Chapter 31
PORTIA
T he blood on my hands wasn’t mine.
It was Caroline’s.
Still warm. Still red. Still everything that made this moment feel more like a scream than a silence.
I sat on the marble floor of Blackthorn Hollow, my knees pulled to my chest beside Silas, who held his mother like she was made of glass. The light above us flickered as if the house itself were trying to mourn her, too.
She had thrown herself into the path of a bullet meant for me.
“God,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “She stepped in front of it. She saw the gun and she didn’t even hesitate.”
Silas didn’t speak. His jaw was locked, his hands slick with her blood, his arms cradling her like the child he’d once been—the one she’d left to keep him safe, the one she had returned for.
“She saved me,” I said, louder this time, the weight of it crashing down. “She saved me.”
Ryker and the others stood close now, but no one interrupted. Marcus’s hand rested lightly on Silas’s shoulder, his face pale and unreadable. Charlie stood by the door, rifle low, eyes tracking shadows like they might come alive again.
“I don’t understand,” I said, barely recognizing the rasp of my own voice.
“I thought she was this cold, untouchable operative. I thought she left because she couldn’t be both.
But she still loved her boys.” My eyes locked on Silas.
“She loved you. That’s why she came back.
And when it counted most, she didn’t even hesitate. ”
The truth of it cracked something open in me.
Because for years I’d held myself apart from my own family.
I'd written off my parents in Arkansas as well-meaning but small-minded, too far removed from the life I’d clawed out for myself in Atlanta.
I’d dismissed my sisters' calls, dodged family holidays, justified my distance as ambition.
I told myself love had strings and guilt and judgment and old wounds that never healed.
But Caroline had spent decades estranged from her sons. And still, without blinking, she’d thrown herself in front of that bullet. Not for duty. Not for Department 77. But because somewhere in the fire and ashes of her choices, her love for her sons had survived.
“She didn’t owe me anything,” I whispered. “But she gave me everything.”
Silas didn’t look at me, but I saw his throat work.
My hands trembled in my lap.
I had a mother. A father. Siblings who’d all reached out more times than I deserved. Who had wanted to know me, see me, love me even when I pretended I didn’t need it.
And what had I given them in return?
Distance. Silence. Excuses.
“I have to call them,” I said suddenly. The words rushed out like breath after drowning. “When this is over, I have to call my family. I have to tell them I’m sorry.”
Elias looked over, his brow furrowed, but he didn’t say anything. None of them did. Because they understood. Every one of them had a scar from family—either the lack of it, the weight of it, or the desperate fight to reclaim it.
“I was selfish,” I went on, more to myself than anyone else. “I thought being strong meant standing alone. That if I let them back in, I’d crumble. That I had to keep running forward or I’d turn to salt like Lot’s wife.”
A shudder ran through me, hot and sharp. “But what’s the point of building anything if you cut the roots out first?”
Silas finally looked at me. His eyes were unreadable, filled with too much. Grief. Shock. Something close to awe. “You should,” he said hoarsely. “Call them.”
“I will,” I swore. “When we get home.”
Home.
Not just Atlanta.
Wherever he was.
Silas turned back to his mother’s face, brushing her hair gently behind her ear. His lips were pressed into a white line, but when he spoke again, his voice broke. “She would’ve wanted that. For you.”
My throat closed. “For you, too.”
And then he nodded. Once. Just once. Like something inside him had shifted.
Caroline’s death wasn’t just an ending.
It was a reckoning.
And a beginning.
I reached out and touched her hand. Cool now. Stained. But still fierce, even in death.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my voice barely sound. “I’ll carry it. Every day. I’ll protect what you died for.”
Ryker murmured something into his comm. Noah stepped forward to cover the entrance. Charlie and Atlas moved toward the rear of the house, double-checking every door, every fallen body.
The war was over.
But not the fallout.
Not the healing.
That would take time.
And maybe—for the first time—I’d let myself have that time.
Not just as a planner.
Not just as a woman who'd clawed her way up from nothing.
But as a daughter.
A sister.
A woman in love.
A survivor who’d stopped running.
Ryker crouched beside Silas, his presence steady, the way a brother’s should be in the aftermath of everything falling apart.
No one said much. The house creaked with settling grief.
It wasn’t until Silas spoke—his voice hoarse and hollow—that anyone broke the silence. “What does this mean?” he asked, eyes fixed on Caroline’s face, his thumb brushing the blood away from her cheek like it mattered. “What she told me?”
A heavy silence dropped over the brothers.
“Could Dad really have had another family?” Silas continued, hollow now.
A stunned breath rattled out of Elias.
“What the hell happens if it’s true?” Charlie asked, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “If we have brothers and sisters out there we’ve never met?”
No one had an answer.
Silas looked up slowly then, his voice breaking as it cut through the room. “What do we do if they were just kids—like we were? If they didn’t ask for any of this but still ended up tied to it because of him?”
The weight of it hung there. The pain of it.
