The view never fails to steal my breath. This morning, I barely notice it. My attention is still on Hayes’ text. My reluctant spirit slows my movements as I pull my phone out, and with a resigned sigh video call my brother.
He answers on the first ring and his grim face fills the screen.
“Hey, what time is it there?” His dark hair falls in messy waves over his forehead and he pushes it away from his face and rests his head in his hands. He reminds me of the way I felt the first time I had to inform someone that their loved one had died.
“Five thirty in the morning. Sun’s almost up, so your timing is good,” I make small talk, even though my heart is beating out of my chest.
He doesn’t seem to hear me.
“No easy way to tell you this…so I’m just going to say it. Gigi Rivers is my biological mother.”
My stomach clenches as if it’s just been kicked by the sharp end of a boot. “What? What does that mean? She and your dad…he’s her brother.” I jump out of my chair, my coffee cup crashes to the floor, shattering against the concrete floor.
Scalding-hot coffee splatters all over my legs and I register the pain somewhere behind the loud rush of blood in my ears.
“Jason Rivers wasn’t my biological father. Gigi was married, got pregnant with me, but my father…her husband went missing before I was born.”
“What?”
“She was alone, disowned by my grandfather and shunned by her husband’s family. So, she gave me to her brother to raise as his own. And she moved to Italy to start her new life.” He sounds like he’s reading from a script, but the devastation in his eyes is very real.
I barely feel the bite of the ceramic shards digging into the soles of my bare feet as I walk back into my apartment and grab my jeans and a t-shirt from my closet. I don’t know why I’m getting dressed but I feel the need to be ready
“I don’t…How? When… did you find out?” I stumble around the questions and rifle through my drawers for a t-shirt.
He lets out a long, weary sigh and grips the back of his neck with his hand and closes his eyes. I trap the phone between my shoulder and cheek so I can step into my jeans while I wait for him to answer.
“Two weeks before Gigi was shot.”
I stop in mid-motion and the phone clatters to the floor and spins halfway across the room.
“Shit, hold on,” I call and run to scoop it up, but my heart feels like it paused at his answer. “Before we saw you in Mexico?”
“Yes.” His expression is regretful, but unapologetic. “I couldn’t say anything, Stone. Not without talking to Remi first. And until last week, I didn’t even know where he was.”
A chill of dread washes over me at the mention of Regan’s twin.
“What has Remi Wilde got to….” The answer to my question comes to me before I can finish asking it. One of the curses of a quick mind is that nothing comes to me in a soft cloud of thought. Thunderbolts are more my mind’s style, and this one packs the punch of a thousand of them at once.
Hayes stares at me and waits for me to say what is so obvious.
“Not Lucas Wilde?” I ask it, but it’s less of a question and more of a desperate plea for him to say I’m wrong.
He nods and my head starts to spin.
“How is that even fucking possible.”
“Stone, I’m not finished, please,” he shouts to cut off my senseless stream of questions. But it’s not his raised voice that ties my tongue. Hayes, never, ever says please.
I brace myself for whatever could be worse than the bomb he just dropped.
I close my eyes, drop my head into my hands. “Go on,”
“Lucas Wilde is my father. Also, he’s not dead.”
I drop back into my chair and stare at my brother in total disbelief.
“He barely survived an attempt on his life. And when he was found, he had no memory of who he was. He’s been homeless since.”
“Someone tried to kill him?”
He nods gravely.
“Who? Do you know?” I press when he doesn’t look at me.
When he does, I wish I hadn’t asked. His eyes are wet with tears.
“His father, Stone. His own father. Because he married a Rivers. I thought our grandfather was an evil son of a