The wait was finally over.
I leaned away from Tate, turning my phone to the side to keep it from his view. Studying every line of the report, I committed the information to memory in awe. So my father had an affair with Tate’s mother. However, the report showed more than the genetic markers confirming our familial link.
The last bit of information stopped me dead in my tracks. I had asked the lab to compare our DNA but never expected this outcome. The data did not lie.
Tate deserved to know, so I blurted out, “We’re half-brothers.”
“What?” Tate snapped his head to me, speaking through a mouth full of popcorn. “Did you hear from the lab?”
I nodded, gripping the phone for support. “The results are conclusive. We share twenty-five percent of our DNA. That means we’re half-siblings.”
A slow grin spread across his face. Overcome with relief and joy, he threw his arms around me. He let out what sounded like a sob as we hugged, and then quickly pulled away.
“What about Liv?”
I shook my head. “She’s not my sister.”
Tate narrowed his eyes at me as if reading the lie on my face. “What are you not telling me, Battle?”
I closed the Mail app on my phone and sighed. “It’s nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Tate snapped and grabbed the phone from my hand. “You promised not to hide anything from me.”
Nerves coursed through my veins, making my hands tremble and sweat. We hadn’t known each other long, but Tate just understood me. He sniffed out my deception like a human lie detector and saw right through my act.
As he read the email, I waited for him to catch on to what I saw so clearly. But Tate didn’t understand the data. He scanned it twice before he glanced at me and shrugged.
“I don’t get it. What am I looking at?”
“Boring scientific data,” I said to move on from this conversation, hoping he would give up.
Of course, Tate being a giant pain in my ass, kept probing me. “Tell me. I can handle it.”
“Scroll down to the bottom of the email.”
He did as I requested, but still looked confused. So, I pointed at the section showing the DNA comparison to Olivia and Tate.
“You and Liv don’t share any DNA,” I said, and as the weight lifted off my shoulders, Tate’s chest deflated, and his shoulder sank.
“No,” he muttered, staring at the floor. “It’s not possible. Our mom said?—”
“She lied,” I interjected. “Maybe she thought it was better this way. Or it’s possible my dad forced her to keep the secret. When my PI looked into the past, he found no record of my father paying off your mother. He didn’t leave a paper trail. But that wasn’t much of a surprise. I never expected to find one.”
“The man from my childhood… The one in the suit.” Tate scrubbed a hand across his jaw and groaned. “He was your father. I mean,ourfather. All this time, I wondered why, of allthe people who came to the apartment, I remembered him. He stopped by on weekends. Sometimes, he spent the night.”
None of this surprised me. Dear old dad spent more time at the office and with his whores than with my mom and me. He acted as if he were only home to fulfill his duty. Maybe once a week, he would grace us with his presence.
Tate offered his hand to me. “Promise never to tell Liv.”
I shook his hand. “It’s our secret.”
“I’m serious, Battle.”
His facial expression switched from dark to scary in an instant. Tate had a way of flipping a switch on the fly, his moods shifting from one moment to the next.
“Regardless of what the results prove, Liv is still my sister. Nothing will ever change that.”
“Family isn’t measured just by blood,” I said, thinking about The Devil’s Knights, my brothers in arms.