I suspected none of them had ever really gotten the whole story—not from their father, and definitely not from Caroline. The Department had made a habit of stealing people’s lives, and it had stolen theirs before they’d even been old enough to understand what they’d lost.
Still cradling Caroline’s body, Silas looked broken in a way that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with betrayal.
And yet, despite the silence, despite the blood, not one of his brothers turned away. No one tried to run from it.
Instead, Ryker moved closer and rested a steadying hand on Silas’s shoulder. “Then we find them,” he said quietly. “Whatever it takes.”
Elias nodded, jaw clenched. “If they’re out there, we do right by them. That’s what Dad would’ve done, even if he fucked it all up.”
Atlas looked toward the windows, his voice gruff. “We should’ve known him better. All of us.”
They stood there, heads bowed, weapons slack at their sides—not soldiers anymore, not operatives. Just sons.
The room dropped into a deeper stillness.
Charlie let out a low whistle, more disbelief than judgment. Elias muttered something I couldn’t hear, his hands curled into fists at his sides. Noah sat down heavily on the edge of a ruined settee, head bowed.
Marcus leaned against the nearest wall and stared at nothing. “So … what do we do now?”
Silas didn’t answer.
Because none of them had that answer. Not yet.
They were all still just trying to breathe through the ache of this hour.
Their mother, the woman who had loved and deceived and protected and abandoned and returned—was gone.
And now they had a father who hadn’t just disappeared. He’d left another life behind. Another family.
The betrayal rippled outward like a bruise under skin.
I didn’t speak. Not yet. I let them have this. Let the gravity of it pull them close to one another in that silent, fraternal way they knew. A web built of nods and glances and barely-there touches. The kind of strength I’d once misread as distance.
They didn’t cry.
They didn’t shout.
They didn’t need to.
Because I finally understood what these men were made of.
And it wasn’t cold steel.
It was tempered fire.
Each of the Dane brothers had gone through something I couldn’t begin to imagine. They’d bled for people they didn’t know, followed orders that must have kept them awake for weeks. They’d built lives around missions and intel and trust so precise it could get you killed if it slipped even a hair.
But they hadn’t come back hardened into something inhuman.
They came back more human.
More aware.
More loyal.
More present.
And now—now I could see it so clearly, it almost broke me.
These weren’t just men who carried guns and secrets and military precision in their bones. They were protectors. Providers. Brothers in the truest, blood-deep sense.
They showed up. Every time.
Even when the world told them not to. Even when it hurt. Even when it cost them everything.
And they didn’t do it for glory. They didn’t wear dog tags as fashion or tell long war stories over bourbon just to impress people at cocktail parties.
They didn’t boast.
They just were .
The kind of men who, if the world paused for one breath on Veterans Day, would be the ones standing off to the side—shoulders back, hands folded, eyes lowered—not needing the applause.
Because they already knew what they’d given.
And what they’d lost.
That was what made them terrifying. Not the weapons. Not the rumors. Not the black ops pasts.
But the fact that they were still soft in the places that mattered.
Still capable of love.
Still standing.
I watched Ryker place a hand on Silas’s other shoulder, his grip firm. Elias moved closer to Charlie, and they exchanged a few low words that seemed to ground them both. Marcus didn’t say much, but the expression on his face—half guilt, half bone-deep sorrow—spoke volumes.
And all I could think was how wrong I’d been.
About all of them.
When I’d first arrived in Charleston, I’d kept my distance. I'd mistaken their discipline for coldness, their silence for arrogance. I thought their protectiveness was a form of control. I thought loving someone like Silas meant losing your autonomy. Your self.
But it was the opposite.
Because the love these men gave? It was fierce. Absolute. Shelter from a thousand storms.
They didn’t flinch when things got hard.
They ran toward the fire.
Silas.
I stared at him then—at the man who’d once terrified me, who now held my whole heart in his bloodied hands—and I felt something tighten in my chest.
Love.
Not the kind you write into vow books.
The kind you go to war for. The truest love I’d ever known.
I had never dated a military man before Silas Dane. I’d told myself they were too rigid. Too dangerous. Too burdened by their pasts. But now, looking at him—looking at all of them—I saw what I’d been missing.
I hadn’t been afraid of military men.
I’d been afraid of love that big.
Love that dug its nails into your soul and demanded you become someone worthy of surviving with.
Love that didn’t leave when the bullets flew.
I would’ve never taken this job without Monte. I’d told myself that a dozen times over. But Monte saw something in these men I hadn’t known how to recognize.
Goodness.
Not softness. Not naivety.
But deep, unshakeable goodness forged in fire and loss and sacrifice. He knew their world was dangerous and he worried about me, but he saw the goodness beneath it all.
And now I saw it, too.
Now I understood.
Now I knew what it meant to be loved by a Dane.
And I wasn’t walking away from it.
Not now.
Not ever.
I looked down at my hands—still stained with Caroline’s blood, still shaking—and I made a silent vow.
I’ll never run again .
Not from Silas.
Not from love.
Not from family.
Because some kinds of loyalty weren’t just earned.
They were chosen.
And I was choosing them now.
All of them.
For life.