She knew.
“You’re Frankie’s biological father.” Her voice was rising now, each word a knife twisting deeper. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Hot, angry tears that I’d put there. “You’re her father.”
Every instinct screamed at me to reach for her, to pull her close, to make this better somehow. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Could only watch as everything I’d feared came crashing down around me.
“Yes.” The word scraped out of my throat, quiet and final.
She shook her head as if she were trying to clear the confusion my words had created. “But her mother’s name—”
“You’re her mother, Kat.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “The woman who gave birth to my daughter wasn’t named Carrie.”
“No, her name was Marsha. Marsha Wade.”
She stood up fast, her hands shaking. Her whole body was vibrating now. “How long have you known?”
My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. The moment I’d been dreading since the day I walked into her house and saw Frankie’s face. “Since the day I came here to fix the sink. I recognized her immediately.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” Her voice cracked, and the sound of it nearly broke me. “You didn’t think I had a right to know?”
Guilt crashed over me in waves. She was right. She was absolutely fucking right, and I had no defense. “I was afraid. There was never the right time—”
“The right time?” She laughed, bitter and harsh, and I flinched at the sound. “When would that have been, Derek? Before or after you fucked me in Jack’s office?”
Each accusation landed like a punch. My hands clenched at my sides. The shame was suffocating, crushing my chest until I could barely draw breath. I stood slowly, carefully, keeping my movements controlled even as my pulse roared in my ears. “I know I should have told you sooner.”
“You think?” She was yelling now, and I deserved every word. Deserved her rage, her pain, her fury. “You let me believe... you let me think...”
She couldn’t finish, and watching her struggle with the betrayal was worse than any physical pain I’d ever endured. This was my fault. All of it.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, the words pathetically inadequate.
“Sorry?” She stepped closer, her hands clenched into fists. My body tensed instinctively, but not in defense, in preparation to take whatever she needed to give. “You’re sorry? You lied to me. You manipulated me. You—”
“I never lied to you.” The words came out before I could stop them, and I immediately regretted it. Technically true meant nothing when the damage was this deep.
“You didn’t tell me the truth!” She was in my face now, close enough that I could see the tears clinging to her lashes, the fury and hurt blazing in her eyes. “That’s the same fucking thing!”
She was right. God, she was right. My jaw clenched as I fought to keep my voice steady, to stay calm when everything inside me was screaming. “You’re right.”
“Don’t do that,” she snapped. “Don’t just agree with me. Fight back. Yell at me. Show me who you really are.”
The challenge in her voice cut deep. She wanted me to lose control. Wanted proof that I was the monster she feared. And fuck, part of me wanted to give it to her, wanted to rage and break things and let all this pain and guilt explode outward instead of crushing me from the inside.
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
“I am showing you who I am,” I said, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. “I’m showing you that I can take your anger without losing control. That I can stand here and let you rage at me without hitting back.”
“I don’t believe you.” She shoved my chest, hard.
The impact barely moved me, but the contact sent electricity through my body. Not desire, something raw. The desperate need to hold her, to fix this, to make her understand. But I kept my hands at my sides, kept my breathing steady even as my heart threatened to break through my ribs.
“You want me to believe you?” Her voice rose, sharp and cutting. “You want me to trust you when you’ve been lying to me from the moment you walked into my house? When you looked at my daughter,yourdaughter, and said nothing?”
The words hit like physical blows—harder than any I’d ever landed. I’d beaten Richard until his face was unrecognizable, felt bones break beneath my fists. Watched Zero’s blood splatter across the clubhouse floor. I knew violence. Knew the satisfying crack of knuckles against flesh, the way a body crumpled under enough force. But this, her words, her pain, her fury, cut deeper than any punch I’d ever thrown.
Each accusation landed with precision, finding every vulnerable place inside me and tearing it open. I’d take a hundred beatings, let every man I’d ever fought have their revenge on my body, if it meant not feeling this. The physical damage I could handle. I’d been handling it my whole life. But this devastation, this emotional annihilation from the woman I loved, this was the kind of pain that didn’t heal. I forced myself to stay still, to keep my breathing even, even as everything inside me shattered.
