fiancée would ensure we never survived.

So I looked the love of my life in the eye and lied.

"No," I said. "It's not yours."

I signed his NDA, took his hush money, and vanished to Europe to raise my twins alone.

I thought I was free. I found a good man who actually loved me.

But three years later, at an art gallery in Zurich, the crowd parted.

Bernard was standing there, staring at me with a terrifying hunger.

He had found out the truth.

And he was ready to burn the world down to get us back.

Chapter 1

Addison POV

The patient file Dr. Miles slapped onto my desk carried a warning label in red ink, but the name printed underneath was the real lethal weapon: Evelin Bennett, the future wife of the man I buried in my heart two years ago.

I stared at the folder.

My chest felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer against my ribs.

"You have five minutes to prep, Addison," Dr. Miles said, checking his watch. "The Bennett family does not wait. And neither does the Logan crime family."

The name *Logan* sucked the oxygen out of the room.

I knew that name.

Everyone in the city knew that name.

Bernard Logan. The Butcher. The Underboss.

But to me, he was just Ben.

He was the man I had found bleeding out in the snow near my father's cabin two years ago.

He was the man with no memory who had learned to chop wood and fix my leaky roof.

He was the man I had married in a living room lit only by firelight, with no witnesses but the ghosts of my parents.

He was the man who went out for supplies one morning and never came back.

I thought the wolves had gotten him.

Or the winter.

I spent months searching the ravine, screaming his name until my throat bled.

I sold my father's antique music box-the only thing I had left of my childhood-to pay for the surgeries that saved his life.

And now he was back.

Not as Ben.

But as a monster.

I walked down the hallway of the clinic, my legs feeling like they were moving through wet cement.

I could hear a woman's voice from inside the VIP suite.

"He is so cold, Dr. Addison," the voice whined. "It is like sleeping next to a statue."

I pushed the door open.

Evelin Bennett was draped over the velvet chaise like a bored cat.

She was beautiful in the way a diamond is beautiful-hard, cold, and expensive.

She held up her phone.

"Look at him," she said. "He disappears for two years, comes back to take over the city, and acts like I am a piece of furniture."

She thrust the screen toward me.

I looked.

It was him.

He was wearing a suit that fit him like armor.

His eyes were dark, devoid of the warmth I used to see when he looked at me across the dinner table.

Behind him was the logo of Logan Enterprises.

The front for the mob.

My stomach turned over.

"He is handsome, isn't he?" Evelin asked, pulling the phone back. "But he is damaged goods. Amnesia, they say. He remembers nothing from those two years."

My heart stopped.

He didn't remember.

He didn't remember the cabin.

He didn't remember the vows.

He didn't remember me.

The door to the suite opened behind me.

The air pressure in the room dropped.

I smelled it before I saw him.

Gunpowder and expensive cologne.

I turned around.

Bernard Logan stood in the doorway.

He was bigger than I remembered.

Broader.

Meaner.

His gaze swept the room, assessing threats, before landing on me.

I waited for the spark.

I waited for the recognition.

I waited for Ben to come back to me.

Bernard looked me in the eye.

There was no spark.

There was only the cold, dead stare of a shark looking at a seal.

"Addison, is it?" he asked. His voice was deep, scraping against my nerves.

I nodded, unable to speak.

He walked past me as if I were invisible.

He went to Evelin and placed a hand on her shoulder.

It was a possessive gesture.

Territorial.

Evelin leaned into him, smirking at me.

"See?" she said. "He does have a pulse."

Bernard looked at me over her head.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

It was a warning.

Silent.

Lethal.

He knew.

He remembered.

And he was telling me to keep my mouth shut or die.

Addison POV

The ride in the armored limousine was a suffocating exercise in silence.

The plush leather seats reeked of Evelin's cloying perfume, a scent that seemed to choke the air from my lungs.

Bernard sat across from me, a statue carved from ice.

He hadn't uttered a single syllable since his men had shoved me into the back seat outside the clinic.

We weren't heading to the police station.

We were going to La Perle.

It was a French restaurant downtown-the very place Ben used to admire in the dog-eared magazines I kept at the cabin.

"One day," he had promised, his voice warm with a lie I hadn't known was a lie. "One day, Addie, I will take you there."

Now, he was keeping that promise.

But we were not there to dine.

The car rolled to a smooth halt.

Bernard waited, imperious, for his soldier to open the door.

He didn't offer me a hand.

Inside, the restaurant was a cavern of silence.

He had bought out the entire establishment.

He took a seat at a secluded corner table and gestured sharply for me to join him.

I sat.

My hands were trembling, so I hid them beneath the table, gripping my knees.

"You look well, Addison," he said.

He spoke my name as if it were a slur.

"Where is Ben?" I asked, hating the way my voice cracked.

"Ben is dead," he stated flatly. He lifted a crystal glass of water to his lips. "He died the moment I remembered who I was."

"You are married to me," I whispered, desperate to find a crack in his armor.

Bernard laughed.

It was a dry, humorless sound that scraped against my nerves.

"I am the Underboss of the Logan Family," he declared. "I do not have civilian marriages. I have alliances."

He leaned forward, the candlelight dancing in his cold, dark eyes.

"You are a loose end, Addison. And in my world, we tie up loose ends."

I felt the blood drain from my face, leaving me cold.

