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Lyla grinned. “I’m feeling fine. I was worried at first since Mia had such horrible morning sickness, but apparently both the baby and I are doing great. I just hit the second trimester, and we took Josie to the ultrasound appointment last week. It’s killing her because I swore her to secrecy, but she’s overjoyed to be a big sister.” She leaned in, whispering, “I haven’t told anyone but Mia and my brother. I was waiting until after the wedding to tell Brax. We found out it’s a boy. Howler is relieved, because he says he can only take so much estrogen in the house with Josie and me.”
“I really am happy for you both. And I promise not to mention anything to Brax until you’re ready to tell him.”
“No, it’s fine. You can tell him if you want. I know how hard it is to keep secrets from Howler, and I wouldn’t ask you to do the same with Braxton.” Lifting her empty glass, she pointed to where someone was setting up a projector. “Looks like the party is really about to start. Darcy’s plan was to do a montage of pictures with Aunt Belinda over the years. After I did a little greasing of the planner’s hands, she switched the last half of the presentation with all the pictures of Darcy and Miles. I’ve added a couple extra ones that my own intel was able to catch in action over the last few days.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t know you had a tail on her.”
“Not her,” she said. “Miles. That was…interesting.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant. Just from the description I’d been given of the pictures taken the previous December, I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant. Braxton thought his cousin had been overly dramatic about what she’d seen in the dossier she’d been given, but I wasn’t so sure.
The lights were dimmed, and the cellist who had been part of the live orchestra began to play a pretty solo as pictures of Belinda as a young girl with her siblings and other family members played out on a screen set up for the occasion. Her youth, teens, and high school graduation. Pictures of her with a very young Miles Collins. Their wedding day, and then several with Belinda noticeably pregnant with Braxton.
My heart squeezed when I saw the way she looked at her son in the pictures after his birth, as a toddler and then as a preteen. The pictures of her with her husband became fewer and farther between, but the ones of her with Brax continued to hurt my heart. I saw so much love, and I hated there was a divide between the two of them.
After Braxton enlisted in the Marines, his parents hadn’t been happy, but then when he’d lost his leg, they—mostly his mother—had become unbearably clingy, and he’d moved in with Barrick. Gradually, he’d reduced contact with his parents more and more, until it completely stopped. At least, until they’d tried to force him into marrying Darcy.
The photos began to change from those with Belinda in them, to Miles, and then Darcy. Separately. Together. At parties or just sitting together in a restaurant. Nothing about it seemed unusual…
Except for the way Miles touched Darcy.
The interval between pictures sped up, and suddenly there was nothing that could suggest innocence in the photos. There were pictures of Miles, nude—except for the ball gag in his mouth and the harness he was strapped into that hung from a ceiling. Darcy in all leather, her hair pulled into a high ponytail that hung down her back. It was hard to look at, yet impossible to tear my gaze away from as I watched their relationship play out with whips and chains on the screen. I didn’t even realize when the music stopped, but the pictures kept going.
The sexually explicit scenes passed and blended into photos of Darcy heavily pregnant, Miles touching her stomach with adoration. Then came the photo of Jonah, a side-by-side comparison of the two, with Miles at around the same age. A small clip of Miles and Darcy walking through the park that ended with Miles kissing his son on the head before backing Darcy against her car and kissing her passionately.
Finally, a copy of DNA test results was the last picture to appear on the screen and stayed frozen for everyone to read. The document stated clearly that Miles Collins was Jonah Collins’s biological father—not his grandfather.
The entire room was deathly quiet as the lights were turned back up, and a very pale Darcy stared at Belinda, who was still gaping at the screen. Miles stood off to the side, his skin a sickly gray. I was sure I would have felt ill, too, if my naked ass had been on full display for everyone to see. There had even been a brief glimpse of Miles and his erection, and I could honestly say that the older Collins wasn’t nearly as well-endowed as his eldest son. But even as that thought had filtered through my brain, I’d been grossed out.
“B-Belinda…?” Darcy squeaked. “I… Um, I can explain. This was all… It was a-a setup. Yes, a setup.”
Slowly, Belinda canted her head to look at the blonde. “A setup?” she repeated with banked fury in her eyes. I knew that look all too well. It happened all the time when Braxton was pissed and didn’t want to scare me. “Which part? Where you dominated my husband and turned his ass red with a flogger?”
“Yuck, she knows what a flogger is,” Lyla whispered, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or herself.
My eyes traveled around everyone near the three people closest to the screen. I’d seen a few pictures of Darcy’s parents, so I knew who they were, and they were trying to blend into the crowd surrounding them as discreetly as possible. Obviously, they were making their feelings clear without words, turning their backs on their only child and avoiding the confrontation that was already unfolding in their home.
“A-all of it?” Darcy stuttered.
“Are you telling me or asking me?” Belinda asked between clenched teeth.
“I… Um. Yes.”
“Jonah isn’t Braxton’s son,” Belinda said, taking a stumbling step back from Darcy. Then her eyes landed on Miles, who had been trying to back through the crowd similarly to how the Hamiltons had done, but without the same success. As soon as his wife’s gaze caught him, he froze. “You fucked her. Jonah is your child. Braxton tried to tell me. He said he hadn’t even seen Darcy in years, but I believed you when you said he was lying to be with that scandalous rocker’s daughter.”
I nearly laughed at her description of me. Rumor had it that my dad had been overzealous with scandal before meeting my mom, but once they were together, he became an entirely different person. For the better.
“Remind me not to let you plan any of my parties,” Brenda hissed as she came up beside Lyla. “I don’t want any of my skeletons coming out of the closet like this.”
Lyla lifted a brow at her mother. “What secrets are you keeping that could possibly be worse than this?”
Brenda drained her fresh glass of wine. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, darling.” Placing her glass on a side table, she dusted her hands together as if they were covered in imaginary filth. “And on that note, I’m going to make myself scarce so I’m not a witness to my sister bludgeoning her husband to death.”
My gaze jumped back to Belinda in time to see she was, indeed, about to do physical harm to Miles. She had an iron statue in her hands, lifting it over her head.
“Wait!” I cried, rushing through the crowd to stop her from committing murder. Everyone else seemed frozen in shock by what they’d watched. Those who were finally coming around were already whispering about the size of Miles’s cock.
Gross.
