Page 18 of Secret Betrayals
Then she’s dangerous.
And we’re already in too deep.
Minutes earlier
I’ve seen Talon snap before. I’ve seen him bloody men twice his size, leave motherfuckers crying for their mamas. But this? This is different. This is personal. And that shit is dangerous. I don’t know who the fuck this woman is, not really. Gabriella. The name was familiar in a vague, ghost-of-the-past kind of way. But the second she walked into church, I clocked how Talon stiffened, how the air changed. The tension got thick enough to choke on, and Talon… he wasn’t himself.
I’ve never seen his eyes like that—wild, tortured, furious. The man looked like he was staring down a ghost that stabbed him in the chest and then smiled while doing it.
And now I know why. Axel may not have clocked it, but I did. Because I remember now, remember her.
Kids. Seventeen. Years old. My brothers.
I feel my fists clenching all over again. My brother has two sons,sons, and none of us knew. Gabriella kept that shit under wraps like it was nothing. And now we’re sitting here, looking at two full-grown boys who look like they belong in our family portrait, except we never even knew they fucking existed.
And fuck me, Talon looks shattered. A walking powder keg.
I’ve been watching him closely ever since we got him to calm down and take his seat, and every tick of his jaw, every breath he drags in through his nose is him fighting not to lose his shit all over again. If he explodes again, this room is going up in flames.
I shift closer to him. Close enough that if I have to get between him and Gabriella, I can. I don’t know what happened between them, but I know pain when I see it. And that woman cracked him open in ways I didn’t think anyone could.
I glance across the table. She’s cool as ice. Beautiful, yeah—but fuck me, that’s not what I see when I look at her. I see danger. I see control. I see someone who knows she’s got the upper hand right now. She knows her sons are armed. She knows we’re outnumbered and off-kilter.
Axel shifts beside me, hands twitching on top of the now righted table. We're ready to throw down if it comes to that. But I don’t want that—not with our nephews in the room.
Jesus… nephews.
That shit keeps slamming into me like a truck.
They’re family. Blood. My kin.
And we didn’t even know they existed.
What the fuck kind of woman hides something like that? I want to be rational, to see both sides—but all I see is red, because this didn’t just hurt Talon, it fractured something in all of us. I could’ve been there. Could’ve known them. Taught them shit. Had their backs.
Instead, they grew up in another world, trained to protecther. Pointing guns at us like we’re the fucking threat.
“Hey,” I lean over and murmur to Talon, low enough for just him and Axel to hear. “We need to keep our heads. We lose control, we lose the room.”
He doesn’t answer me, but I see his fingers twitch, like he's barely hanging on by a thread.
I glance at the boys—my nephews—and the hate in their eyes makes my stomach twist. They see us as the enemy. They see Talon as the bad guy. And that ain’t right. They’re looking at the man who would’ve moved mountains for them if he’d had the chance.
And now he’s got seventeen years of regret sitting in his chest like a bomb.
Whatever happens next, one thing is clear.
This isn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
Five
Life comes full circle and knocks you on your ass. All you can do is say thank you for this shitstorm and push through
My brothers don’t know what the fuck set me off. Neither of them knew Gabriella back when we were together. They might’ve seen her once or twice, but I doubt they’d remember her. Back then, I was a fuckboy, so I don’t expect them to remember the only woman I ever truly loved. So I’m not surprised that they don’t get it, because they don’t know how things were. Don’t know how they ended. Don’t know what, I just figured the fuck out.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
