Chapter Four
For a long suspended second, Deacon just stared at Jessa as if the words she’d spoken couldn’t possibly exist in the same universe they were standing in.
“I’m Noah Riggs’ biological daughter,” she repeated.
He looked as if someone had hit him with a two-by-four. His mouth parted. His eyes narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again, and he was obviously trying to force the pieces into some shape that made sense.
“This isn’t a joke… is it?” he finally managed to say.
Jessa closed her eyes. God, how she wished. She wished harder than she had wished for anything since Lauren died. “No,” she whispered. “It’s not a joke.”
A groan slipped out before she could swallow it down. Every time she said it, even in her head, it dragged a raw edge across wounds that hadn’t even begun to close.
Noah Riggs is my father.
She forced herself to meet Deacon’s eyes. “I’m still having a hard time accepting it,” she admitted, her voice cracking despite her best efforts.
He didn’t speak. His expression softened, just a fraction, but the shock stayed.
“I grew up believing Lauren rescued me,” Jessa whispered. “That she stepped in when no one else would. That she chose me. That everything she did was out of love.”
Her throat closed up hard. She swallowed through it.
“And instead… she was lying to me.” Her voice broke again, thinner this time. “For my entire life.”
Deacon’s brow furrowed, pain flickering across his features, not for himself, but for her. She hated how much she felt that look. Hated how old emotions surged under her ribs.
“My whole life,” she murmured. “Everything I knew… everything she told me…” She shook her head, voice trembling. “None of it was real.”
She didn’t realize she was shaking until Deacon reached out—hesitant, hovering—as if he wanted to steady her but wasn’t sure she’d let him. Truth was… she wasn’t sure either.
“Easy,” he murmured. “Sit down.”
Before she could protest, he guided her to one of the plastic chairs along the wall. The touch was steady, grounding… maddening. She sank into the seat because her knees weren’t giving her much choice.
Deacon crouched in front of her, ignoring whatever pain it caused his stitched-up side and arm. “Tell me everything,” he said. Not harsh. Not commanding. Just… resolute.
Jessa drew a sharp breath. Then another. She pressed her palms to her thighs, fingers curling into the fabric of her jeans to keep them from shaking.
“Shortly before she died,” she began, her voice barely above a whisper, “Lauren told me the truth. She said she wasn’t just my adoptive mother, that she was my biological mother too. She was nineteen, scared, alone… and she’d gotten pregnant.”
Deacon’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t interrupt.
“And Noah Riggs,” she forced out, “was the father.”
Silence dropped like a stone between them. Deacon leaned back just enough to study her face, as if trying to gauge how much of this was breaking her from the inside out.
“Does Noah know?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I’m sure he doesn’t. Lauren never told him.” Jessa looked away, her gaze landing on the scuffed tile floor. “She never told anyone before that day. Not Roman. Not me. Not Noah.” Her throat tightened again. “She carried my whole life in a lie.”
Saying it still hurt, every single time.
And Deacon, crouched in front of her with worry etched into his face, was witnessing every cracked edge she couldn’t hide.
Deacon’s stare sharpened, his shock giving way to confusion, then to something heavier. “Why would she keep this from you? From Noah? Noah’s not an asshole. In fact, he’s a decent man and probably was thirty years ago, too. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell him.”
She let out a bitter, shaky breath. “I don’t either.”
And she didn’t. Months later, it still felt like trying to solve a puzzle missing half its pieces. Every time she thought she had an answer, another question opened beneath her feet.
“I don’t know the details of their… romance,” she said carefully.
Even the word felt strange on her tongue.
Romance. Her mother and Noah Riggs, the very man who was her brother’s business rival.
“Lauren didn’t leave much for me to go on.
But she said that once she realized she was pregnant, she hid it from her parents. ”
Deacon frowned. “Because they didn’t like Noah?”
“They didn’t approve of him.” Jessa dragged her fingers through her hair, needing something to do with her hands. “Noah was in the wrong social class, and they were strict. Controlling. And they would’ve disinherited her for having a child out of wedlock.”
Deacon’s eyebrows pulled together even tighter, but she pushed on.
“Her family’s money… it wasn’t just money. It was power. Legacy. Expectations.” A humorless laugh slipped out. “Her standard of living was important to her. She grew up sheltered and watched every second of her life. But she didn’t want to disappoint them either.”
Deacon shook his head as if he couldn’t picture it. Like he didn’t want to.
