Kane shares a look with Liam, and I move my head back and forth between the two of them.
“What?”
“Legally, Junior is your closest living relative. Along with Frank Reyes,” Kane explains, leaning back against his seat as we feel the plane gain speed.
“Right, but Junior is the firstborn. Any inheritance would go to him first. And even if that wasn’t the case, I don’t give a shit about the money. He can have it. He knows that.”
“Baby, Frank Reyes is not worth more than fifty million. It’s not Frank Reyes’s inheritance he’s after. It’s yours.”
“What do you mean? I can pay my bills, but that is about it.” I speak the words while I feel my thoughts freeze, and a weird feeling washes over my entire body, giving me goosebumps all over my skin. I blink in confusion as the airplane lifts off, gaining height in takeoff, pressing me against my seat while my head feels like it’s about to spin into orbit.
In this moment, it clicks.
I open my mouth, but no words come out, and all I can do is shake my head when Kane gives me a trouble look.
I swallow hard before I blurt out something I can’t take back.
“Say it, Kane. I won’t believe you until you say it.” I glare at him, my eyes never leaving him.
He just stares at me for a while, like he doesn’t want to voice what I’ve just figured out. But I need him to tell me. I need him to tell me this isn’t a hunch. I need him to tell me that he had his best man on this, and he’s motherfucking sure.
I need him to say the fucking words I’m too scared to voice but have felt inside my bones my entire life. Stupid girl.
“You are not a Reyes.”
“Motherfucking, what?!” Imogen exclaims before I can say anything, the G-force pushing us into our seats.
I squeeze my eyes shut at the realization, feeling like a massive pressure is pushing against my chest, suffocating me in this damn chair. Without a second thought, I unbuckle my seatbelt, overcome by a desperate need to be on my feet, even though the airplane is still tilted in the air. I see that the seatbelt sign is illuminated, but the nausea sitting in my stomach makes me dizzy as fuck, and well, I just don’t fucking care.
“Callie, sit your ass down,” Kane yells when I walk behind the chair, doing my best to keep my body straight by holding onto the back of the piece of furniture but failing like fucking Bambi on ice.
I ignore him, shoveling forward while I press a hand against the wall, looking down to the cream carpet, my head facing the small hallway, not wanting to face anyone right now. My lungs are having a hard time functioning because of my shallow breaths, so I do my best to inhale and exhale deeply, trying to calm myself down.
“Callie!” Kane growls again, making me turn around.
I take the two steps back to stand behind the armchair, still ignoring the tilting of the aircraft as I grip the seat to keep me steady.
“How long have you known this?” There is a boiling feeling inside me, and I’m not even sure what it is.
Anger?
Grief?
Sadness?
Betrayal?
He meets my vicious gaze, then swallows hard before he finally opens his mouth.
“A few days before you disappeared.”
I blink a few times before my eyebrows shoot up in anger, and my nostrils flare.
“You knew this … before I walked into those caves?”
He nods in confirmation, increasing the boiling feeling inside me.
“You knew this … yet you didn’t feel the need to tell me?”
“I was going to, after you came back. But you never did.”
“You were going to shoot me!” I bellow in frustration.
“I was never going to shoot you!” he counters with the same force as my words. “I had to make sure I could trust you.”
My hands reach up before I drag them down my face in impotence.
“Yet you didn’t think this was information that may have helped? I told you I didn’t want to kill them because they were my blood, yet all this time you knew they weren’t! You let me defend a brother who literally fucked me over, and he isn’t even my fucking brother?! Do you know the shit he put me through my entire fucking life?”
“We weren’t sure if you were aware. Cristina fucked us over, so we couldn’t take any chances with you,” Liam explains.
“Fuck! You! Do you actually believe yourselves?! I gave you Fernando, I helped you into those caves! I told you I wanted to be on your team because I didn’t trust my life with my brother. All that time I was good enough to fuck, but not to trust. Fuck! You!”
