Then the mood shifted, humor draining away as someone closed the heavy doors and my father moved to the center of the room, his presence commanding immediate attention.
Business time.
"We're running damage control," Byron said without preamble, voice hard and focused. "We've already fished Klein's body out of the harbor. It's being kept secure in a facility we control while we figure out the next steps, the cleanest way forward. But we need to know everything that happened up there. Every word. Every action. Everything."
So, I told them.
The confrontation. Our past. Klein's unraveling, the way he'd looked like a man who'd lost his grip on reality completely. The gun. The wild accusations about Victoria and Dominion Hall. The shot that had torn through my shoulder. Sophie's push that had sent him over the railing.
All of it, laying it out like a mission debrief because that's what it was, really. Another operation. Another crisis to manage.
A brother I hadn't met yet—tall, blonde-haired, with the bearing of someone used to command and the kind of quiet confidence that said he'd seen combat—spoke up first. "I'mMarcus. I've got a buddy at the Bureau who can help smooth this over. Self-defense is clear-cut, especially with the gunshot wound as physical evidence. We can control the narrative, make sure this doesn't blow back on you or Sophie."
Another brother—this one I recognized as Ethan from Micah's earlier comment about the mayor—nodded thoughtfully, fingers steepled under his chin. "This makes sense if Victoria was involved. According to dad, she had a way of winding people up, pointing them at targets, making them believe they were heroes when they were really just weapons she was deploying."
I looked at my father, confused, needing context. "Who's Victoria?"
My dad’s expression darkened, something old and painful flickering across his face like a wound that had never fully healed. "Victoria was ... part of the program. Part of Project Trueborn from the beginning. Kicked out and almost weaseled her way back in. She's dead now. And we thought her sins went with her, thought we'd cleaned up all her messes. But, apparently, there's more she left behind. More damage still rippling out."
He paused, jaw working, then added with careful precision, "But if Klein was working with Victoria—or working from her personal instructions—we might've gotten lucky. He was probably operating on his own, chasing ghosts and conspiracy theories without official Bureau support. Maybe. We'll know more once Marcus's contact does some digging."
The weight of that uncertainty settled over the room like fog, heavy and oppressive.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Then Dad’s expression softened slightly, some of the tactical hardness leaving his eyes. "You should get some rest. You've been through hell today. Your suite is ready."
I frowned, genuinely confused. "What suite?"
Grins all around, like I'd walked straight into an inside joke everyone else was in on.
Micah answered, gesturing broadly at the mansion around us with something like pride. "We all have our own suites here at Dominion Hall. Permanent quarters. To use when needed, when we're in Charleston, when family business requires us to be here. It's home base for all of us, no matter where else we might live. And we're building a whole new wing on the east side for the other Valentine Danes. For when they're ready to join us."
Right. My real brothers. The ones I'd actually grown up with in Texas. The ones who'd raised hell with me, who'd scattered across the world after Dad disappeared, who had no idea any of this existed, no idea they had fourteen half-brothers waiting to meet them.
It wasn't going to be easy bringing them in. The Valentine clan was just as hard-headed as me, just as suspicious of authority and grand explanations, just as likely to tell someone to fuck off as to listen to them with an open mind. But in the end, they'd understand. They'd have to. Because family was family, even when it came in unexpected configurations, even when it meant rewriting everything you thought you knew.
"How do we do it?" I asked Micah, voicing the question that had been building since I'd learned about all this, since the world had turned upside down. "How do we bring them in without it turning into a complete disaster?"
He clapped me on my good shoulder, grip firm and reassuring, eyes serious despite the earlier humor. "The best way we know how. One Dane at a time."
Nods all around the room, silent agreements from men who understood exactly what it meant to have your world rewritten, to discover family you never knew existed, to learn that yourentire origin story was more complicated than you'd ever imagined.
And in that moment, standing in a room full of brothers I'd never known I had, with Sophie somewhere in this massive house being welcomed by women I hadn't met yet, with my shoulder aching and Klein's body on ice and my entire life turned upside down and inside out?—
For the first time in a long time, I felt the very real embrace of family.
Not the manufactured kind. Not the designed-for-purpose kind that Project Trueborn had intended.
The real kind. The messy, complicated, show-up-when-it-matters kind.
The kind that fished bodies out of harbors without asking questions first and had surgical suites ready before you arrived and asked "are you okay" before anything else mattered.
The kind that made room for you even when you didn't know you needed room.
The kind that looked at a bullet wound and saw a brother who needed help instead of a problem to be solved.
The kind that didn't run when things got complicated.
