Chapter 24
ELENA
I stared at Grayson, my emotions a whirling mess. My mother, bless her soul, reached across the space between them and gently patted Grayson's hand. Her voice was soft, almost wistful. "I hope he wasn't horrible to you."
I held my breath. She meant Anthony. My father.
The man I'd built a thousand fantasies around—and torn down just as many.
The man whose blood ran through my veins, connecting me to the stranger standing across from us.
My half-brother. The word still felt foreign on my tongue, like it didn't belong.
Grayson gave a small, tired smile. "He didn't make life easy. But Meredith and I... we looked out for each other."
That landed like a stone in my chest. They had each other.
I had no one but Mom. All those years of dreaming about siblings, about a bigger family, and they'd been right there—living their lives, protecting each other, while I stared out windows wondering why my father's visits grew shorter and less frequent until they stopped altogether.
Anna sighed again, deeper this time, and turned to me. Her eyes were glassy, her voice trembling. "I should've told you the truth sooner."
My stomach clenched. I wasn't ready. Not for this. Not with Jackson watching, his dark eyes missing nothing. Not with Grayson sitting there, a living reminder of everything I never had. But Mom's face was pale, her hands shaking slightly, and I knew she needed this. To unburden herself before?—
I couldn't finish the thought.
"When I told him I was pregnant," she started, "he changed. Started laying hands on me."
My heart stopped. I blinked at her, trying to process the words. My father hit her? The man who'd brought me stuffed animals and candy, who'd promised me the world then vanished—he'd hurt my mother? The disconnect was so jarring I felt physically ill.
"He gave me a black eye when I first told him over a home-cooked meal," she whispered, shame curling around her voice. "I covered it up. Changed the locks."
I wanted to scream. To go back in time and protect her.
But I was just a baby in her belly. Helpless.
Unformed. While she faced his rage alone.
How many times had she told me he loved us both?
How many times had she painted him as some distant hero, too busy saving the world to come home? That the two of us together was enough?
"He left voicemails. Called nonstop. Became someone else. Someone cruel."
I could see it—her alone in that little house, terrified, trying to keep me safe, a life still growing inside her. My throat burned. I'd spent years blaming her for keeping me from him, for not fighting harder to make him stay. And all along, she'd been fighting to keep him away.
She looked at Grayson now. "It started long before Elena was even born.
He'd come to town, and we'd get together.
We did that for years, and it wasn't until I fell pregnant and he changed that I hired someone to dig into him.
I found out he had a wife. That he'd been cheating on me the whole time.
Well, I guess he'd been cheating on her. "
I felt like I was watching my life unravel thread by thread.
Every lie she'd told me—every bedtime story about a father I asked about, who was always busy with work and still loved me—was a shield she'd built to protect me from this.
From knowing I was the product of an affair.
From knowing my father was a man who could hurt the women he claimed to love.
"He wanted me to get rid of her," she said, her voice breaking. "Tried to force me. Came to my job. I had him thrown out by security."
I couldn't breathe. I was never supposed to exist. He tried to erase me before I even had a name. Before I had a face or fingers or toes. The room shifted slightly, and I felt Jackson move beside me, a silent anchor in a storm I hadn't seen coming.
"He broke into the house after that. Threatened me. I told him I didn't want anything from him. That if anything happened to me or the baby, someone would go to the police. That I had told someone who would give them his name."
My mother—my fierce, fragile mother—had stood her ground.
Alone. Pregnant. Terrified. And still, she protected me.
While I'd spent years resenting her for keeping me from my father, for making us live away from him, for working double shifts instead of attending all my school plays.
All that time, she'd been my protector. My warrior.
"After that, he left. But sometimes... he came back. To see Elena."
I swallowed hard. I remembered those visits. The way he smelled like expensive cologne. The way he never stayed long. The presents that felt like apologies for something I didn't understand. The way he'd look at me sometimes, like he wasn't sure how he felt about me.
Was he wishing I'd never been born?
"I don't know why he came," she said. "Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was escape. But he never wanted to be a father."
I stared at the floor. I'd spent years wondering if he loved me.
If I'd done something wrong. Turns out, I was just a reminder of everything he hated.
