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Theo squeezes my hand and I glance over in his direction as he mouths, “Okay?”

I nod and he gives my hand another squeeze as Blaze sits at the head of the table and sighs.

“Nix, I’d like you to meet Theo and Tate Carter, your brother and sister.”

Gasps fill the room and my eyes widen as I feel Theo’s hand clamp down on mine. My head feels fuzzy as I stare at the man across the table, trying to put the pieces together.

“What?” Nix asks, turning to look at Blaze. “What the hell do you mean they are my brother and sister?”

“Their mother, Sarah, is… was your mother, too.”

With wide eyes, he stares down at the table, his jaw ticking.

“You need to keep explaining, Dad.”

Blaze sighs. “I first met Sarah, your mother, in 1986 when she moved to Baton Rouge to go to school and we hit it off right away. God, she was mesmerizing and I fell in love with her the very moment I met her. From that day on, we were inseparable.” The love and devotion still shining in his eyes for our mother is so real, so potent that I have no choice but to believe him. I can see the pain of losing her splayed out across his face and it’s another one of those moments when it hits me how little we really knew about her.

“A year later, we found out we were pregnant with twins.”

Theo and I look at each other with wide eyes. The math doesn’t work out for us but there’s only one man sitting across the table from us so I have no idea what to think.

“Wait,” Nix says, sitting up straight. “What the fuck are you saying?”

Blaze’s eyes shine with unshed tears and my stomach sinks as I hold Theo’s hand a little tighter. “I’m saying that you are a twin but your brother died during delivery.”

Theo squeezes back and our eyes meet, both of us trying to imagine how empty we would feel without the other and tears well up in my eyes. I turn back to Nix, watching as he drops his head into his hands.

“I had a brother?” he asks, his voice faint and I want to go over to him and give him a hug but I stay rooted to my seat.

“Yes, you did.”

“And my mother, was she really a club whore like you always said?” He looks up, meeting Blaze’s eyes with an anger that I recognize.

“What? You called our mother a whore?” Theo snarls, standing up but I pull him back down, shaking my head. Now is not the time.

“She wasn’t. She was the love of my life.”

Nix blows out a breath, still shaking his head like he can’t process any of this. I don’t blame him since I’m struggling myself.

“Why did she leave us?” he asks.

“When we lost your brother, she broke down and she just couldn’t get over it. She said she needed to go away for a while and I would have done anything she needed me to do.”

“So you just let her leave? Why didn’t she come back?”

Blaze turns to Theo and me. “This is where you come into the story. While your mother was traveling around, she met a man named Dominic King. King was and still is a notorious crime boss in Chicago and not the kind of man you mess with. Before she even realized what was happening, she was swept up in that world.”

I scoff. “Seemed to be a common problem for her.”

“She was in pain, Tate, and she didn’t care about anything because her baby was dead.”

“One of her babies,” Nix cuts in and I nod in agreement.

“Look, I’m not defending all her choices and you all have every right to be fucking pissed about all this but you need to know everything.”

“Fine,” I snap. “How did we end up back here in Baton Rouge?”

“When she found out she was pregnant with the two of you, she knew that she couldn’t let you be raised in that world so she ran but before she did, she managed to get her hands on evidence that would put Dominic King away for a very long time and a boatload of money.”