Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Apollo
“What did you say?”
Hades’ voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that came right before someone’s skull met pavement.
He didn’t ask because he hadn’t heard me.
He asked because he couldn’t comprehend what I’d just said.
Because the words I’d spoken made no fucking sense in the world he’d built for himself.
The world where Lettie was his and his only.
If I were being honest, I didn’t understand them myself. Had no reason to believe Lettie was my sister, Colette. No scientific reason, anyway. No DNA test. No birth certificate. No proof beyond the gnawing certainty that had been eating me alive since the moment I saw her.
But there were clues. The color of her eyes—my mother’s eyes. The way she walked. The sound of her voice. When she reached over and touched my hand last night, something inside me broke. Shattered into pieces so small I’d never put them back together.
It was her.
I knew it was her.
“I think Lettie is my sister, Colette.”
That was a lie. I didn’t think it; I knew it. Felt it in my bones. In the hollow space where my sister used to be. In the part of me that had been searching for years and finally, finally, recognized what it had been looking for.
I just couldn’t prove it.
Zeus eyed me from his place in the president’s chair.
His gaze flicked to my father, who stood behind me, leaning against the wall.
Silent. Waiting. We rarely called church with every member present.
Mostly it was for times like this. When someone wanted to take on an old lady, it required a unanimous vote.
“Explain,” Zeus ordered, his gaze returning to me when my father remained quiet.
This was my show. He’d back me up, but he hadn’t met Lettie. Hadn’t heard her speak. Hadn’t seen her face. Hadn’t felt the punch to the gut when she smiled and it was Mom’s smile looking back at him.
“It started the day we came back from Nebraska,” I said, closing my eyes and seeing her standing on the porch, watching me.
Our eyes locked. Something I couldn’t explain pulled at me.
Dragged me under like a riptide. She wasn’t the first woman I’d met who looked like my mother.
Fuck, I’d been looking into the faces of every blonde woman I’d encountered for over two decades.
Searching. Always searching. I knew how old my sister would be.
Knew what she might look like. Knew I was probably chasing ghosts.
But Lettie fit.
My eyes opened. I looked at Hades. “I was sitting in the van waiting to be carried inside like a fucking child.”
The anger bled through. Couldn’t stop it. Failed to keep it out of my voice. Losing the use of my legs from the attack in Nebraska was something I hadn’t made peace with. It was something that burned in my gut every time someone had to lift me. Carry me. Help me like I was goddamn helpless.
I didn’t think I would ever make peace with it.
“I looked around the yard expecting to see everyone gawking at me. The cripple who couldn’t walk.”
“Lo,” Ares whispered.
I shook my head. I didn’t want his pity. Didn’t want anyone’s fucking pity.
“She stood next to Aspen, staring at me. But she looked at me with curiosity, not pity.”
“Nobody fucking pities you, Lo,” Zeus said angrily as he leaned forward.
I knew he was telling the truth. My brothers were sympathetic, but they didn’t pity me. It didn’t stop me from feeling it, though. Didn’t stop the rage that coiled in my chest every time I had to ask for help. Every time I couldn’t do something as simple as walk across a fucking room.
“My point is, when Kraken lifted me out of the seat, she never looked away. She wasn’t embarrassed by watching me.”
“What the fuck, Lo?!” Hades’ chair scraped back, loud and violent as Zeus’ hand shot out. He gripped Hades’ forearm before he could stand.
“Sit the fuck down.”
Hades didn’t look at him. His eyes stayed on me as he growled, “Move your goddamn hand.”
“No.”
The air in the room thickened. The kind of thickness that made men reach for weapons they weren’t supposed to have in church. The kind that ended with someone bleeding on the floor and everyone pretending it was justified.
Atlas leaned forward, ready to move if he had to. Ares watched with bored interest, like he was curious which one of them would bleed first.
“Because she looked at you, you think she’s your fucking sister?”
I took a deep breath. My father’s hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. Hard. Grounding. Reminding me he was there. That I wasn’t alone in this. That whatever happened next, we’d face it together.
I understood Hades’ anger. He wanted Lettie to be his old lady. That was why we were here this morning—to vote. To make it official. To claim her in front of the club so no one could touch her. So she’d be protected under club law.
And I was about to blow that all to hell.
I looked at Hades. “I’m not trying to take her from you.”
