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.