4. Juliette
Juliette
I studied the file of my parents.
Aiden and Ava Cullen.
The names should be close to my heart, but they weren’t. I’d never known them. I didn’t remember them. But my brother did.
I had found two birth certificates in my father’s desk months back—Killian’s and mine.
The only problem was that it listed our parents as “Aiden and Ava Cullen.” I’d held on to that secret for as long as I could, letting it fester inside me.
It wasn’t until the girls and I got caught stealing from Priest DiLustro in Philly that I admitted to my father what I had learned.
Killian had known it all along. He’d been older when Liam-slash-Dad adopted us and apparently could be trusted with the information, knowing he’d done it to protect us.
Killian and I sat in the library of Dad’s—Liam’s—home now. It was just the two of us. The flames danced in the fireplace. The scent of pine, pumpkin pie, and sugarplums drifted through the air. A soft song played somewhere in the distance. None of it registered.
Just the beating of my heart and the pain in my brother’s eyes.
“Were they like us?” I questioned, shooting a glance at Killian. He’d given me a rundown on everything he remembered and all the facts he had. “Like Dad?” Then, remembering he probably didn’t think of Liam as our dad in the same way I did, I corrected, “Like Liam?”
Killian shrugged. “More or less.”
I raised my eyebrows. That didn’t tell me much. “Don’t be stingy with information,” I complained.
Killian tilted his head, studying me. I never could tell whether he saw too much or not enough. We both had blue eyes and dark hair, but in terms of personalities, we couldn’t be more different. I was rash, he was calculating. I had a temper, he didn’t.
“Our father—birth father—was a hitman for the Brennans,” he said, his voice cold.
“Liam and Dad were best friends, and spent a lot of time together. Mom was—” He paused, searching for the right word.
Or maybe he got choked up. Killian was way too good at hiding his emotions.
Another thing the two of us didn’t have in common, but I was getting better at it.
“She was gentle. She had no connection to the mafia. Seeing the brutality of it was hard for her.”
I swallowed, a lump in my throat growing. It wasn’t because I was mourning what I never knew. It was because I heard pain in my brother’s voice.
My hand reached for his and I squeezed it, offering comfort.
“You remember that night, don’t you?” I whispered.
Killian nodded, a dark expression passing through his eyes. “I do. And I’m working through my list of accomplices. I’ll make every one of them pay, Jules.”
There was no sense in scolding him about it or telling him we should take a higher road. Be safe. Fuck taking a higher road and fuck being safe. The bastards who hurt our parents should pay. They’d scarred Killian.
“Can Dad… Liam… help us?” Liam Brennan was the head of the Brennan Irish mafia. He saved both my brother and me, and raised us as his own.
My brother’s eyes met mine. “I have a list of names. Behind them all is one person.” I held my breath, waiting. “Sofia Volkov.”
That night, running through that list of names in my head, I went to my self-defense class with an additional purpose.