CHAPTER TWENTY

He was frozen, but he wasn’t cold. His breath didn’t fit in his chest. His skin was two sizes too small.

“Who—” he started, but got stuck on the question. “Who is your father?” Colin managed to say, the words thin and tentative as he tried to make sense of the way north had become south, and down was now up, and who the hell this kid’s dad was. Had their mother been knocked up courtesy of Stefano? That thought churned his stomach. Or did they share the same dad? But if Marcus had been born to Thomas Paige, he and his other siblings would surely have known about his existence, because the prison would have turned the baby over to Thomas Paige’s parents to raise – Colin’s grandparents.

Which meant…

“My father is Luke Carlton,” Marcus supplied, and Colin blew out a long stream of air. His mother had not only cheated on his dad, she’d gotten pregnant from the affair. Course, that was the least of her crimes.

“So she was pregnant when she went to prison?” he asked, the words tasting like chalk.

“I guess she had to have been,” Marcus said from his post on the sidewalk. The three of them stood in their places like actors on their marks.

“Pregnant? She was fucking pregnant?” he asked again, as if repeating the facts would assemble them into a neat, orderly package.

But before Marcus could respond, Colin turned to his other brother. Ryan’s jaw was open. He hadn’t moved. He didn’t blink. “Can you believe this?” he said to Ryan, holding his hands out wide. He’d barely batted an eye when the detective had told him last week that Dora had been dealing drugs.

But this—this was something else entirely. This was the true bombshell.

He had another brother. One who was fourteen years younger. One he’d never known existed.

This was a meteor crashing into his backyard, slamming a crater in the earth. This was him standing over it, trying to figure out what to do with that gaping maw in the ground.

“No. This is insane, even for her,” Ryan said, the look in his eyes mirroring Colin’s.

He snapped his gaze back to Marcus, who rubbed a hand over his chin, a gesture that Colin did often, too. He flinched at that one small, shared trait. “I can’t believe she was pregnant that whole time, as all the shit went down. And she hid the pregnancy through all of that?”

“My dad told me she didn’t want anyone to know. She was scared of it getting out,” Marcus said. His early nerves seemed to have evaporated, replaced by something that sounded like relief. He straightened his spine, standing taller. He still wasn’t as tall as Colin or Ryan, though. Perhaps, the height genes among the Sloan men had come from their father. Somehow, this small detail mattered to Colin—mattered because he’d loved his dad. Because he missed his dad.

“When did Luke tell you that?” Colin asked, using Marcus’s dad’s first name.

“When I was older. I think ten or eleven.”

“When were you born?”

Marcus gave them his birthday. Three months after their mom went to prison. Which meant she would have been six months pregnant when she was locked up. Colin tried to remember how she’d looked then, during the trial and her arrest. She wore baggy clothes, if his memory served. A seamstress, she’d have known how to make the right outfits to hide a growing belly. The thought of her planning a whole deception hit him like a sledgehammer.

“Holy shit.”

There were no other words for this situation. Just none. He backed up, reaching for a railing, a tree, something to hold on to.

Nothing was behind him—only sidewalk, yard, and the utter surprise of the foursome becoming a fivesome. He grabbed Ryan’s shoulder, and his older brother steadied him, as the news started to register as real.

His own mother had methodically hid her fifth child, keeping him secret as the tsunami rocked their family.

Five.

He was one of five, not one of four.

And none of them had a clue.

He started traveling back in time, trying to add up the facts and make some sense of this latest machination of their mother’s. “So she was pregnant when she was arrested,” he said, thinking out loud, taking a minute to process the absolute fucking weirdness of that detail. “And she was clearly pregnant when she was sentenced and went to prison.” His brain kicked back into gear and started reconnecting the parts to the whole. And as he lined up the pieces, his jaw nearly dropped with one cold, stark realization. He brought his hand to his mouth, started to speak, but his voice was vacant. Then he found words again, managing a bare whisper as he turned to Ryan.

“She was pregnant when Stefano pulled the trigger.” And the corollary to that hit him like a harsh smack in the back of the head. Motivation. “Was that why she did it? Was that her motive?” He shifted his gaze to Marcus. “Did it have something to do with you?”

Marcus held up both hands as if he were surrendering. “I have no idea. I wasn’t even born.”

He didn’t mean to imply that Marcus was the motivation for the murder, but even so, it had to have played a role in their mother’s thinking. She probably wanted the life insurance money so she could run away with her lover and her unborn child.

Colin spun to face Ryan, who looked like a mad man still—like this new wrinkle was rattling him to the core.

“Do you think this had anything to do with it?”

“I think what the fucking fuck. That’s what I think,” Ryan said, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I seriously cannot believe that she hid a pregnancy. But then, this is the woman who buried names of her accomplices, along with a goddamn drug-dealing route, in a dog jacket. That woman could hide anything. She’s like a squirrel hiding nuts.”

“She must have killed it in hide and seek,” Marcus said softly, and a sliver of a smile formed on his lips. Colin glanced at Ryan, their eyes locking, sharing the realization that Marcus had just made a joke about their mother. Their mother.