A mistake he couldn't completely walk away from. The monthly checks suddenly made sense. They weren’t love, but obligation. Hush money. The price of his freedom.
"I lied to protect you," she said, her voice breaking. "I didn't want you to know how cruel he could be."
I nodded, but I couldn't speak. My throat was too tight.
My chest too full of broken glass. Every memory of him was being rewritten in real time—his rare smiles, his distracted hugs, the way he'd check his watch when he thought I wasn't looking.
He wasn't a busy man with important work.
He was a man counting the minutes until he could leave.
She turned back to Grayson. "I knew he had other kids. I just hoped he wasn't as awful to them."
I glanced at him, already knowing the truth from Jackson.
Grayson's jaw tightened. "He wasn't terrible to me. But Meredith... he blamed her for our mother's death."
My breath caught. That kind of blame, it could rot a person from the inside out.
To carry that weight as a child, to believe you were responsible for something so devastating.
.. I couldn't imagine. For the first time, I felt something other than envy when I thought of Meredith. I felt a strange, unexpected kinship.
Anna's face crumpled. "I'm so sorry."
Grayson shook his head. "It wasn't your fault. Or hers. Our mom had postpartum depression. She took her own life. He ignored her cries for help."
The silence that followed was heavy. Sacred.
A shared grief none of us could fix. I looked at my mother—so frail now, but still fighting—and wondered what would have happened if Anthony had stayed.
If he'd been the man she thought he was at first. Would he have ignored her illness too?
Would she have suffered the same fate as Grayson's mother?
"I wish I could undo it," Anna said softly, her voice thick with regret.
"You did what you had to do," Grayson replied. "You protected your daughter. That's more than he ever did."
My chest ached. I wanted to reach for her hand, but I couldn't move.
I was frozen between gratitude and grief, between the mother who'd sacrificed everything for me and the father who'd seen me as nothing but an inconvenience.
Between the life I'd lived and the one I might have had if he'd been different. Better.
Anna nodded slowly. "I saw the newspaper clipping. The accident."
I looked at Jackson. He looked back.
We both knew the truth.
But I said nothing.
Not yet.
The weight of what I knew, what I'd learned, sat heavy in my stomach. The truth that Grayson and Leo had killed him. That they'd covered it up.
This man had killed my father. This handsome, polite man with the designer clothes and a charming smile had taken Anthony Cassaro's life. Looking at him now, you'd never suspect he was capable of murder.
Then again, I'd never thought I was until push came to shove.
I should have felt vindicated. Here was my proof—my father was a monster. The sibling who'd killed him had every reason. But instead, I felt hollow. Empty. Like I'd been fighting a war against ghosts.
"He wasn't a good man," Grayson said quietly, his eyes never leaving my mother's face. "But I'm sorry for what he did to you. To both of you."
There was something in his voice, a sincerity that cut through me. He was just a man who'd protected his sister from a monster. The same monster who'd tried to make my mother get rid of me.
"Did he ever..." Mom started, then stopped, her voice faltering. "Did he ever mention us?"
Even now, after everything, some part of her needed to know she'd mattered. That we'd mattered.
Grayson's expression softened. "No, I'm sorry."
My mother's face fell, but I could've sworn there was a strange relief there, like she'd gotten some answer for a question that had bothered her for too long.
I didn't know what to do with that information personally. That we were nothing to him ultimately. Something he'd thrown money at to make go away.
"I should have looked for you," Grayson said. "After he died. I knew he had... arrangements. Other women. But I never thought?—"
"It's not your responsibility," Mom interrupted, her voice stronger now. "You were just a child yourself."
"No, I was an adult in college, I should've looked to see if he'd…" Grayson looked down at his hands.
"How could you have known he had another woman and child?" my mother said softly. "There was no way you could have known."
The room fell silent again. Outside, rain began to patter against the windows, soft and insistent. Like time itself, refusing to stop for our grief.
"I think," Jackson said, speaking for the first time since we'd sat down, "that there's been enough pain caused by one man. Maybe it's time to focus on healing instead."
His eyes met mine, and I saw something there, something pure yet worn. Something real.
I looked at my mother—her face tired but peaceful now that her secrets were out—I knew I had to try to make my peace with all of this. For her sake, if not my own.
"I'd like that," I said softly.