Chapter 6
Chapter Six
DORIAN
“It could be worse. We could be having this at your ghost house.”
I glared over at Hudson as we scrambled up the stone pathway to Aston’s home on the edge of the lake.
Each of my siblings—at least the ones I had grown up with—had a place on the lake.
I wasn’t using mine currently, and Hudson’s was farther back into the forest, but we each had a place that we used when we visited.
For some it was an oasis. Some an escape.
For me, it would be my reward if I ever actually finished this particular project.
Currently we were walking up to Aston’s place since he and Blakely were in town for the lovely family dinner we were required to have every month.
Because when our dear old dad had died, he hadn’t just decided to throw a few skeletons out of his closet directly into our faces. No, he had decided to make it complicated for us.
While most people may have realized that their parents had secrets, I felt like ours were a little special.
Some cheating fathers had a single kid out there with a woman who had been forced into silence.
Not us.
We had an entire family out there who had thought their dad took far more work trips than was reasonable.
Then again, we had thought the same. Well, knowing what I knew at the time, it was more that my parents had probably hated each other in some way, so being apart would be easier than having to deal with one another face-to-face.
But for some reason, both of the moms had been in on it.
I didn’t know their motivations; money, a twisted form of love, or exhaustion, but here we were. Dealing with the consequences.
Because if our family did not have dinner once a month, we would lose everything.
I wasn’t sure exactly which crackpot lawyers had allowed this to happen, but because it was so tangled in red tape, we were leaning into it.
At least five of my Cage siblings had to be in residence for a dinner once a month.
We had an actual spreadsheet and calendar to ensure this happened.
Because it couldn’t just be five from one side of the family and not any from the other.
There had to be at least three from one side at a time.
Usually that meant the siblings I grew up with because we were seven.
And the ones who had grown up farther south, and in a different tax bracket thanks to Dad’s cruelty, were only five.
The fact that I had eleven siblings truly made my stomach hurt.
Then again, for all I knew there were more siblings out there. I swallowed hard. Countless other siblings that we would never know about until a new skeleton popped up out of nowhere.
Hell, maybe one of Dad’s special letters would show up and at the end of this torment and betrayal, we’d have a whole new surprise.
I shuddered to think there was a third family out there. Because no, there couldn’t be. If there had been, Dad would’ve mentioned it at some point in the will.
It was how he fucked with us.
It wasn’t that we would just lose everything. It would break the shaky foundation that Cage Enterprises and Cage Lake sat upon.
Cage Enterprises was a billion-dollar company that fed into real estate, development, environmental concerns, research and development, and countless other departments.
My family that worked with the main part of Cage Enterprises were brilliant at what they did and wanted it to succeed.
Thousands of jobs would be lost if the company was dissolved.
Not only that, but real people would be hurt without some of our research.
Aston, Flynn, and James worked on Cage Enterprises, and they split it into three main sections. Blakely and Isabella now worked with them. Our family was a tangled mess, but it made sense.
With so many siblings there were bound to be knots and tangles.
We didn’t always have family dinner up in Cage Lake, sometimes we had it in Denver. At some point if anybody decided to move outside of the state, maybe we would have it there.
That reminded me. “Is Kyler going to be here?” I asked as we walked into Aston’s home without knocking.
Hudson shook his head. “He’s still on tour.”
“So now he’s coming to fewer of these than you are,” I said drily.
Hudson shrugged as he hooked his jacket on the rung and reached for mine.
I raised a brow. “I can take off my own jacket.”
He glanced at my leg. “You’ve been limping. Didn’t know if your ribs still hurt.”
Glaring, I handed over my jacket before stalking away.
Hudson rarely came down to Denver, so he didn’t go to any of the family dinners in the city.
And Kyler was a famous rockstar, which always made me laugh.
Meaning he was out of town often. I didn’t even know if he had a place in Denver.
That was shitty of me. My own sibling and I didn’t know where he lived.
Then again, it wasn’t as if Kyler spoke up in the group chat.
Or even talked to us often. He talked to his sisters, I knew that much. But I didn’t know him.
I didn’t really know any of that side of the family.
“Well, that makes five,” Aston said as he lifted up his lowball of whiskey in a toast.