His upper lip curled. “Good. Because you fucking can’t.”
“I don’t want to.”
That seemed to hit him harder than any argument would have.
Because it was true. Whatever Lettie was to me, whatever she might be, she was already his.
I’d seen it in the way she looked at him.
In the way she fought the pull and leaned toward him anyway.
In the way he watched her, like she was the only piece of light left in a world that had gone black.
Like she was oxygen and he’d been drowning.
Hades sat back down slowly.
Zeus released his arm.
“Continue,” Zeus ordered.
I rubbed a hand over my mouth, buying myself a second.
My throat felt too tight, like someone had wrapped barbed wire around it and pulled.
The scar that didn’t exist still burned.
The old wound of losing Colette tearing open like it had never healed.
Like the missing years meant nothing. Like grief had a fucking expiration date and mine had just reset to zero.
“She looked familiar,” I said.
“Lots of women look familiar,” Hermes muttered.
Hades’ head snapped toward him. Hermes lifted both hands. “Just saying.”
“Don’t,” Hades warned.
I shook my head. “He’s not wrong. Familiar doesn’t mean shit by itself. I know that.”
I’d been chasing familiar my whole life. Looking for my sister in every blonde woman who passed me on the street. In every grocery store. Every gas station. Every fucking place I went. I knew how desperate I was. Knew how easy it was to see what I wanted to see instead of what was actually there.
“Then what?” Zeus asked.
I looked at my father again. His face was pale beneath the beard; eyes fixed on the table like if he stared hard enough the wood might give him a different truth.
A better one. One where his daughter wasn’t stolen and raised by someone else.
One where his wife didn’t take her own life because she couldn’t handle the pain of losing a child.
A child we prayed was alive but never knew.
A child who now might be living two miles away.
Two fucking miles.
“She has my mother’s eyes,” I said.
Dad closed his eyes.
The room stayed silent.
Hades didn’t move. Neither did Zeus.
“Not just the color,” I added. My voice roughened.
Cracked at the edges. “It was the way she looked at me. Like she was trying to decide if I was safe and dangerous at the same time. My mom did that. She had this way of studying people without making them feel judged. Like she could see too much but didn’t want to hurt you with it. ”
My mom would look at people, really look at them, and see past the bullshit. Past the walls. Past the armor. She’d see the wounds underneath and know exactly how to help without making you feel weak for needing it.
Dad made a rough sound behind me.
Fuck.
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. Against the burn that felt like I’d swallowed glass, like every word was cutting me open from the inside out.
“Lettie does that.”
Hades’ fingers curled against the table. Not a fist. Not yet. But close.
“She does a lot of things,” I continued.
The words came faster now. Desperate, like if I didn’t get them out, I’d choke on them.
“Small things. Expressions. The way her mouth pinches when she’s trying not to say what she thinks.
The way she softens when someone is hurting, even if she doesn’t understand why they’re hurting. ”
I looked down at my useless legs. It was easier than looking at any of them. Easier than seeing the pity or the doubt or the anger. My hands tightened on the wheels of my chair. Knuckles white. Fingers aching.
“She watches families like she’s starving.” The words came out strained, like they were being dragged out of me against my will.
No one spoke.
Not even Hades.
Especially not Hades.
He knew what I meant. They all did. I hadn’t met Lettie before she came to the clubhouse, but I’d heard the rumors about the hippie chick with the gardens.
The kind woman with the gentle soul and the reclusive mother.
The woman who looked at families like she was trying to memorize something she’d never had.
Like she was hungry for connection she didn’t know how to ask for.
Like Mom used to look at children after Colette was taken.
“Last night,” I continued, “when you left her with me, we talked.”
His eyes flashed. The kind of flash that meant he was already planning how to make me pay for it. How to hurt me without killing me. How to remind me that touching what was his came with consequences.
Blood and pain and broken bones.
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“You sure about that?” he asked.
The question should have pissed me off. It didn’t. Because I understood it. If some brother had sat across from Colette and started digging around in wounds she didn’t know she had, I’d want to rip his throat out too. I’d want to make him bleed for every second of pain he caused her.
“I’m sure,” I said. “I asked where she was from.”
“What did she say?” Zeus asked.
“Utah. Said they moved around a lot but didn’t go into detail.”
