Twin Babies for Rival Twins

Chapter 2

Who owns it? The thoughts in my head. Elias or Enzo? f**k.

Two weeks had crawled by since the clinic cot, since the matron’s clipped voice branded me with a future I couldn’t outrun.

I’d spent the first three days curled under my dorm comforter, knees to chest, whispering the same prayer to a God who’d stopped listening somewhere between Matthew’s sneer and the Arlington twins’ teeth on my skin: Please let it be a mistake. Please let the test be wrong.

By day four the nausea arrived like clockwork, a sour wave every sunrise, and I knew the prayer was dead.

There was only one way out; abortion. But it wasn't even a thought.

I needed money. Real money. Not the part-time diner shifts that barely covered ramen. So I polished the résumé I’d hidden since sophomore year: B.S. in Supply Chain Management, minor in Contract Law. I became a contract broker, someone who negotiates freight rates between shippers and carriers, the invisible glue in global logistics. The title sounded important. The pay, when it came, could be. If anyone hired me.

I started with the big firms downtown. Glass towers that scraped the clouds, lobbies scented with bergamot and ambition. I wore the only blazer that still buttoned across my chest, the skirt I’d bought two sizes ago and now strained at the hips. Rejection came in waves.

“Experience?” they asked, eyes flicking to my waist.

“Internship at PortSummit Logistics,” I answered, chin high.

“References?”

I slid the folder across. They barely glanced.

One interviewer, mid-forties, wedding ring glinting, leaned back, smirk lazy. “Stand up, turn around. Let’s see the full package.”

Heat flooded my face. I left without a word.

Another office, another suit. “We’re looking for someone who can… bend to client needs.” He said bend like it was a verb with teeth. To make me see he meant something else.

I walked out before he finished the sentence.

Between rejections I stood in front of the mirror and catalogued the damage: breasts heavier, n*****s dark and tender; a faint blue vein threading beneath the skin of my stomach. I pressed my palm there and felt nothing, just the weight of two futures I couldn’t name.

A treacherous voice whispered: Go back to Elite Space. They’d remember you. They’d fix this. I pictured the line of girls outside the club, taller, thinner, hungrier, waiting for a single shift that paid more in one night than I’d earn in a month.

I pictured Elias’s cool boardroom stare, Enzo’s wolf grin. Men like that didn’t keep souvenirs. They especially didn’t keep accidents.

Still, I kept applying. Kept smiling. Kept swallowing bile in fluorescent hallways that smelled of lemon polish and dismissal.

That Thursday I left TransGlobal Freight with the familiar sting of no. The HR manager had lingered on my chest while pretending to read my transcript. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, already turning away. I stepped onto the sidewalk, heels wobbling on uneven pavement, and didn’t see the convoy.

Black SUVs, tinted windows, engines purring like panthers. The lead van braked hard inches from my knees. Horns blared. My portfolio scattered, résumés fluttering like white flags.

“Watch where you’re going, you stupid…” The driver’s door swung open. Then, I saw him, Elias Arlington, from the passenger seat.

Sunglasses reflected my stunned face back at me. Same razor cheekbones, same cologne that cost more than my rent. My lungs forgot how to work.

“I…I’m sorry,” I stammered, crouching for papers. My skirt rode high; I felt the breeze on the backs of my thighs and remembered his palm there, guiding, claiming. I remembered his c**k sliding into me slow and deliberate, stretching me open while his thumb circled my c**t with surgical precision. I remembered the way he’d fondled one breast, rolling the n****e between fingers that knew exactly how much pressure made me gasp, then leaned down to suck the other, tongue flicking in time with each thrust, gentle and ruthless all at once. My knees nearly buckled again.

He didn’t speak. Just looked through me, into me, like he was reading a balance sheet and found it wanting. Then he moved past, the scent of cedar and gunpowder trailing him. Relief and grief collided in my chest. I exhaled shakily.

A part of me wanted him to remember me, another part didn't want him to.

I’d seen the headlines. Starlets and socialites clutching ultrasounds outside courthouse steps, screaming paternity at iron gates. The Arlingtons paid lawyers, not fathers. I couldn't be part of the list. It wouldn't matter. None had ever won against them.

Enzo’s version of denial came with zip-ties and a one-way ride to a clinic that didn’t ask questions. He drove them in and paid for abortions. Then the truth would be spilled.

A suited guard jogged up, earpiece glinting. “Boss. That’s her. The girl from Elite Space. That night.”

Elias stopped. The sidewalk seemed to tilt. I felt every heartbeat in my throat.

“No,” I said too quickly. “You’re mistaken.”

He turned. Removed the sunglasses. Gray eyes pinned me like specimens. He stepped close enough that I smelled whiskey on his breath, same brand he’d poured down my throat while Enzo ate me.

“Give me a three-sixty,” he said, voice low, lethal.

“I’m not—”

“Now.”

The command wrapped around my spine. I turned slowly, skirt brushing my knees, heat crawling up my neck.

When I faced him again his gaze had dropped to the faint bruise still yellowing above my collarbone, then lower, to the swell beneath my blazer that hadn’t been there two weeks ago.

“I remember the body,” he said quietly. “Warm. Responsive. The way you trembled when I…” He stopped, jaw flexing. “But the face… the name…” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Take her.”

Hands gripped my arms, just like they grabbed me that night, gentle but unbreakable.

Again? No “No! I'm not going…” The world blurred. My knees buckled. Darkness rushed in like tide.

***

I woke to antiseptic and beeping. Hospital. Again. An IV tugged at my hand; the gown scratched my skin. A nurse, mid-thirties, adjusted the drip.

“Thank God you’re awake, Miss Samantha. And thank you.”

I tried to sit up. Headache split my skull. “For what?”

She glanced at the chart, then at the door like it might explode. “A million dollars split between two accounts the second your vitals stabilized. Who are you that the Arlington brothers are fighting to pay your bills?”

My mouth went dry. “Both?”

“Yes, miss. You must be their sister, or someone important. Elias brought you in, demanded the penthouse suite, private obstetrician. Enzo stormed in twenty minutes later, threatened to blow up the hospital if they didn’t allow him to pay. They’re in the lobby now. Arguing over who gets to see you first.” She hesitated, then slid a black-and-white printout across the blanket. “Congratulations?”

I stared at the grainy image. Two dark sacs, two tiny pulses flickering like faulty bulbs. My stomach lurched. “What, I have cancer now?”

“No,” the nurse said, voice softening. “You’re carrying twins.”

I stared at the ceiling, fluorescent lights haloing into suns. “f**k,” I whispered. “A twin for a rival twin. I’m fucked.”