Chapter 130 Chapter One hundred and twenty-nine
ARA
“What's the next step now?” Stuart asked Thayne who was typing away on his phone.
“Emily will remain in custody while I pin Gabe down.” He answered without lifting his head from his phone.
It'd been two days since we rescued my sisters from what would have been a deadly bomb explosion.
Stuart looked at me briefly. “I was talking about your fathers.”
“I'll share my plans once I've finalized them.” Thayne answered again without looking away from his phone.
Stuart sighed, then left.
I turned to Thayne, to tell him to take things gently. “I just want you to take things slowly, Thayne. So we do this once and for all. I'm not—”
“ARA!” Mollie’s voice sliced through the room, sharp with panic, and instinct took over.
I moved, or tried to. Thayne’s hand closed around my wrist, firm but not rough, anchoring me in place.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Let them come to you.”
I twisted toward him, fury and fear colliding in my chest. “That’s my sister calling my name.”
“And she’s safe,” he replied, finally lifting his eyes from his phone. “They both are. Running blindly won’t help anyone right now.”
Before I could argue, footsteps thundered down the hallway.
Mollie burst into the room first, her hair a mess, her eyes too bright. Millie followed closely behind, her face pale but determined.
“We don’t have the same father?” Mollie asked, her voice small, wrecked by sobs.
The words hit me like a slap. How could they know that? I had never told them. I had buried it, carried it alone, protected them from it for years.
Millie stepped forward, her tears burning into anger. “You hid it from us our entire lives?” Her voice cracked, sharp and demanding. “Where is our father, Ara? Who is he? We deserve to know.”
My chest caved in. The truth was, I didn’t have an answer to give them.
Behind me, the bed shifted. Thayne stood and came to my back, his presence solid, silent, his way of telling me I didn’t have to face this alone.
“How did you find out?” I asked softly. “Who told you?”
“Emily,” Mollie whispered. “Before you came back.” Her lips trembled as she continued. “She said Mama didn’t want you because a bad man hurt her and—”
“Stop,” I begged, panic slicing through me. “Please stop.”
But Mollie’s mouth kept moving, the words spilling out like poison she didn’t understand.
“Why should we?” Millie snapped. “You lied to us! We don’t even know who our father is, but Emily says she does.”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “She doesn’t. She’s lying to you. She’s trying to hurt us.”
“She promised she’d tell us!” Mollie cried, stamping her foot. “Why won’t you listen to us, Ara?”
“Because Emily is manipulating you,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. It cracked anyway. “We don’t know who he is. I swear to you.”
They were both crying now, deep, broken sobs, and I had nothing left to give them. No comfort. No truth that could heal the wound she’d torn open.
“Then don’t ever talk to us again!” Millie screamed.
She grabbed Mollie’s hand and pulled her toward the door. They didn’t look back.
The door slammed loudly, and I stood there, hollow.
“I never thought they’d find out like this,” I whispered, wiping my face with trembling hands. “Mama never told me anything… except that we had different fathers.”
The silence that followed felt heavier than any explosion we’d survived.
They refused to speak to me, refused to look at me. It was as if I’d been erased from their world in less than a day.
The silence hurt more than their screams had. I wanted, no, needed to know who their fathers were, not just for them, but because it was my responsibility to help them find the truth.
They deserved answers. And I was failing them.
I just didn’t know where to start. Or who to ask.
This was exactly Emily's plan, to turn their hearts against me so that whenever I showed up at the front porch back in Long Island, they wouldn't accept me wholeheartedly.
No wonder they'd listened to her the moment she sweet-talked them into going into the house.
“We laid a trap for Gabe,” Thayne said quietly, scattering my thoughts. He was dressed now, and he looked ready to burn the world down if it would be the end of our problems.
“He’ll walk straight into it in thirty minutes.” He leaned down and wrapped me in a heavy, protective hug, his arms firm around my shoulders and belly. “Ara, please don’t do something stupid.”
I pulled back just enough to look at him. “So now I’m the one who does stupid things?”
He smiled faintly. “You’re brilliant,” he said. “Just… less predictable when you’re pregnant.”
Before I could retort, he kissed my cheek, then stole a soft kiss from my lips, brief, grounding, meant to steady me.
I knew he was trying to distract me. To give me something else to focus on besides the way my sisters had looked through me like I was a stranger.
But my mind refused to let it go. My mother had been fiercely secretive about Millie and Mollie’s father, so much so that it had always felt deliberate.
I’d told myself it was because he was probably dead. Or gone. You know, disappeared-without-a-trace kind of father.
Or someone she wanted to shield them from until they were older.
Now, I wasn’t so sure. What if it wasn’t about protection? What if it was about fear?
A sudden thought stopped me cold. Thayne’s mother. Liliana.
She had been my mother’s closest friend once, closer than anyone else. They’d shared secrets, laughter, years of history before everything fell apart.
If anyone knew the truth…
My pulse picked up. She'd given me unexpected clues the first time I met her.
Perhaps I just needed to speak with her again. Maybe the answers hadn’t been buried as deep as I thought.
Maybe I’d just been looking in the wrong place.
Once Thayne got back, I would ask him to take us to his mother. She would definitely have answers.