Theirs.

One and the same. The green-eyed, husband murdering, drug dealing, cheater of a woman who had slept with this kid’s father while she’d been married to Colin’s dad.

Such a twisted, sordid tale. Dateline would have a field day with this new development.

There was a rustling sound as Marcus took a sheet of paper from his jeans pocket and unfolded it. “I brought this. I wasn’t sure if you guys would believe me. But here it is,” he said, then handed over a birth certificate. With steady hands, Colin held the paper and read every detail, Ryan by his side, peering at the document, too. From the state of Nevada. Marcus Carlton’s birth certificate. The mother’s name was Dora Prince. The father’s was Luke Carlton. The date was three months after their mother became inmate #347-921.

In black and fucking white.

“Have you always known?” Colin asked as he handed it back and studied Marcus’s face, looking for clues, for the family resemblance. Michael, Ryan, and Colin had plenty of differences, but they all looked like brothers.

Did Marcus fit the mold, he wondered. Marcus had the same eyes as Colin. The same square jawline. Colin saw shades of himself in this boy, and it was odd to be looking at him in this new light.

“Pretty much. Even if my dad and stepmom had wanted to hide it, they wouldn’t have had much luck. My stepmom has, um”—Marcus held up his arm—“darker skin than me.”

“Ah, got it,” Colin said, speeding onto the next questions. There were so many, they were piling up, but he desperately wanted to make sense of this. “So there was no hiding that you weren’t her biological kid. And you knew who your biological mom was, but Luke swore you to secrecy when you were younger?”

Marcus nodded. “Exactly. He told me they were threatened. That’s why he left Las Vegas in the first place. He said once she went to jail, my mom and dad were threatened that I’d be hurt.” He paused, drew a breath. “And I guess you guys, too.”

Ryan flinched. “Are you kidding me? He said that? That we would all be hurt?”

Marcus held up his hands. “I don’t know every detail. I was really young. All I know is what my dad told me—that it was too dangerous for us to stay in Vegas so he moved to San Diego with me and met my stepmom there.”

Ryan dropped a hand on Colin’s shoulder and exhaled, hard. His words came out dry and crackly. “You know what she said to me the other week? The last time I was there?”

“When she finally confessed to you?”

Ryan nodded. “She said, ‘They told me they’d hurt you all. They told me they’d come after my babies if I said a word.’ I bet it was T.J. and Kenny who said that.”

The hair on Colin’s arms stood on end as the full meaning registered. “Do you think she meant all of us?” Colin tipped his chin at Marcus.

But Ryan didn’t answer. Marcus did. “That’s what she’s told me, too.”

“She? You’ve seen her? You’ve met her?” Ryan asked then stopped himself, halting the conversation. “I gotta get Johnny Cash out of the car. Let’s go inside.”

A few minutes later, Colin let his older brother, the dog, and his younger brother into his house.

Younger brother.

The notion still didn’t compute. “You go see her?” he asked the boy who had once just been another kid at the center trying to rise above. Now he was flesh and blood.

“I have before. A few times. Look, It’s not like I have some deep relationship with her,” he said, his tone somewhat apologetic. “Obviously she never raised me. I’m closer to my stepmom. But I’ve visited a few times. My dad took me. He knew it was important for me to go, and I wanted to know who my mother was.”

“What was that like? Seeing her?” Colin asked, as he headed to the fridge to grab sodas. It was a natural instinct—invite someone into your house, offer a beverage. Maybe he needed one normal moment in the midst of this madness.

Marcus bit the corner of his lip, then answered. “She’s…” He let his voice trail off, searching for words. “She’s emotional, and she’s not really—”

“She’s fucking crazy. You can say it.” Ryan heaved a sigh. Colin handed out the sodas then clapped his older brother on the back. Ryan had been hit hardest by their mom’s incarceration, since he’d held onto the hope she might be innocent for so much longer than the rest of them had. It was only fitting that he’d be the one to voice the descent Dora had taken behind bars. “She’s losing her mind.”

Colin snapped his fingers as more puzzle pieces lined up. “Ry, that must be why she spiraled,” he said, like he was the detective now, figuring out the clues. “That’s why she started going crazy. She killed the father of her children, went to prison with another’s man’s kid in her, hid that child, and had the baby in prison. No wonder she’s gone off the deep end.”

“Prison alone would be enough, but add in the other things and she probably never stood a chance at staying sane,” Ryan said sadly, cracking open the soda can.

That familiar action jarred Colin—the three of them drinking sodas at his kitchen table. This was the definition of surreal—the trio parked at the same table where he’d eaten his free-range eggs this morning, a slice of avocado on the side. Now, he was chatting with the instant brother who’d fallen from the sky and into his life this afternoon. And yet, he hadn’t just appeared out of nowhere. He’d been skirting the perimeter. “Why are you here now, Marcus?” Colin asked. “Why did you want to let us know who you are?”

Marcus gulped. “I wanted to…” He broke off then dropped his head in his hands.