“Did she mention her father?” Atlas asked.
“No. She said she was raised by a single mom trying to make ends meet, working her way through any man willing to give her a second look.”
Hades’ face hardened.
Yeah. That had bothered me too. What had Lettie been exposed to growing up? How many men did her mother parade through their lives? How many predators had looked at her with hungry eyes while her mother was too busy chasing the next dick to notice?
The thought made my stomach turn.
“Colette’s been missing for over twenty years,” I said. My voice was steady now. Clinical. Like I was reciting facts instead of ripping my chest open. “She was almost two when she disappeared.”
Zeus leaned forward. “Lettie is what... twenty-four? Twenty-five?”
“That would be my guess.”
“That’s not enough,” Hades argued.
“I know.”
But it was something. It was more than I’d had in all the years of searching. More than the dead ends and false leads and women who looked like her but weren’t.
I ignored him and kept going. “She said something when I told her about Colette. I can’t get it out of my head.”
The room seemed to lean closer.
I hated this part. Hated saying it out loud because once I did, it would become real in a way I wasn’t ready for.
Real in a way that meant I couldn’t take it back.
Couldn’t pretend I was imagining things.
Couldn’t convince myself I was projecting grief onto a woman who just happened to carry the wrong name and the right eyes.
“I told her my sister’s name was Colette.” My father’s hand tightened on my shoulder. Squeezed so hard that it hurt. “But that I called her Lettie.”
Hades’ brows drew together. I watched something shift in his expression. He was processing. Calculating. Trying to figure out if this was real or if I’d finally lost my fucking mind.
“She apologized,” I said quietly.
Zeus’ eyes narrowed. “For what?”
“For asking everyone to call her Lettie. She said it must be tearing me apart every time I heard it.” I waited for Hades to look at me. “It’s what my mother would have done,” I said. “It’s not just how she looks, it’s how she acts. Everything about her reminds me of my mother.”
Hades went still. The kind of stillness that meant he was processing something he didn’t want to process.
Something that changed the shape of everything he thought he knew.
Something that meant Lettie wasn’t just some woman he’d claimed.
She was someone else’s. Someone who’d been stolen and lost and mourned for over two decades.
Dad’s voice came rough from behind me. “Ford started calling her Lettie when she was a baby.”
Every eye moved to him.
Dad kept his hand on my shoulder, his gaze distant. Fixed somewhere in the past. Somewhere none of us could follow. Somewhere he’d been living alone for too fucking long.
“There wasn’t any big reason for it. He was twelve and thought Colette sounded too formal for a baby. He started calling her Lettie.” His throat worked as he swallowed hard. “His mother loved it, so it stuck.”
My chest hurt.
Fuck, it hurt.
Like someone had reached inside and squeezed until everything cracked. Until my ribs splintered and my lungs collapsed and my heart stopped beating. I closed my eyes for a second. Not because I was breaking. Because I was trying like hell not to.
“I forgot about that,” I admitted.
The words tasted like failure. Like ash. Like I’d betrayed her all over again. Like losing her once wasn’t enough. I had to forget I gave her the name too. Had to forget the most important thing about her. The thing that made her mine before she was anyone else’s.
“I didn’t forget her,” I said quickly. Hating the crack in my voice.
The one that made me sound like a kid instead of a man.
Hated that after twenty-three years, I still couldn’t talk about her without falling apart.
“I never forgot her. But I forgot... how much that nickname mattered. That I was the one who gave it to her.”
Dad’s hands were on me immediately. Both of them now. Heavy. Grounding. “Ford.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“No shit,” I snapped. Then softer, because he didn’t deserve my anger: “I’m fine.”
I wasn’t fine. Hadn’t been fine since the bullet tore through my back.
Since the surgeon told me I might never walk again.
Since I woke up in that hospital bed and realized I’d survived the war but lost the ability to stand on my own two feet.
Lost the ability to chase after my sister if I ever found her.
Lost everything that made me feel like a man instead of a burden.
But I was still here.
Still breathing.
Still fighting.
And if Lettie was Colette, if she was my baby sister, then I’d finally found her. After years of searching. After decades of guilt and grief and wondering if she was alive or dead or suffering somewhere I couldn’t reach.
I’d found her.
And I wasn’t letting her go.
Not again.
Not ever.