I couldn't find words to respond. My mouth opened and closed uselessly, brain scrambling for purchase and finding none.
He continued, relentless now that he'd started, like he had to get it all out before I could stop him. "The next part might come as the biggest shock. I'm sorry. But you have to know. You deserve to know."
I almost laughed—hysterical, bitter, broken.You just told me I was part of a fucking government breeding program and you think there's something more shocking you can tell me? What's left? Aliens? Time travel?
"There were others," he said.
"What others?"
"Other families. Other ... iterations of the program."
I didn't understand. My brain was still stuck three sentences back, still trying to process super soldiers and breeding programs.
He looked uncomfortable. More than uncomfortable. Like he was about to detonate something he couldn't take back, couldn't soften, couldn't make easier.
Then he said it, words I'd never expected to hear, words that rewrote my entire understanding of family: "You and your brothers—the ones in Valentine, the ones you grew up with—they aren't my only sons. There are others."
That rocked me back in the chair, physically pushed me against the backrest like I'd been shoved, like the words had physical weight.
"What?"
My voice came out strangled, disbelieving.
"This place," he gestured toward the mansion looming behind us, elegant and expensive and suddenly sinister in a way I couldn't articulate, "Dominion Hall. It's ours. All of it. From the studs to the spires. The land, the yachts, the resources, the operation. And the men in it—Micah, his brothers, the others you haven't met yet—they're my sons, too."
Another punch to the gut. Harder this time. Direct hit to something vital.
"They're ... my brothers?" I got the question out somehow, choking on it, on the implications.
He nodded. Simple. Devastating.
"How many?"
The pause before he answered felt like falling, like the ground had opened up beneath me and I was waiting to hit bottom.
"You have fourteen half-brothers here at Dominion Hall. Men I raised the same way I raised you and your brothers in Valentine. Men who are part of this family whether you accept it or not."
My eyes went wide, vision tunneling for a second, everything going dark at the edges.
Fourteen.
Fourteen half-brothers I'd never known existed. Fourteen men who shared my blood, my father, my genetic blueprint.
There's science fiction and then there's fantasy. This was crossing into impossible, into territory my brain couldn't map, couldn't categorize.
"And Mom?" I asked, my voice rough and broken, barely above a whisper. "What about Mom?"
"What about your mother?" He looked confused by the question, like it was obvious.
"Did she know? About the others? About this?" I gestured wildly at the mansion, at everything, at the life he'd apparently been living while we thought he was dead.
He nodded slowly, and that simple movement destroyed something in me. "She was part of the program, too. We both volunteered. Together. It was our choice."
I laughed then. Really laughed. Like a crazy person, like someone who'd finally snapped under pressure, like the sound you make when reality breaks completely and there's nothingleft but absurdity, nothing left but the wreckage of everything you thought you knew.
Because this was crazy. Too fucking crazy.
Too big to hold. Too strange to process. Too much to accept.