“She told her parents she was taking a gap year,” Jessa continued softly. “Traveling Europe. Figuring herself out.” She swallowed. “But she was hiding a pregnancy. She gave birth to me overseas. Nobody knew, not her friends, not her parents, not Noah.”
“And then what?” Deacon pressed.
“She arranged for me to be brought back to the U.S. and placed in the foster system.” Her throat tightened again. “She told herself she’d… circle back. When she could. When her life was stable. When she was old enough to fight her parents for custody.”
Deacon stared at her, horrified. “She put you in foster care.”
“She said she hated herself for it,” Jessa whispered. “Every day, she hated herself for it.” Her breath trembled, but she forced the rest out. “Years later, when she had the means, she found me. And she adopted both Roman and me since by then he was my brother in every way that mattered.”
Deacon’s eyes softened, but only made the ache in her chest worse.
“She gave me a home,” Jessa whispered, voice cracking. “She just… didn’t give me the truth. And now the one person who knew everything is gone,” she whispered, “and Wynn is turning her secrets into weapons.”
Deacon stayed crouched in front of her, his expression tight with sympathy. He dragged a hand down his jaw, then met her eyes again.
“So what about Roman?” he asked quietly. “Is he… Lauren’s too?”
Jessa shook her head immediately. “No. Roman wasn’t her biological child.”
Deacon frowned. “Then why adopt both of you?”
Jessa let out a breath that trembled more than she wanted it to.
“Because Lauren thought it would make her look less suspicious to her parents if she adopted a boy and a girl. A matched set. Something her parents could applaud as a ‘charitable act.’” She forced a hollow laugh.
“She hid me in plain sight. She thought adopting Roman would keep them from ever looking too closely at me.”
Deacon blinked, stunned. “Jesus, Jess.”
“I know.” Her throat tightened. “What she did, what she arranged, wasn’t legal. Not all of it. There were private adoption loopholes, paperwork that wasn’t exactly aboveboard. She never told me every detail, but she didn’t have to.”
Deacon’s gaze sharpened. “Roman knows?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He found out a long time ago.”
“And he kept it from you?” Deacon pressed.
“He kept it from everybody,” she said softly. “Lauren made him promise. And when some… issues with her inheritance came up, Roman fixed them.”
Deacon’s brows shot up. “Fixed how?”
Jessa exhaled. Small. Uneven. Heavy with implication. “I don’t know the specifics. I didn’t ask. But Roman can and has bent the law when it comes to protecting us.” Her voice dropped. “Whatever he did, it wasn’t clean.”
Deacon muttered a curse under his breath.
Jessa looked down at her hands. Her fingers were trembling.
“So now,” she went on, “Wynn has just enough truth to burn Roman and me. And if he dumps everything he knows? Roman could go down and I could as well for accessory after the fact to whatever illegal wranglings he did for my mother so she could keep her inheritance. My grandparents are still alive, too. They’re in their late eighties and are both in assisted living.
This kind of scandal would no doubt crush them. ”
Deacon sat back on his heels, shaking his head slowly. “If Wynn loved Lauren as much as he claimed he did,” he said, “why the hell would he smear her name by spilling that she gave birth to a child out of wedlock? Why drag her reputation through the mud?”
Jessa closed her eyes for a heartbeat. God, she wished she had an answer that didn’t make her stomach twist. “He doesn’t care about her reputation,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”
That got Deacon’s attention.
Jessa forced herself to keep going. “Wynn wants to hurt Noah. That’s the point. That’s all of it. He thinks Noah crushed Lauren. That Noah broke her heart and left her alone to raise a daughter she couldn’t claim.”
The words felt wrong and right all at once. Too heavy. Too close to truths she wished she hadn’t heard.
“And Wynn…” she added, biting gently into her lower lip, “he’s always been jealous of Noah.”
Deacon frowned. “Jealous?”
“He worshipped my mother.” Jessa’s voice thinned, fragile around the edges. “Even when she tried to set boundaries or push him away gently, he clung harder. And when she talked about her past, about her regrets, Wynn twisted it into proof that Noah was the man who ruined her life.”
Deacon stared at her, searching her face. “Regrets? Jess… what regrets?”
Jessa’s stomach clenched. She looked down at her hands, twisting together in her lap.
“Before Lauren died,” she murmured, “she said some things that… made me think she was still in love with Noah. She wouldn’t say it outright, but she talked about him with this…
softness. This ache.” She paused. “I think she never stopped loving him. Not really. And Wynn knew it. Or sensed it. And it broke him.”