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Logan, in typical fashion, just acts. Preparing her a cup efficiently and with the kind of precision only he can pull off. “Did you overhear any of West Point’s plans for you?” he asks as he hands it to her, foregoing pleasantries.
Also typical Logan, but that’s okay. Actions speak louder than words.
Chloe nods, the way her hands tremble a little as she lifts the cup to her mouth the only sign of her nerves. “They wanted money from me? But that’s stupid.” Her eyes dart my way for a second, flashing with guilt. “I had to spend almost everything in that envelope you gave me, Ri.”
“That’s fine.” I accept a cup of coffee of my own from Logan, taking a stool and pulling Chloe down onto the one next to me. “It wasn’t what they were after.”
Her eyes widen. “Then… then how were they going to get more money out of me?”
“Not that,” I say sharply, seeing exactly where her mind went. She doesn’t know about the inheritance, but she obviously knows Austin McKenna is a brutal, sadistic shithead who wouldn’t be above using her, pimping her out, or worse to fund his gang. I take a deep breath, knowing she’ll havefeelingsabout the truth, then give it to her. “Our mom… um, Heather Sutton, she wasn’t actually your birth mother, Chloe. Frank had an affair.”
“He… what?” she asks, sounding like a lost little girl.
I press my lips together to keep from blurting out what a fucking piece of shit he was on every level. It’s better that he’s gone. Hedeservedwhat he got. But Chloe always hoped he’d be better than he was, and this is one more piece of evidence that he never had been.
“He had an affair,” I repeat. “Mom knew and shewantedyou. But you—”
“I wasn’t hers.”
“Youwere,” I insist, gripping her hand tightly. “Not by blood, but by everything that matters.”
Chloe stares at me blankly for a moment, then inhales sharply and nods. “Okay.”
I smile, squeezing her hand. She’s trusting me to make this okay, looking to me to make sense of a shitty world even whennothingfeels like it makes sense.
This time, though, I don’t have to explain it all on my own.
“The woman your father had an affair with was a Sutherland,” Logan steps in crisply, his pale eyes warming almost imperceptibly when I throw him a look of appreciation for taking some of the burden of telling her such life-changing news off my shoulders. “Your real grandfather, her father, was a man named William Sutherland.”
Chloe stares at him for a second. Then—
“Was?” she asks in a small voice.
I understand. We never knew either set of grandparents and are all alone in the world. It might have been nice to have had someone else out there who cared.
“It’s why McKenna wanted to get his hands on you,” Dante says, conveniently leaving out the part where the Reapers had started out with the same idea. “Sutherland was a wealthy man, and you’re the heir to his estate.”
“The money West Point wanted was your inheritance,” Maddoc adds.
Chloe is shaking her head. “I don’t have an inheritance. I didn’t even know him!” She whirls on me. “Did you know? Did you know we’re not…” Her voice breaks. “Not really sisters?”
“Wearereally sisters,” I say fiercely. “We share blood. We share DNA. We share everything. You’re mysister, Chloe. You always were and you always will be.”
The “half” I leave off is meaningless, at least to me.
“Okay,” she says after a minute, her voice still a little shaky.
I run my hand down her hair, cupping the back of her head and looking into her eyes. “We willalwayshave each other.”
“Okay,” she says more confidently this time, squaring her shoulders. She looks around at the guys. “So what happens now?”
“Now, we help you claim your inheritance,” Maddoc says. Something raw passes over his face for a split second, but it’s gone when he adds calmly, “And then we help get the two of you out of town.”
Of course.
Of course we have to leave.
I stuff all the feelings I have about that down deep enough that they won’t hurt right now, because this is about Chloe. Always.
