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Lucky grunts, and then turns to face me. “It’s just more paperwork,” he says, a folder about two inches thick in his hand.
“Paperwork often contains details. Need me to read it for you?” I know I’m being a bitch, but right now, I’m reeling, and I don’t know what the fuck else to do.
Lucky shoots me a dark stare but otherwise says nothing. He turns to the folder, opening it slowly, his gaze bouncing over the words. He’s silent as he turns page after page, saying nothing, offering no details as if I’m not right here and desperate to know everything.
“Lucky!”
He looks up, a stupid smirk on his handsome face. “Yes?”
“What is it?”
He shrugs. “Don’t know, sweetheart. I’m havin’ trouble soundin’ out some of the big words.”
I want to scream, but my mind wanders back to the name on the DEA badge. Steven Morgan Jefferson. It’s an easy name to remember and so eerily close to Geoffrey Morgan that the truth starts to sink in, hard and fast.
“Lucky,” I call out again, this time my tone is breathless and full of panic.
“Hold on a sec. I need to read this.” He’s still focusing on the papers, and whatever he’s learning puts a frown on his face.
“Lucky!”
“You’re being a real pain in the—”
“Goddammit, Lucky, will you listen for one fucking minute? If his name isn’t Geoffrey Morgan, does that mean I’m not Aria Morgan?” And if I’m not Aria Morgan, who the hell am I?”
My breath comes in short, shallow gasps, and my vision goes dark around the edges.
“Shit,” Lucky growls and drops to his knees in front of me. “Breathe, Aria.” He inhales deeply and exhales slowly. “Follow my breaths,” he repeats gently and keeps breathing in and out, in and out, until I join him.
My vision starts to clear, and my heart doesn’t feel as if it’s going to jump out of my chest, but the unsettled feeling of panic intensifies.
“This is…no. It can’t be true,” I say as tears fall down my cheeks. My shoulders shake and my chest heaves as the tears turn to sobs that shake my whole body.
“This. Can’t. Be.”
Lucky stands and wraps me in his arms, holding me close while I lose my shit. His chest is hard, warm, and he smells good, like earth and man. I clutch at his t-shirt and let my tears fall, let the sobs escape because I have to get this out somehow.
The anger and the hurt, the confusion and the white-hot fucking rage at the unfairness of everything. Daddy works for the federal government, and he never told me. Never said a fucking word, proving once again that I mean nothing to him.
Less than nothing, in fact.
I hate that it’s Lucky here with me, that he’s the one comforting me during the second most traumatic time in my life. I thought Mom dying was bad. And it was. Truly horrendous, but this somehow feels worse.
“It’s not the end of the world,” he whispers and rubs my back. “Dads lie all the time.”
“Maybe, but even you have to admit this is a big fucking lie. This is, I don’t know, Lucky. I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.”
“You’re Aria Morgan, a huge pain in my ass. It’s just a name.”
I pull back and stare up at him. “You don’t believe that.”
His hazel gaze locks with mine, and the air between us crackles.
“What makes you say that?”
“Spartan,” I say through gritted teeth and poke the tattoo written in Greek above his brow. “I looked it up on Google.”
“I was in the Spartan Brigade in the Army, that’s all.”
