Page 27 of Riding the Pine

Shit.

I ready myself for judgement, for anger, or… hurt, betrayal… something. And instead, his thoughtful stare displays none of those emotions that I can decipher. I can’t determine what he’s thinking, but there’s no clenching of his jaw or flexing of his fist to indicate he’s ready to knock me out for thinking about his sister naked.

And for now, I’ll call it a win and take it.

CHAPTER 12

Athena

OCTOBER 2022

I’m not sure how I can know what I know and not share it with my siblings. I came home to try to talk to Papá, to make him say it, confirm it to my face but he’s out of town for work. And instead of having the house to myself, or spending the evening with Mamá, I’ve found the house crawling with smelly boys.

Okay, so they’re not smelly. But they all have their own apartmentsandthe hockey house to live in. And yet, when I showed up here at home, there they were.

Sure, I have an apartment of my own, but at the moment, it’s not entirely my own. Savannah Banana is resting up at my place, and while she’s the perfect roommate right now—i.e. unconscious and quiet, minimal needs and noise, she also needs to rest to heal.

What she doesn’t need is my pacing back and forth wearing out the rugs in the apartment trying to process what I just discovered about my piece of shit father.

I thought with Ares being a freshman at UCR they’d all be there, at least for the first month or so, and yet… here we are.

Scott’s in the den, sprawled out on the couch watching Top Gun: Maverick, Artemis is in a recliner half-watching, half-scrolling on his phone. Ares is in the kitchen with Apollo making what sounds like a God-awful mess of things.

Maybe I should have stayed home with Vannah.

Nervous energy has my body shaking. It can’t be true, right? Papá may be a shrewd businessman, an asshole in the boardroom, but there’s no way he’s cheated on Mamá, right?

If he had, he wouldn’t have let me poke around in his office. It has to be a mistake. It just has to.

I needed my birth certificate to renew an expired passport, and who the fuck knew the can of worms I’d be opening when I walked into Papá’s office to find our personal documentation.

“It’s in the office, Mija,” he said. “Filing cabinet to the left of my desk,” he said.

What he didn’t say was that I’d find bank statements with a single monthly payment from an account in there. Gloria Aguilar. Not a company, not a random bank account number, a name. A woman’s name.

It wouldn’t be so bad if that’s all it was, but a quick search on social media brought up pictures of a beautiful woman, perhaps in her late forties, early fifties, smiling into the camera with a young man standing next to her.

I’d love to say I’m overreacting or seeing something that wasn’t there, but Alonso de la Peña’s genes are strong. And looking into the eyes of the guy Gloria’s caption calls Mathias, I’m damn near sure that young man is my half-brother.

I can’t tell the boys, especially not Apollo, Papá already puts so much pressure on him as the precious first-born penis in the house. But I need to tell someone, figure out what the fuck to do with the information burning through my insides.

A waving red vine catches my attention. “You wanna watch, Bright Eyes?” Scott knows what I like. I’d never say no to twisted red candy and a movie.

“Sure.” I walk around the couch and plop onto the cushion next to him, gratefully accepting the sweet which will hopefully keep my mouth busy enough not to spill my guts about the fact there’s another de la Peña sibling in the wild.

Cabrón.

Arrogante pedazo de mierda.

Did he think we’d never find out? That he’s so good at lying and hiding his indiscretions that no one would ever discover his secret? Is he paying Gloria for her silence? It wasn’t a small amount of cash, $100,000 per month being sent into her account. It’s not exactly a child support amount.

“You okay?” Scott side-eyes me, offering the open packet of candy my direction.

I ignore the heat of Artemis’s stare on the side of my face. “Yeah, just didn’t expect to come home and find all of you here.”

“Exterminator at the hockey house,” he explains as though that’s a good enough reason for them not to be at any of my brother’s apartments instead of here.

“You mean Mamá has a fully stocked fridge at all times, and the guys have conspicuously not done any grocery shopping in weeks, right?”

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