Chapter 15 Parker
PARKER
The jet hums like a sleeping predator, all leather and burnished chrome that catches the afternoon light sliding through oval windows.
Liam and Noah sit buckled across from me, headphones swallowing their small heads, iPads balanced on knees that don’t quite bend over the seat edge.
Cartoon explosions leak through the noise-canceling in tiny metallic bursts.
Liam pushes his dark hair back with that same impatient swipe—Jace’s gesture, muscle memory written in DNA—while Noah glances up with amber eyes that see everything, miss nothing.
Cal’s eyes. When they laugh together, the sound hits my sternum like recognition, that low mischief that belongs to Silas threading through their voices like smoke.
I’m not entirely sure who their biological father is. Well, fathers.
Plural.
When they were born, I noticed the differences first—their coloring, their cries, even the way they breathed.
Liam came out quiet, eyes wide and unblinking, skin pinking fast under the delivery lights.
Noah arrived two minutes later, fists already balled, lungs announcing himself to the world.
The nurses joked they couldn’t possibly be twins—one dark-haired and solemn, the other fair and furious.
I laughed because it was easier than googling if twins could have two separate fathers.
The doctors ordered the standard newborn panels, pricked their heels, and took their tiny vials of blood.
Routine, they said. But later, one of them frowned at the chart.
Something about the results didn’t make sense—the paternal markers were completely different.
My boys have different fathers, and that was more of a wow moment than a terrifying moment.
I felt like a medical oddity, to be honest.
I told her not to worry about it, signed the discharge papers, and made sure the records went under my mother’s maiden name.
Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I was twenty-eight, terrified, and just wanted to be a good mom. Even if that meant not ever reaching out to Jace, Cal, or Silas. At least, not back then. Now? I don’t really have a choice when it comes to seeing all three of them again.
Tomorrow we bury Dominic Carter. Natural causes and a lifetime of unnatural debts.
Charles sits diagonally from me, long body folded into buttery leather like he was born for it. The soft overhead lights carve new lines around his eyes, gray threading his temples—empire weight settling into his bones. He watches the boys with that careful smile, half pride, half apology.
“Liam looks like you,” he says, and we both step around the lie.
“They have the Carter jaw,” I reply. “Noah got my eye shape, though.”
His phone buzzes, that insect sound that rearranges air molecules. The screen lights his face as he answers, voice already shifting into business mode.
“Yeah,” he says, “what’s up, Sy?”
My hands still on my lap. The sound bleeds through the speaker: gravel and smoke, a voice that tightens every nerve ending I own. My shoulders lock, breath catching like I’ve been struck.
That same voice whispering against my throat in blue-hour darkness: “Firefly, look at me.”
I turn toward the window, using clouds as my mirror, but my fingers find the hem of my sweater, worrying the cashmere between thumb and forefinger.
“How did the negotiations go?” Charles asks, lazy as a cat. Then that laugh I know, not his public smile, but the one reserved for back rooms and blood-cleaned hands. “How many did you leave alive?”
The phone crackles. Silas’s voice filters through, distant but unmistakable, that particular rhythm that used to make my pulse stutter against hotel pillows. I catch fragments: “...warehouse secured...” “...message received...” The timbre hits my spine like a tuning fork.
The weight of him behind me, hands spanning my ribs, voice rough with want: “Tell me you feel this too.” The way he’d appeared in the hotel corridor like a shadow made flesh, still wearing his tuxedo but with the bow tie undone, shirt open at the throat.
Blood on his knuckles from something, someone, he’d handled quietly while the reception continued downstairs.
My breath catches. I press my palms flat against my thighs, fabric bunching under my grip.
Three sets of hands. Three voices saying my name like a prayer.
But it started with Jace’s control, the way he’d gripped my wrist in the elevator, voice cutting through my champagne haze: “You’re drunk, princess.
And you’re making choices you’ll regret.
” Except I wasn’t drunk. Not on champagne.
Just drunk on the way they looked at me like I was something precious and dangerous all at once.
The memories hit like physical blows: sharp, visceral, unavoidable.
“Crazy fucker,” Charles continues, and there’s affection in it, the kind reserved for monsters who belong to you. “Contact the cleaners to purge the warehouse.”
The way Jace’s control finally snapped when I whispered “yes” against his mouth. How his hands tightened on my throat, not to hurt but to claim. “Say it again,” he’d demanded, voice rough as gravel. “Say you want this. Say you want us.”
“When do Jace and Cal land?” Charles asks.
My pulse skips. Ridiculous for a woman who’s birthed twins and built empires, but there it is. That soft stutter I hate, can’t control. My fingers twist the sweater hem tighter.
Cal’s triumphant laugh as he spun me toward him, amber eyes blazing with something between victory and worship. “Angel, you have no idea how long we’ve waited to hear those words.” His hands mapping my face like he was memorizing it, thumb tracing my bottom lip. “No idea what you do to us.”
Through the speaker, static and distance: “...flight delayed...” Silas’s laugh, low and rough. “...personal package secured...”