“I trusted you,” Kane replies with a guilty look on his face.
“Not enough,” I refute, shaking my head.
“You’re right. Not enough.” He moves his body to stand up, but I instantly take a step back, shaking my head, resulting in him flopping back down into his seat.
Whatever he wants to say, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know the excuses, not right now. Not when I’m still in the middle of processing the fact that, apparently, my father isn’t my father, and my psychopath brother isn’t my brother.
He’s just a fucking psychopath.
Correction, a psychopath after my money, which I didn’t know I had from a father I never knew.
What in the actual fuck?
“Who is my father?” My head snaps to Jeremy, assuming he was the one doing all the research. He’s the one with all the details.
His eyes widen when the attention suddenly is moved to him before he recovers himself.
“We haven’t figured that out yet. There is a trust fund in your name that holds $1.5 billion that will be yours on your twenty-fifth birthday. The record itself was easy to find, but Nathan had a hard time finding out who set it up. The last thing he mentioned was that the trail led back to Russia. He was supposed to meet us at the safe house, but I got a text about an hour ago from one of our agents that was with him. He’s dead.”
“Nathan’s dead?” Liam bellows while my mind is wondering what I’m missing.
Russian?
“Yeah.”
“Fuck,” Kane mutters with a worried look before he moves his face to Liam. “We need to end this fast.”
Liam nods his head in agreement before he turns his focus back to Jeremy.
“Do we have any other options?”
“If you want this quick, no. It will take weeks before we may be able to find someone who comes even close to his level. We need to end this. We need Wolfe.”
“Call him. I want him and his shit with us before the end of the night.” Kane gets up, his gaze focused on me, like he is about to devour me.
Or spank me. I don’t know. And right now, I don’t fucking care.
I’m not in the fucking mood for either.
“You know, he’s gonna cost,” Jeremy calls out to his back.
“I don’t care,” Kane rumbles, his eyes piercing through mine, his breath now warming my face.
“I’m sorry I had to tell you that, but you have to wrap your head around it. You are not a Reyes. Frank Reyes is not your father. Junior Reyes is not your brother. I don’t know who your father is,” he tells me this while his hand moves through my hair, “but I swear to God, baby. I will get you the answers you need. Right now, we need to get to the safe house in one piece so we can make a plan to finally put an end to this war. And to put a bullet through Junior Reyes’s head.”
It takes all the willpower inside me to not lean into his touch, wanting nothing more than to be comforted by him, but he hurt me by not telling me this. And well, at this particular moment, I’m an unreasonable bitch.
I need someone to blame right now.
“You knew, but you chose to not tell me.”
He sighs while his thumb rests at the corner of my mouth.
“Don’t act all innocent. You know damn well I couldn’t put all my cards on the table.”
I push him back, making him drop his ha
nds.
“Fuck you.” My feet take a step backwards. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to see you right now. I’m going down that hallway that leads to whatever it leads to hoping to find a bottle of whiskey in there, pour myself a drink, and try to get some sleep because I can’t fucking wait for this night to be over.” I glance at his watch still sitting on my wrist, noticing it’s 6:00 a.m. “Or morning. Whatever. Don’t follow me because I still have a gun in the back of my jeans, and I really feel like using it.”
I pull the gun out of my pocket and lift it into the air before I turn around and walk into what appears to be the bedroom of the jet. Part of me expects him to follow me and slam me against the wall, and part of me actually wants him to. To hurt me in the most desirable way, to feel him plowing inside me, making me forget whatever the fuck I just heard.
But for once in his fucking life, he respects my wishes and stays out. When I reach the door, I turn around, seeing him looking at me with the corner of his mouth raised in a lustful grin. I narrow my eyes at him before I flip him the bird and slam the small door shut, rolling my eyes at my childish tantrum.
Well, whatever.
I pull out my phone out of my back pocket, noticing a message on the screen.