“Let’s get this damn photo over so we can actually have a dinner without losing everything and having it tainted.” Isabella pulled out her phone, and before I could even get a drink, she snapped a photo of the five Cages as well as a couple of spouses.
I looked around the room and realized that yes, we were five. Now that Hudson and I were there, it added to Isabella and Aston, their significant others, and Sophia.
My lips curled into a smile as I looked over at my sister, and the fact that she couldn’t help but glow.
She’d not only married the love of her life who cherished her, making her the center of his world, she’d gotten pregnant soon after the wedding.
Now a new mother, she’d settled into her role with such grace, it was as if she’d only been waiting for her person to come along.
My brother-in-law, Cale—yes, the man was named after a vegetable but spelled with a C—was a nice guy.
He was a little quiet compared to the rest of us, but you couldn’t help but be quiet with so many Cages in the room.
In fact, I knew the guy more than I even knew Kyler or Emily, my youngest sister. And how shitty was that?
But Emily rarely came to these dinners, since she lived the farthest away other than Kyler. And well, apparently, she had more of a life than the rest of us.
“Where are my favorite people?” I asked as I moved past the others without even bothering to say hello.
Sophia just smiled in answer. “They are sleeping upstairs in their cribs. Because why wouldn’t my sister-in-law build a nursery for them?”
Blakely moved forward and wrapped her arm around my waist. I couldn’t help but do the same over her shoulders. “Hi there, Dorian. Good to see you.”
“Hi,” I mumbled.
She just laughed. “I mean, of course I’m going to have space for them. My nieces need all the love and nurture. Plus, I’m sure that there will be more in the future considering how many Cages there are.”
I looked down at Blakely with a raised brow. “Oh? Something we need to know?”
She choked on air, waving her hand in her face.
Aston was there in a second, glaring at me.
I blinked. “Seriously? I was only kidding. Well fuck.”
My brother let out a dramatic sigh. “Of course we aren’t. We’d announce it better than this. You know my wife. She knows how to plan things.”
Blakely rolled her eyes. “And please, give me time before you start making me grow a football team.”
That made everybody laugh, and I nodded in thanks as Hudson handed me a beer.
“Actually, Ford was supposed to be here too, and he wanted to announce something,” Aston put in.
Ford was our younger brother and had married before all of us. In fact, the precocious asshole who I loved dearly had married not one but two people. His best friend and their favorite woman. Dad hadn’t been happy with that but fuck it. Fuck him.
“Really? Greer is pregnant?” Sophia asked as she clapped her hands.
Aston nodded. “Yes and he was going to announce it tonight at family dinner, and maybe even do a group text or something, but something came up.”
“Is Greer okay?” I asked, my heart racing.
“Greer is just fine,” Blakely said with a bright smile. “There was a family emergency with Noah, everyone’s okay, but they couldn’t make it tonight. And they wanted to make sure that we knew about the pregnancy, because the Montgomerys just found out, as well as Greer’s brothers.”
“The Montgomerys keep beating us, and I don’t think I like it,” I said, trying to infuse the humor that I usually brought to an occasion. But from the worried looks on my siblings’ faces it wasn’t really getting there.
“I think I hear a baby’s cry,” Sophia said before she rushed off. I gave Cale a look.
“I don’t know how she does it either. But now I hear it,” Cale said as he followed her. I couldn’t help but do the same as I gave my beer back to Hudson.
I hadn’t been the greatest brother in the past year, and I knew it. Between pain, dealing with Mom, and just well, everything, I was an asshole. But Sophia’s twins? I loved them more than anything.
And when Ford’s kid came into the world? I couldn’t help but be their favorite uncle. I might as well have one title like that.
I heard the others behind me cheering on Ford and his family, and I would text him later, but for now, I needed to check on the girls.
“They’re just wanting to be picked up, everything’s okay, Dorian,” Sophia said softly as she held one of them close to her chest. Cale held the other, and I couldn’t help but go over to the man and hold out my arms.
“You’re lucky I like you,” Cale mumbled as he put a small bundle into my hands.
“She’s so tiny,” I whispered. Her bright baby blue eyes stared up at me as she reached for my finger. “Strong grip.”
“I swear you Cages melt so quickly as soon as you have one of the girls in your arms.”