I know that laugh. Felt it rumble against my ribs in blue-hour darkness, tasted it on whiskey-slick lips.
Silas behind me, his voice a prayer against my ear: “Firefly, you’re going to destroy us all.” But his hands were reverent as they found the zipper of my dress, sliding it down like he was unwrapping something sacred. “And we’re going to let you.”
“Parker hasn’t returned calls,” Charles says, casual as discussing the weather. “She might attend. Sienna and the kids set up the guest house just in case.”
Waking up between them in the pre-dawn darkness, their breathing steady around me. The weight of Jace’s arm across my waist, possessive even in sleep. Cal’s face buried in my hair, a small smile playing at his lips like he was dreaming something beautiful.
And Silas... Silas was frowning in his sleep, brow furrowed, jaw clenched like he was fighting demons even in dreams. A small sound escaped him, barely audible, but it sounded like pain. Like fear. My chest ached watching him battle whatever shadows lived in his head.
Static whispers from the phone. I strain to catch more of that voice, the one that used to call me firefly like it was a prayer, like a promise. But Charles shifts, the speaker angles away, and all I hear is my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.
I couldn’t help myself. I cupped his cheek, thumb smoothing over that furrow between his brows, and pressed the softest kiss to his lips.
Just a whisper of touch. Immediately, his face relaxed, the tension melting away.
He turned into my palm like a flower seeking sunlight, and for a moment, he looked peaceful.
Young. The boy I remembered before life carved him into something harder.
That’s when I knew I had to leave. Not because I regretted what we’d done, but because I understood what it meant.
They needed each other, their brotherhood, their unbreakable bond.
I was the variable that could destroy it all.
Even if I could make Silas’s nightmares disappear with a touch, I couldn’t be worth the cost of their family.
When he hangs up, the cabin fills with cartoon soundtracks and engine hum. Too loud with my silence.
I clear my throat, trying my best to crawl my way back to the present. “How are they?” I ask, voice too smooth, too carefully disinterested. “Jace and Cal and Silas?”
“Good. Different, but good.” Charles stretches into leather that probably costs more than most cars.
“Jace runs enforcement now—restructured it, made it look legitimate. Contracts and uniforms, but underneath, still a sharpened blade. Cal took over anything with wires—cyber, comms, keeping us ahead of federal interest. Silas is still...” He pauses, searching.
“Silas. Information extraction. Problem solving. Making examples.”
“Like Riverside,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Yeah. Guy tried to renegotiate after signing. Sy made the decision easy.” Charles studies me with those familiar green eyes. “You keeping tabs from LA?”
“Only when it bleeds into my feed.” Not quite a lie.
He exhales slowly, weighted. “After my wedding, they changed. Jace got colder. Silas started volunteering for every violent cleanup. Cal had a stretch where he wasn’t himself.” His fingers drum against leather. “Did you know they had eyes on you?”
My stomach drops. “What kind of eyes?”
“Found a mirrored drive when I was purging servers. Your name on the root folder. Cal’s work, but under Jace’s credentials.” He watches my face. “Logs. Geo tags. Photos from security cameras that shouldn’t aggregate. Timestamps going back to college, then LA. A couple of years’ worth.”
The air feels thinner. “Personal surveillance.”
“Jace said it was an old oversight from Dad. Said he meant to delete it.” Charles’s voice gentles. “He wiped everything while I watched. You were safe—that’s all that mattered.”
Safe. The word sits heavy because I can hear ghosts inside it—Cal with keyboards and bent conscience, Jace with passwords and promises he kept for reasons never spoken aloud.
“Something was off back then,” Charles continues. “You disappearing hit them harder than they admitted.”
“Can’t see why. They were your friends, not mine.”
“Don’t say that, Parks. They cared about you.” He leans forward. “After my wedding, I thought maybe something happened, but nobody said anything.”
“Nothing happened.” The lie lands soft as feathers, loud as gunshots. “I packed and flew out the next day.”
Noah peels off headphones, amber eyes finding mine like compass needles. “Mommy, are you sad?”
“No, baby.” I dry my cheeks with my sleeve. “Happy to be going home.”
The seatbelt chime sounds. Through windows, coastline spreads like promises and warnings—inlets, marsh light, the silver river curling behind the Carter estate like a sleeping guard dog.
“Welcome home,” Charles says, like something sacred.
Outside, three black SUVs wait with engines warm.
In the distance, barely visible against the backdrop of old money and older secrets, I catch a glimpse of movement.
Three figures too far away to distinguish, but my body knows anyway—recognizes the particular way they hold space, the gravity they create just by existing.
My mouth tastes like copper and sugar. The air smells like salt and cut grass. Thunder rumbles somewhere too distant to be certain if it’s coming closer.
I tell myself I’m ready. I tell myself I’m tired of running. I tell myself the truth weighs less than lies.
The door opens to heat and brightness, to summer that smells like reckless youth and consequences I’m finally ready to face.