He swipes to the reports, not because I need it to know what I’m going to say, but because men like us do better when there’s a screen to anchor the blow.
“First,” he says, “Maverick is definitely a Locke. No one is stealing that jawline from his father.”
“Blessed and cursed,” Maverick says, managing a tired grin.
“I,” he continues, “am a Carrow. No shock there. Pretty sure we could use the family resemblance as a legal document.”
Storm’s mouth tilts. The line of his shoulders eases a millimeter. Even he wanted the science to say the world he knows is the one he lives in, as shitty as it is.
I take a breath as he continues. “Unfortunately, Atticus is ninety-nine point nine percent the child of the Vales. Which is a rude thing to read at three a.m., but here we are.”
Atticus nods, lips twisting. Storm glances at Conrad.
“Phoenix,” he says clearly. “She is a Masterson.”
The glass in Con’s hand doesn’t break. His face doesn’t change. A smaller man would go theatrical. Conrad goes still. The quiet gets so loud I can hear the condenser click in the built-in beverage fridge.
“But you?” he adds, because Storm’s knife has two edges. “You’re not. You’re not your father’s child. Nor are you related to Phoenix in any way.”
The tumbler in his hand tilts, and I take it from his hand, setting it on the table. For a second he looks at his hand, like it’s an object someone left attached to him by accident.
“Run that by me again,” he says, voice low.
“We did,” Storm answers. “Spencer’s lab and a second out-of-state reference. Chain of custody is clean. Markers don’t lie.”
His laugh is small and wrong. “He would hate that.”
“If what you said is true, he’s in a position to have an opinion about water temperature and not much else,” I say beneath my breath.
Atticus swears and drags his palms down his face. “Your mother,” he says, to Conrad. “She?—”
“—vanished,” I finish. “And now we know why.”
Conrad leans forward, forearms on his knees, big hands hanging loose, head bowed like a man at a baptism who can’t decide if he wants to be saved or if he’d rather just go to hell. Rage is there; I can see it building, a clean, hot line starting at the base of his skull. It’s the kind that will burn something if we don’t put it to work.
“Say it,” he tells me without looking up. “All of it.”
“Phoenix is his,” I repeat, because breaking a thing requires precision and he asked for it. “You’re not. That makes her his by blood and not yours, and you—” I let the sentence bend, then snap it into the shape I want. “—you are ours by everything that matters. It also means the day he weaponized her against you, he did it because it was the most efficient way to hurt two people he didn’t own in any sense at all.”
Conrad lifts his head. His eyes are dry and bright, clear as a blade under good light. “It doesn’t make her less than anything she’s always been.”
“She’s always been ours,” Storm says.
Conrad nods once. The truth lines up behind his teeth. “She’s always been one of us,” he corrects. “It just took me too long to say it out loud.”
Atticus’s mouth does a pained half-smile. “You’re getting better at it.”
“I’m learning,” Conrad says.
We sit with it for a beat—what was stolen, what wasn’t, what this does to the map we’ve been drawing since we were boys. My skin itches to move us forward. Mourning is a luxury we can steal in five-minute increments and nowhere else.
“Now we find her,” I say. “We do it clean. We do it fast. We do it without scaring her into running again.”
Conrad blows out a long breath. “Where is she?”
I grip the back of the chair to keep from pacing. “We can’t find her. Not now. You’re the only one with her location.”
He studiesme with the same expression he used to save a fight for later. Then he reaches for his phone that is thankfully finished updating.