* * *
UNKNOWN NUMBER: ARE YOU OKAY, AMORÉ?
* * *
No, Ronnie, I am not okay, you jackass.
So much for, ‘You have two more days’.
I roll my eyes at my phone before I look for the plane’s Wi-Fi and my fingers start tapping the screen.
* * *
ME: I’M ALIVE AND FUNCTIONING. WILL CALL YOU TOMORROW.
* * *
I press send before tucking it back into my jeans.
When I turn around, I look at the queen-size bed in the middle of the room covered with sheets that have the same cream color as the carpet with marble looking nightstands on each side. I walk towards the one with the bottle of whiskey on it, then take the crystal cap off the thing before putting it to my lips, not interested in glasses right now.
Thank fuck those assholes like their whiskey as much as I do.
I take a few big gulps, ignoring how it feels like my insides are burning before I drop myself onto the soft mattress and take a deep breath. I stare out of the small window in front of me, looking into the darkness before my lip starts to tremble. I try to swallow the tears, but my heart feels heavier by the minute, the reality of Kane’s words finally sinking in.
“I’m not a Reyes,” I whisper into the empty room, feeling like a fraud when I say the words out loud.
“I’m not a Reyes,” I repeat before I feel the words suck out the last remnants of energy that are left in my body.
“I’m not a fucking Reyes.” It’s the third time I say it, and it feels like a punch in the gut, my eyes filling until I can’t hold the tears back anymore, the waterworks having free rein. I place the bottle back on the nightstand before I curl up on the bed, sobbing into the soft silk of the pillows.
My body aches in every way as I think about the betrayal that has been going on my entire life.
I wonder who else knew.
I wonder who else knows.
I close my eyes, hoping I can escape this nightmare by crying myself to sleep, but it doesn’t seem to work. My nose won’t stop running, and my throat starts to feel sore from all of the shallow breaths I’m taking. I do my best to take deep breaths to calm myself down, but the foggy feeling in my head won’t settle down, making me cry out in grief every time I feel like I’ve finally begun to get myself together.
I have no clue how long I’ve been laying here, but finally, I hear the door open and someone moves towards the bed. I just shake my head, not even a tiny bit curious to see who the fuck it is. After what feels like minutes, I feel the bed shift down a little under the weight of a body, then a small arm wraps around my body, laying behind me on the bed.
“Do you want to talk?” Imogen whispers against my hair.
I turn on to my back, then I stare at the ceiling, my vision blurry from the bucket loads of tears pouring out of my eyes.
“I don’t even know what to say,” I answer with a cracking voice.
What the fuck is there to say? It’s not even the fact that my father isn’t my father, or my brother isn’t my brother. I just feel so fucking stupid. I’ve been looking for approval from the wrong people my entire life. I did my best to please the wrong people my entire life.
My mother always told me to keep my eyes open because betrayal could be right in front of my nose, yet I was too blind to see. I put myself in so many fucked up situations because of my misplaced loyalty.
I got myself raped because I kept hoping my brother would one day be exactly that.
My brother.
Reign wanted to kill him for me, but I said no.
Kane wanted to kill him for me, but I said no.
“Stop. That. Right. Now.” The sound of her voice is soft, but the tone leaves no room for misinterpretation. However, I close my eyes, not sure if I’m ready to hear it yet.
“I should’ve known.” The tears keep running down my cheeks, and my eyelids feel too heavy to properly open.
“How?”
“Look at me, Gen!” I exclaim. “My skin is as white as snow, I’m half fucking ginger, and I have freckles on my face. I have fucking freckles.”
“Yeah, but so does your mother,” she counters. “Everyone thought you looked like your mother, and we all know Junior has a different mother. You couldn’t have known.”
I rub my face with the back of my hand, trying to wipe my incessant tears away while I take deep breaths.
“I don’t know, Gen. I don’t know. I just don’t fucking know.”
