“I’m glad you were willing to talk with me.” Cole’s voice sounds almost unsure, and it makes me glance at him again. I stare right into his eyes, inspecting them as if I can pull the truth from his mind without having him utter a word.
Stone takes a seat next to me on the cushion and gestures toward the open couch next to Wyatt. Cole sits there, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Despite the tattoos and earrings, his leg jumps up and down, betraying the badass bravado I’ve seen from him since the beginning. He hasn’t come here with his entourage of gang members either. It’s just him—open and vulnerable. If I’m honest, it’s exactly what I expected of him.
He holds his clasped hands in front of him, his knuckles bouncing off his lips until he lets them fall forward. “I want to get one thing out of the way first since you’re probably the maddest about this. Yes, I killed the man you knew as your father, and I won’t apologize for it. I came to Clary to kill him and he deserved it. But when I read how he raised you in the file I had compiled about you, I wanted to make him suffer before he took his last breath.” His jaw feathers, knuckles turning white. “Clark Wilder was a sick son of a bitch. The only thing that stopped me from torturing his ass was what it might do to you.”
I narrow my eyes, inspecting Cole’s every movement, but Stone’s not having any of that. “Why?” he blurts.
Well, there goes our plan of letting me talk.
Cole ignores him, his eyes pleading with mine, and I’m sure he can read how badly I want to know, but he’s waiting for me just like I asked. I take a deep breath and try to muster all the courage I can. It’s time to put on the armor I’m used to. I have a feeling this is going to be one hell of a story. I lean into Lucas to steal some of his strength. “Why did you kill him?”
Cole twists his fingers together, his movements so harsh it looks as if he could snap his own bones. “Nineteen years ago, Clark Wilder and his wife stole you from a loving family.” He nods toward my lap. “There are baby pictures of you in that box. You had a brother who loved you, a mother and father who cherished you, a family that was devastated when someone else’s selfishness took you from them.”
I suck in a breath, mind whirring. Ever ready to deal with anything, Stone steamrolls ahead. “Are you saying Dakota was kidnapped?”
Again, Cole doesn’t even glance at Stone. He doesn’t appear to care that any of them are here. His eyes are plastered to mine, letting me decide what I want answered first. “Who are they?” I ask, voice shaky. My whole body trembles. Lucas is trying his best to calm my nerves, but I can’t stop the tremors wracking my body.
Cole looks away, and I swear on my life, the badass gang leader’s eyes are glassy with emotion. “I didn’t know your real parents,” he answers softly. “I knew your brother.” He clasps his hands together until his knuckles turn white. “He was my gang brother. We weren’t blood, but it damn well felt like we were. We joined the Dragons at almost the same time. He was just a kid—” He clears his throat and glances back at me. “His parents—yourrealparents—are dead. Your mother killed herself on what would’ve been your tenth birthday. She couldn’t handle your loss anymore.”
My heart squeezes, agonizing over a woman I never knew, but I can’t help the longing that builds for the woman who birthed me; for the woman who loved me so much that she couldn’t live a life without me.
How could I not know these people existed? “And my real father?” My voice wavers. The numbness I’ve been dragging along behind me like a lead weight is long gone. I’m feelingeverythingnow.
“Your father died when Charlie was seventeen. You would’ve been fifteen. He told me it was of a broken heart. Hospital records,” he says, pointing to the box, “confirm that it was of a heart attack of an otherwise healthy man.”
I take in several deep breaths to slow the rapid degradation of my ability to process everything. The perimeter wall I’ve built keeps crumbling and crumbling. Every time I find sure footing, another rock slips out from underneath me.
“My brother’s name was Charlie? What happened to him?” Cole closes his eyes. A shudder rips through him, and in this moment, I feel connected to him. He’s feeling for a brother I never knew, and in this, tendrils are pulling us tighter and tighter together. Weirdly, the only connection I have to a family I never knew is in this gang banger. I get to my feet, carrying the box with me, and make Wyatt move over so I can sit next to Cole. I put my hand over his. “Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”
Cole places his free hand over mine, and it shakes too. “We were on a mission for the leader of the Dragons at the time. Shit went south, and your brother didn’t make it, Dakota. He was shot.”
His jaw tenses, and he grieves for the friend he once had. It bleeds from him, ripping through his tough guy façade until it’s spilled on the floor at our feet. I can internalize the grief for someone I didn’t even know but this was a real person to Cole. His friend. His brother. My heart aches for him more than it does for me in this moment.