Colin’s instinct to help kicked in. “Hey. What is it?” he asked softly.

“I feel so stupid,” he mumbled.

“Don’t feel that way, just tell me. Tell us.”

Marcus raised his face. Glanced away. Swallowed. Looked back at them. “I just feel so disconnected sometimes from my family. I love them, but I feel like I’m not part of them. Like I’m not part of anything.” He levelled his gaze with theirs. “My dad and I don’t always see eye to eye, and my stepmom tries to include me, but she’s busy with my little sisters, and I just felt like I was grafted onto their family. Like they were all just stuck with me. They had no choice but to take me.” His voice turned colder, but sadder, too, as he added, “I was nobody’s choice.”

Colin’s heart ached for the kid. His family had been blasted to pieces, but he’d always felt tethered to his siblings and his grandparents. “Is that why you were following us?”

Marcus nodded, a confession in his dark brown eyes. “I wanted to see what you guys were like. That probably sounds stupid, but once I moved out from home this summer, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t lie to you about why I went to Shannon’s. I’m part of the Protectors, and I went to Shannon’s street as part of a patrol. But also to keep an eye on her. And since I knew your names, and found out you volunteered at the community center, I started going there to hang out.”

Colin’s breath caught as he processed this new detail. Marcus had been stalking them, but not to cause trouble. Rather to see what the Sloans were like. To gather intel. Colin had no idea if he’d have done anything differently in Marcus’s shoes. “You knew who I was when you came to my math tutorial?”

“I did,” he said with a nod, and a brief smile formed on Colin’s face. He couldn’t deny that he admired the hell out of the way Marcus said those two words—I did. Because he owned it. He owned his actions. He stood by the fact that he’d been spying on them. “I wanted to know if you all seemed…well, cool.”

Colin turned to Ryan, whose expression had softened. The initial shock in his blue eyes had been replaced by something else. Concern, maybe? That was certainly what Colin felt. This kid had been left unanchored in a crazy world, born in the strangest of circumstances, told to keep secrets. All he wanted now was a connection.

“Did we? Seem cool?” Ryan asked, a playful note in his voice for the first time since this conversation had started.

Marcus laughed lightly then gestured to Colin. “Well, you’re the only one I talked to. And yeah, I think you’re cool,” he said. “And I think it’s cool that I’m good at math, like you are.”

“Me, too,” he said with a smile.

“You need to meet Michael and Shan. They’re pretty awesome as well,” Ryan added.

“I’d like that.”

Colin wasn’t ready to invite the kid over for Christmas dinner, nor to break out the family photo albums. He wasn’t going to take him out for an ice cream and a pizza. But he didn’t intend to show him the door either.

He did what he knew was best. Speak the truth.

“Look,” Colin said, moving his chair closer to the table. “I don’t know what to say. I’m floored. I mean, part of me feels like you were tricking me by talking to me while knowing what you knew.” He chose bluntness. His mantra. His mission. No more lies; no more secrets. “But on the other hand, I get it. I probably would have done the same. You had a shitload of stuff to deal with, and now I get why you made that comment in the car yesterday about not knowing it was me who was going to be driving.”

“I didn’t want you to think I was taking advantage of you. Of the fact that we’re…” The careful words came out awkwardly, like he was afraid again to say “brothers.”

“That we’re…” Colin stuck on the word, too, then pushed past it. “That we’re brothers.”

That sounded so immensely weird. Even stranger without Michael and Shannon being there. He’d call them in a few minutes and invite them to share this bizarre moment. Then he remembered where he was supposed to be right now. At Elle’s match. Looking at the time, he realized it was probably almost over, and a small bout of frustration coursed through him. He’d call her soon, too, and explain why he’d missed the match, and surely she’d understand. There was no doubt in his mind that she’d not only be cool with it, but she’d be keen to hear this news. Probably excited, in a way, that one of the boys she watched out for had done something brave.

Because that was what Marcus’s appearance here today was. Yes, it was weird and bizarre and shocking. But at the core, Marcus was downright brave.

“I’m sorry to just spring it on you. There’s not really a handbook for introducing yourself as the long lost brother. Or a Hallmark card. I was trying to figure out what to do and say, and then you talked to me in the hall at the center,” he said to Colin. “That’s when I realized I needed to get my act together and just man up and see you and introduce myself. That’s what Elle helped me with.”

The house went silent. His ears rang with that name, and a chill ran down his spine. “What did you just say?”

“Elle helped me,” Marcus repeated, as if this was no big deal.

When it was a big fucking deal. A huge deal.

“Elle? Elle at the center?” he asked, as if there could possibly be another Elle.

Marcus nodded enthusiastically. “I’ve been talking to her since the beginning. She’s been counseling me. She’s kind of amazing.”

That definitely described her.

Kind of amazing.

But for the first time ever, other words popped into his head. Words he’d never associated with her before. Words he didn’t want to associate with her.

If he’d felt the slightest bit tricked before, that was nothing on how he felt now.

Elle Mariano was a liar.