“Look, it’s a lot, okay? It was a long night, it’s fucking almost seven in the morning. Let’s just get some sleep and try to figure out this shit tomorrow.”
My heart disagrees, desperate to want to know every single detail that has been a lie since the day I was born, but my head can’t take anymore at this fucking moment. I literally can’t process another word, and I literally can’t function right now.
I silently nod, then she picks up the bedspread from the end of the bed, placing it over my shoulders.
“You want me to leave?” she asks softly.
“No, please stay.”
She hums in agreement before I feel her lay down next to me as I wrap myself in the blanket, hoping it can somehow shield me from my grief. Feeling Imogen next to me gives me a glimpse of the safe feeling I’ve been longing for, and to my surprise, it doesn’t take long before I drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Eighteen
Callie
Six years ago – 18 years old
My hand reaches out to take Reign’s plate before a knock comes through the front door. It’s a demanding knock, filled with urgency.
“Who the fuck is that?” I ask while I pick up his plate.
“I don’t know.” My eyes move to his as he chews on his last piece of bacon before he tears off a piece of it, holding it in front of my face, not feeling the need to jump up and open the door. I can’t help the smile that appears on my face, loving his I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude before I open my mouth and lean forward, my lips covering his fingers farther than necessary, deep throating them while I give him a seductive wink.
“Fuck, now I really don’t care who’s at the door,” he growls while tugging me into his chest, rubbing his nose on my neck as he inhales loudly. One of my hands is trying to keep both plates upright while the other grabs his neck, making sure he doesn’t jerk back his head. He starts to place enticing kisses below my ear as his hand strokes the small of my back. I can smell his freshly washed hair, and that mixed with the feeling of his lips against my skin is turning me on like crazy. The wetness between my thighs is dampening the fresh pair of panties I put on twenty minutes ago, but that doesn’t bother me for even a second. I’m ready to drop the plates back on the kitchen island
when three loud knocks sound through the door again, this time with a lot more force.
“Reign, open the damn door.” I hear Ronnie shout through the wood.
I roll my eyes when Reign stops kissing me and rests his forehead on my shoulder in annoyance.
“You are needed, Mr. Delaney.”
“Great timing, that Italian fucker.”
“Tell me about it,” I mumble while I let go of him and start to bring the plates to the counter. Reign gets off the bar stool, then walks to the door to open it.
“What the fuck took you so long?” Ronnie scowls as he walks past Reign, followed by Kenzo and two other guys I don’t know.
“My girl needed some attention, and well, she’s prettier than you.” He shuts the doors behind the guys before he walks back to the side of the kitchen island.
“Morning, Callie girl.” Kenzo gives me a coy smile, and the corner of my mouth tilts to mimic his expression.
“Good morning, boys,” I singsong before I bend down to put the plates into the dishwasher. When I stand back up, Kenzo and the other boys are plopping their asses onto the couch while Ronnie stands opposite of Reign on the other side of the kitchen island. He gives me a wink with a smirk on his face, and automatically, I roll my eyes in response.
“You look good today, amoré.”
I fold my arms in front of my body, ready to throw back a snarky comment, but Reign beats me to it.
“Did you come all this way to suck up to my girl?” Reign glares at him with a fake smile on his face. He’s not the jealous type. In fact, he doesn’t give a shit about Ronnie flirting with me every chance he gets because the entire city knows by now that I’m not interested. But after living with him for a few months, I know that there is one thing that is sacred to him.
His house.
Our house.
He never invites people over, and he hates it when Ronnie comes bursting in like this. Especially when he has just finished his breakfast but is clearly still hungry for something else. I look at his gorgeous face that is now tensed up in aggravation. He’s hypnotizing when he smiles, but he’s captivating when he’s pissed. He can instantly turn from sweet-and-handsome Reign to take-no-prisoners Reign, and since I clearly have a weakness for bad boys, the latter is a look that turns me on even more.
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