“He loved you, baby girl.” Cole shakes his head as if he can will away the emotion taking control of him. “He talked about finding you all the damn time. I knew the whole story inside and out. Anyone who was close to him knew; it’s all he ever talked about. The only thing he wanted was to find you. For himself. For your parents.
“His suffering became mine, and when he was bleeding out in that rat-infested hotel room, I made him a promise. I told him I’d find you and that I’d make the fucker who took you pay. I sent him to heaven with that knowledge, and you’ve been my number one priority ever since. That’s why I killed Clark Wilder. I witnessed my friend’s pain every single fucking day. I heard what it did to his family, and I saw with my own eyes the toll it took on him. I wasn’t letting Clark get away with that.” He pauses for a moment, the fierceness in his gaze returning as easy as a flip of a switch. “After Charlie died, I made it my mission to bring you home.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands. My mind is so full of questions that I can’t process one because another pops into my head right after it. Cole squeezes my hand that’s still engulfed in his. Wyatt’s touch skirts up my back, rubbing along my spine. “Why did they take me?”
Cole drops his hold on me, his face an angry red. He’s transitioned fully from the mourner to the violent person he is. “They found out they couldn’t have children. I think you can guess the rest, knowing how important family legacy is to the Wilder treasure. Clark couldn’t stand for it to end with him. He needed a child, so he took one. He brought you back to Clary where he lived like a hermit. He hid you with hope that you’d never be found. He changed your name, he didn’t take you to the doctors—hell, he barely took you anywhere. He did everything in his power to keep you hidden so no one would ever come looking for you. As far as everyone in Clary knew, you were his—if they ever thought of you at all, that is. Most people weren’t aware you existed until you showed up in Kindergarten, and that’s because you didn’t. At least not as Dakota Wilder.”
Different facets of my life slot together like some fucked up version of Mad Libs. Let’s take the most outrageous thing someone can think of and fill in the blanks of Dakota’s life. The worst part of it all? I can see my father being so desperate to do what Cole is accusing him of. It all makes perfect sense. The man made me promise to have kids. At the time, I understood it on a basic level, but now it makes so much more sense. He was speaking from experience. He made me vow to have kids so that the crime he committed didn’t fail. He wanted to keep the Wilder line going. Aboveeverything.
“I feel sick,” I croak as my stomach sloshes. Everything my father said and did to me is now twisted into a new meaning I couldn’t have imagined. To know he wasn’t just a hermit who didn’t like people but someone who was actively trying to hide me makes my stomach roll and squeeze in bouts of nausea.
Lucas leans forward. “You’re turning white.”
I shove the box into Cole’s arms and run for the closest bathroom. There, the tears finally release as well as the lies coiled up over the years. I expel it all into the porcelain toilet, eyes burning, body shuddering. I wretch and wretch, an exorcism of the life I’ve lived, and I can’t help but wonder what will be left when everything comes up.
This isn’t a case of wrong paternity—my mother loving another man and my father stepping up to take care of me in his place. No, this is something far more sinister. Not only am I not a Wilder, I’m not anything I believed I was.
Footsteps sound behind me, and I peek between my curls to find a pair of foreign sneakers next to my knees. Cole kneels as a tremor racks my body. He rests his forehead against my back and runs his hand up and down my spine. “Charlie was my brother, and now you’re my sister. I’ll protect you with my life, baby girl. I can’t help this part. You already know how I feel about being the smartest person in the room. It’s going to suck. It’s going to hurt. But when it’s over, you’ll come out the other side stronger. I promise.”
4
The house grows quiet. After Cole left hours ago, I told Wyatt, Lucas, and Stone that I wanted to be alone to process things. The box with all the proof Cole could find sits unopened on my dresser like a siren’s call. Every time I focus on something else, it keeps pulling me back. The hardest part about looking at the contents of that box will be knowing that it wasn’t my life. Not even close. My body buzzes; my mind pulling in all different directions, glitching in the most extreme way. Should I be upset? Do I mourn the family I never had? Or do I mourn the father who raised me even though he may have done a shitty job?
I’m numb when it comes to Clark Wilder, but it doesn’t mean I hate him. I can’t. I hate what he did. I can be pissed as hell and want to kick his ass up the Superstitions and back, but I can’t hatehim.