Chapter 32 He's Your Brother
"By the way," Chloe suddenly blurted, her fingers clamping down on Nathan’s forearm like a vise. Her alcohol-soaked brain was finally catching up to the massive, glaring hole in his story. "If you don't actually have a wife... where the hell did your son come from?"
She stepped into his space, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Is he adopted?"
"No." Nathan shook his head slowly.
Chloe bit her lip, a sudden, irrational spike of territorial jealousy flaring in her chest. "Don't tell me you had him with a one-night stand?"
She stomped her foot on the pavement, her frustration boiling over. She took a ragged breath, her hands balling into fists. "Fine! Even if you had a kid with another woman, I'll accept it! I’ll let you off the hook this one time! Just tell me the goddamn truth!"
Watching her furiously negotiate with her own jealousy just to find an excuse to forgive him, a faint, heartbreaking smile touched Nathan’s lips. "It's neither, Chloe."
"Then where did the kid come from?"
Nathan looked down at her, his dark eyes completely bottomless. "He's yours."
"Mine?" Chloe glared at him, utterly bewildered. "Are you insane? I never had a baby with you back then. Just because I'm throwing myself at you now doesn't mean you can just spout nonsense to distract me."
"He really is yours," Nathan stated softly, the terrifying gravity of his voice anchoring her to the pavement. "But he's not your son, Chloe. He's your biological brother."
Chloe stared at him, the world around her screeching to an absolute halt. "My brother?"
Nathan nodded once.
"My biological brother?" she repeated, her voice turning fragile. "The kind my parents gave birth to?"
"Yes."
Chloe tugged violently at her hair, her mouth falling open as she tried to force her brain to process the impossibility of the news. For twenty-four years, she had been an only child. Now, out of nowhere, a teenage brother existed.
"My parents are amazing!" she gasped out, a hysterical, bewildered laugh escaping her throat. "When on earth did they have him?"
"The fifth year after you went missing," Nathan replied, the faint smile vanishing from his face entirely. "Carol insisted on undergoing extreme IVF. She passed away shortly after delivery from an amniotic fluid embolism."
The breath was violently punched out of Chloe’s lungs.
"Amniotic fluid embolism? She died giving birth?" Chloe was suddenly hyperventilating, anger and sheer panic warring in her chest. "Why would my mother do that at fifty-two?! Was she terrified she wouldn't have anyone to take care of her in her old age? Did she think you would abandon them?"
"It wasn't for her," Nathan said, his voice dropping into a gentle, devastating register. "Carol wasn't worried about herself. After you vanished, Alvin spent five straight years tearing the country apart looking for you. He was completely reckless. He crashed his car into a ditch during a blizzard pursuing a false lead. Carol was terrified. She realized that one day, he was going to die out on the road."
Nathan reached out, carefully gripping her trembling shoulders. "She told him, 'What if we are both dead and gone by the time Chloe finally comes home? She will have absolutely no family left. Let's give her someone. When she comes back, she can't be completely alone.'"
Tears immediately spilled over Chloe's lashes, hot and fast.
Suddenly, a painfully mundane memory struck her from the day she had left home. Her mother had spent weeks carefully selecting a prime pork leg, dry-curing it with special spices to prepare a rich country ham for the holidays. She had packed a massive, heavy bag of it for Chloe to take.
Chloe had flat-out refused it, whining that it was too heavy to carry. They had argued in the driveway for an hour until Alvin finally gave in and said they would just mail it later.
Without a second thought, Chloe raised her hand and viciously slapped herself across the face. Smack.
She hated herself with a sudden, violent intensity. It was just a bag of ham. How heavy could it have really been? If she had just swallowed her bratty pride and carried it, she could have tasted her mother's cooking one last time. She would never, ever taste it again.
Before she could strike herself a second time, Nathan’s large hand snapped out, catching her wrist mid-air. "Stop it."
"I deserve it!" Chloe sobbed, struggling wildly against his iron grip. "I feel so miserable! If I don't hit myself, I'm going to lose my goddamn mind!"
"Stop," Nathan commanded softly. He pulled her forcefully into his chest, wrapping his arms around her to trap her flailing limbs against his heart. "They loved you so much. They were absolutely overjoyed just at the thought of you returning. If they saw you hurting yourself right now, it would completely break their hearts."
Chloe buried her face in his wool coat, her body wracked with violent sobs as another memory gutted her.
Before she had left, Alvin had secretly shoved a wad of cash into her purse—$2,400. 'You're newlyweds, money is tight,' he had whispered anxiously. 'Hide this from thieves. It’ll make life easier.'
Back then, $2,400 was enough for a down payment on a house. It was his entire life savings, money he had never spent on himself, handed over just to make sure she was comfortable.
Nathan rested his chin on the top of her head, gently stroking her hair. "Don't be hard on yourself, Chloe. Alvin and Carol brought Mason into this world precisely because they believed with absolute certainty that you would survive. He is the ultimate gift they left behind for you."
I still have family, Chloe thought, clinging desperately to his coat. I still have a brother.
She scrubbed the tears from her raw face, her voice cracking. "Nathan. Take me to him. I want to meet Mason right now."
"Okay," Nathan murmured, his own eyes burning red. "He's at evening training until 8:30. I'll drive you to pick him up."
The dark, quiet space of the Bentley felt like a rolling confessional. As they drove toward the elite academy, Nathan finally told her the brutal history he had been too terrified to share when she first woke up.
When an adult vanishes without a trace, the world assumes the worst. But Alvin had violently refused to accept it. He took early retirement from the factory, liquidating his pension to fund his hunt. He plastered missing posters at truck stops, offered massive bounties on national websites, and was routinely bled dry by scam artists claiming to have leads.
He devoted his entire existence to the search.
When Carol realized she couldn't stop him, she decided to gamble her own life. Because hospitals refused to perform IVF on a fifty-one-year-old woman, she did the unthinkable: she petitioned the court to legally declare her daughter dead. Using that horrifying piece of paper, she applied to a specialized fertility clinic in Duluth as a completely childless, grieving mother.
At fifty-two, she gave birth to Mason. And then, her body gave out.
After her funeral, Alvin had stood in the deafeningly quiet house, staring down at the fragile newborn in his arms. He looked at a twenty-four-year-old Nathan, his eyes completely hollowed out by grief and obsession.
"I can't raise him," Alvin had rasped. "If I stop looking for her, the guilt will kill me. The only time I find peace is when I'm out there on the road."
Alvin had stepped forward, pressing the swaddled infant into Nathan's stiff, awkward arms.
"You stay here at home, Nathan," Alvin had pleaded, placing a heavy hand on the young man's shoulder. "I will find Chloe. I will bring her back. You just... take care of this boy for now. Think of it as a favour to her."
Nathan had looked down at the tiny, breathing weight in his arms, and then up at the broken father who had always treated him like a son.
He had nodded. And for eighteen years, he had never once broken that promise.