The man—Aiden—rolled his eyes. “Kid, just Google Thomas and Aiden Mulvaney. You’ll see us everywhere.”
Of course, he would. Thomas Mulvaney wastheThomas Mulvaney. Billionaire-philanthropist Thomas Mulvaney. Adopted-seven-kids Thomas Mulvaney. Married-one-of-those-kids Thomas Mulvaney. Had his father pawned his brother offon Thomas then told the world he died? Yeah, that sounded like something he’d do.
Matty had to admit he was curious. “Fine, so you don’t want money. That doesn’t make you my long, lostdeadbrother.”
Aiden huffed out a frustrated breath. “A DNA test can prove we’re related easily enough, but I think you’re just being stubborn now.”
“We look nothing alike,” Matthew said with a sniff, just being stubborn.
It was true. The man standing beside his table—his brother, Aiden Mulvaney—was over six-feet-tall with longish brown hair that dusted his shoulders, blue eyes that were almost navy and scruff on his cheeks and chin that Matty couldn’t grow in ten lifetimes. Matty, on the other hand, was barely five-six, with chestnut hair, blue-green eyes and a complexion and bone structure that Jordan had once likened to ‘a Victorian child with cholera.’
They couldn’t have been more different if they tried.
But still, if Matty squinted, he could sort of see it. They both had the same mouth, the same flat stare, the look of someone whose father was a total douchebag. Not that daddy issues were rare. Shitty dads were at an all-time high. “Say I believed you,” he heard himself say. “What do you want with me?”
Aiden flushed beneath his golden tan, gaze floating away from him like he was embarrassed. Clearly, feelings weren’t his strong suit. “I want you to know that you have family. A real family. One that won’t lie to you.”
What a weird way to phrase that. Lie to him about what? Project Watchtower? Were they going to invite him into the fold and then reveal whatever weird project the Mulvaneys had going on with his father? Somehow Matty doubted that. Why would anyone be that honest with a stranger? It didn’t make sense.Besides, they might want that honesty to be reciprocal and Matty wasn’t in a position to reveal certain things about himself.
“Lie to me? You mean like my dad?Ourdad? Did you go snooping and find all his deep, dark secrets, too?” he asked, arching a brow at him.
“Too?” Aiden asked, looking surprised. “What is it you found out?”
Oh, he definitely knew about Project Watchtower. Aiden was trying to see if he knew. What was happening? Were they trying to play him? Bribe him into silence? If he was gonna talk, he would have done it before now.
He shrugged. “I know my dad wasn’t some paper-pushing bureaucrat. I know that he killed people. For a while, I suspected he killedyou,based on what he said about you to my mother.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s not what he said but how he said it. He talked about you like you were a ghost still haunting him.” Matty blew a breath out through his nose. “Could you at least sit down? I’m getting a kink in my neck looking up at you.” Aiden threw a glance at his husband and baby. “They can come, too, if you don’t mind them hearing you airing out our family’s dirty laundry.”
Aiden waved over the older man, then slid into the booth across from Matty. When the man sat down beside his brother, Aiden scooped up the baby, who was delighted by this, not because he seemed happy to see his father but because it put him closer to all the things on the table.
“Tommy, this is my brother, Matthew. Matthew, this is my husband, Tommy and our baby, Theo,” Aiden said, pulling Matty’s laptop cord from chubby baby hands with an apologetic look.
“Matty,” he said. “I hate Matthew.”
Thomas nodded. “Nice to meet you, Matty.”
“Yeah, same,” Matty mumbled, closing his laptop. It was clear his study session was over. “So, what do you want?”
Thomas Mulvaney snickered. “Yeah, he’s definitely your brother. The likeness is uncanny.”
Matty gave him a weird look. “We don’t look anything alike.”
Thomas smiled. “Its the attitude, not the looks, though I can see a resemblance there, too. Same nose, same mouth, same stubborn set to your chin,” the older man said fondly looking at his brother with goopy heart eyes.
Ew. Good for them or whatever, but he just didn’t see the appeal of falling in love. People sucked. People disappointed. People were all just inherently…bad. Even him.
“Well, what is it?” Matty asked. “Not to be a douche, but it’s finals week.”
The two exchanged a long glance before Aiden said, “That’s why we wanted to talk to you.”
“You wanted to talk to me about finals week?” Matty asked, bewildered.
Thomas shook his head. “No, I wanted to ask if you really loved this school?”
Matty glanced out the window with a frown, looking at the campus across the street, then shrugging. “I mean, it’s fine. Why? You look a little old to be starting college. No offense.”