"Are you going to kill me?" I asked.

He studied me for a long, agonizing moment.

For a split second, I saw a flash of something flicker in his gaze.

Hesitation?

Regret?

No.

It was pure calculation.

"No," he finally said. "You saved my life. I pay my debts."

He slid a sleek black envelope across the pristine tablecloth.

"There is cash inside," he said. "Enough to buy a new life. Far away from here."

"I don't want your money," I said.

I pushed the envelope back toward him.

His jaw tightened, a muscle feathering in his cheek.

"Then what do you want?" he demanded. "To play house in a shack? To pretend I am a lumberjack named Ben?"

"I want a divorce," I said, my voice gaining strength. "If we are not married, then let me go."

"You are not going anywhere," he countered.

He stood abruptly and stalked around the table.

He stopped directly behind my chair, his presence looming over me.

He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, sending a shiver of dread down my spine.

"Evelin needs a therapist," he murmured. "You are hired."

"I won't do it," I said instantly.

"You will," he replied, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Because if you don't, I will find that music box you pawned."

My head snapped up.

He knew about the music box.

"I bought it back," he revealed cruelly. "It sits on my mantle. It is a fragile thing, Addison. One squeeze, and it becomes nothing but splinters."

"You wouldn't," I breathed.

"Try to run," he threatened softly. "And watch what happens to the only memory you have left of your father."

He straightened up, adjusting his cuffs.

His phone buzzed against the wood of the table.

He glanced at the screen.

"Evelin is waiting at the Estate," he said. "Come. You have work to do."

I stared at his hand as he checked his watch.

On his wrist, the crisp cuff of his shirt had pulled back.

I saw the tattoo.

A simple, black letter *E*.

When he had gotten it at the cabin, using ink and a needle in the dim light, he told me it stood for *Eternity*.

For us.

I looked up at him, my heart breaking all over again.

"It stands for Evelin, doesn't it?" I asked.

Bernard didn't look at me.

"It always did," he said.

Addison POV

The Logan Estate was less a home and more a fortress of stone and glass, perched precariously on the edge of a cliff.

It was cold.

Imposing.

Just like the man who owned it.

I was sequestered in the guest quarters, trying to make sense of the medical files Bernard had forced upon me.

Suddenly, the door flew open with a violence that made me jump.

Evelin stood there, framed by the doorway.

She looked deranged, her chest heaving.

"What is she doing here?" she shrieked, her voice cracking.

She spun around to face Bernard, who was lingering in the hallway like a dark shadow.

"You brought the help into our home?" she screamed.

"She is on call," Bernard said, his voice maddeningly calm. "You said you had anxiety. You needed monitoring."

"I don't want her here!" Evelin yelled, pointing a trembling finger at me. "She smells like poverty."

Bernard looked at me.

His face was an impenetrable mask.

"Get out," he said.

Just like that.

"It is freezing outside," I argued, my voice shaking. "It is a five-mile walk to the main road."

"I don't care," Evelin spat.

Bernard didn't even blink. He signaled to two of his guards.

"Escort her off the property," he commanded.

The guards seized my arms.

They weren't gentle.

They dragged me down the polished marble hallway, my heels skidding uselessly against the floor.

I looked back at Bernard one last time.

He was lighting a cigarette, the flame illuminating the sharp angles of his face.

He didn't watch me leave.

They threw me out the front gate like a bag of refuse.

I landed hard on the asphalt.

My knees scraped against the grit, tearing skin.

The cold air bit into my flesh like a thousand needles.

I pushed myself up and started walking.

Every step was a painful reminder.

Ben-the man I thought I knew-would have carried me through the snow.

Bernard threw me into it.

I walked for what felt like an eternity, losing sensation in my toes, before a black SUV pulled up slowly beside me.

The window rolled down with a soft hum.

"Get in," Bernard said.

I kept walking, staring straight ahead.

"Get in, Addison, or I drag you in."

I stopped.

I got in.

I had no fight left in me.

"We are going to the St. Regis," he announced, staring at the road. "Evelin has a gala tonight. She needs you to calm her nerves."

"I am not her servant," I whispered.

"You are whatever I say you are," he replied coldly.

At the hotel, he left me in the hallway outside the master suite.

The heavy door hadn't latched completely; it stood slightly ajar.

I heard voices drifting out.

"Bernard," Evelin said. Her voice was low, laced with suspicion. "Why is she really here? Did you sleep with her?"

I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Bernard laughed.

It was a cruel, hollow sound.

"She was a nurse, Evelin," he said dismissively. "I was high on painkillers for two years. I don't even remember her face half the time."

"But you were intimate?" Evelin pressed.

I heard the sharp clink of ice hitting a glass.

"I was drugged," Bernard said effortlessly. "It was a mistake. A hallucination. It meant nothing to my honor. And it meant nothing to me."

My heart shattered into dust.

He was rewriting our history.

He was turning our love into a drug-induced error just to save face with a mafia princess.

"You can punish her if you want," Bernard added, his tone bored. "As long as she stays close. I need to keep an eye on her."

"Why?" Evelin asked.

"Because she knows too much," he said.

I slid down the wall, unable to stand.

I buried my face in my hands to stifle a sob.

I had to get the music box.

I had to get it and run.

If I stayed, he would destroy me.