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“Of course, Aryan.”
“I don’t think I can do this more than once, and now that Alondra is here, my brothers won’t leave me alone until they know the story, too. So, let’s head back so I can tell the story once,” I say, holding my hand out to her.
Brooklyn
I want to walk past him and this hand, but instead, I take it. I am hurt and pissed off, but if I am being honest, Aryan has never deliberately hurt me, and even him not giving me the relationship I wanted, the only person I can be mad at is me because I am the one who chose to stay. I could have left at any time, but I chose to stay. So I take the hand offered to me and walk with him back into the living room.
Aryan
Brooklyn and I walk into the main living room to see no one has moved an inch.
“It’s about time,” Joseph says when we walk in.
“Shut the hell up,” I snap, not in the mood for any of my brothers. I walk over to the dining table and take a seat at the head with Alondra and Salove to my right, with Brooklyn at my left. The rest of the family comes to take a seat, with Josh taking the head position at the other end of the table.
“When I was about twenty-six, I was sent on an assignment to a little island whose infighting left the country unstable. The U.S., wanting to use the positioning of the island and possibly its natural resources, decided to send us in to help stabilize them.
While there, I met a woman named Sophia. She would come to our camp with food and other supplies, like handmade soap, lotion, shampoo, etc., to sell. She was beautiful and kind, and we were instantly attracted, but it never went beyond flirting. She was married to a man her father had chosen for her. She was unavailable, but we became good friends. She came to me one night crying; her husband had been killed, and she needed a friend. One thing led to another, and we ended up sleeping together. The following day, we agreed it was a mistake and decided never to speak about it again. Shortly afterward, I was sent away on another assignment, but I never forgot Sophia, so I was happy when I got reassigned back to the island where Sophia was.
Once I was back, I asked around for her and was shocked when she finally came around because she was pregnant, in her third trimester pregnant. I counted the days and quickly realized there was a good chance the baby was mine. She claimed that she was positive the baby was mine, and she told me she hadn’t slept with her husband in months. She told me about her family but didn’t want me to meet them because she feared her father would disapprove. Sophia said if we were already married, then he couldn’t separate us, so that’s what we planned to do. She was everything to me; I risked getting discharged for her. Sophia’s father put her out as soon as she was showing, so when I came back, I would sneak her in to sleep in my bunk to watch my baby grow in her belly and make sure they were okay. She was the sweetest woman I had ever met. We found a priest I paid to marry us, so one night, under a clear sky, I married Sophia Pappas. Her father was so angry he refused to meet me.”I grab Brooklyn’s hand immediately when she leaves the table, forcing her to stay put. She tries pulling away, but I clamp down even harder on her hands.
“The island was too small to have a hospital, so the people would have to take a ferry to the mainland to get medical care. I put together a special night for Sophia and me to spend the night together alone. As we were lying under the stars, with her in my arms, I felt something warm on my side, and Sophia and I realized at the same time her water had broken, but it was too late to take the ferry, so that meant I had to deliver the baby. But I’m a medic, so no big deal. I was so cocky, so trusting in my skills that I never doubted that everything would be fine. Sophia was a trooper, lying in the middle of a field, scared, but I talked her through it. Thirty minutes later, I held a tiny redheaded baby boy. He was so cute. I know all parents think that way, but I swear he was a Brennan through and through. I wrapped him in a shirt and handed him to Sophia while I helped her push out the afterbirth. But she never stopped bleeding. It just kept flowing out of her. I tried everything up my medical sleeves to stop the bleeding, to stop her from hemorrhaging, but no matter what I did, nothing helped.
“Aryan, take care of AJ, take care of our son,”was the last thing she said to me. In the midst of all that was going on, she laid Aryan Jr down, but he was quiet, too quiet. When I picked him up, he was already gone. It’s like Sophia decided to take him when she died. In a matter of ninety minutes, I had a family, and I lost them both. I spent the rest of the night holding them both before I buried my wife and son. I went to talk to her father the next day, and when I told him Sophia and the baby were gone, he told me it was my fault. He said my love was a curse and that I would lose everyone I ever loved because of what I did to his daughter. I asked if I could be reassigned, and I never practiced medicine again, at least not until we rescued Megan.”
CHAPTER20
Aryan
The silence at the table was so thick it could be cut with a dull knife. I am taken aback when I register Brooklyn wiping the tears from my face. I didn’t even realize I was crying or she was now holding my hand.
“Aryan, all these years, and you never said a word, not one hint. We would have helped you,” Josh says.
“I couldn’t, I just wanted to forget it. I didn’t want to talk about it, relive the worst night of my life. We’ll get to that later. I want to know why you’re here. Sophia told me she had a younger sister, but she never said it was a twin sister. I, uh, it’s a little disconcerting looking at you. But there is a reason you are here.”
“There is. Sophia. I had hoped she’d be here way off of that dreadful little island, and getting pregnant by you guaranteed it. Once she was pregnant, she knew you’d do the right thing, and that would get her away from our crazy ass father who was already trying to marry her off again. But then she never came home again. During the time you were away, and she was in the beginning stages of her pregnancy, she and I would talk, and she would say she knew you’d come back to her. She would talk about the life she would share with you. She was going to ask you if you’d bring me too when it was time for you guys to leave. She always told me if I ever needed anything to find you, that you would help. She said you promised her, and she knew you would never break your promise. So, when danger came, I asked for temporary asylum in the U. S. with Salove, but it’s almost over, and if he and I go back, I’ll be dead, and Salove will be taken. I had been looking for you the entire time. It wasn’t until the article of your brother Jaasiel’s write-up in a magazine that I got any viable leads, which led us here.”
“How are you in trouble?” Asher asks.
“During Sophia’s marriage, she worked diligently not to get pregnant, which worked until it didn’t. Over the years, as twins, we would often be thought of as interchangeable, so we would work extra hard to be seen as individuals, but once she was pregnant, we knew things had to change. We had until she was showing to be interchangeable, literally. I wore my hair like her, talked like her, dressed like her, I became her. When she finally started to show, I took her place. We knew that if her husband found out she was pregnant, it would be the most terrible thing ever. We almost got caught several times, but we were able to pull it off. When she had the baby, I kept it, telling everyone it was my baby, and then her husband was killed, and we thought that solved it, but her father-in-law came to find out what happened to his son.”
“Why didn’t you want him to know?”
“Because he runs a criminal organization that deals in drugs, guns, and murder, and the last thing she wanted was to have her son brought up in that life. Then you came back, she got pregnant, married, and died all within a year, and I still had Salove with me.
She had planned to tell you about her son after your baby was born, kind of a package deal type of situation, but that never happened.”
“So, what changed?” Jaasiel asks.
“Salove and I were on the mainland getting food when he literally ran into his grandfather Nabeck. He took one look at him and saw his son, especially when he saw me. I was able to get us away from him using the business of the market, but he launched an all-out search for Salove. You see, Sophia’s husband was his only child, making Salove his only heir. I ran to the U.S. and filed for asylum. But now that my time is winding up, I knew I needed to find you in hopes that you could and would help us not be sent back,” she says, and I am reeling at the knowledge of Sophia having a son.
“How old are you?” I ask the boy.
“Seventeen,” he answers, talking for the first time. “Are we going to have to go back?” he asks, looking terrified at the prospect of it.
“Not if we can help it,” Anson responds.
“You can’t go over there and destroy that island like you did before,” Joseph says.
