Chapter 25 #3
I don’t need to see her face to know. I can feel it. The sound of the gasp she sucks in at his rejection.
He pulls me back into a hug, seeing my tears.
His arms tighten around me, his chin pressed to the top of my head, steadying me while I shake against him.
For a moment, I let myself sink into the safety of it, the anchor of my brother alive and here.
The only thing that would complete this moment is if Dexter were here too.
When he finally pulls away, it’s only enough to look me in the eyes, thumb brushing the tears from my cheek. Over my shoulder, Dale shifts closer, with a look of anger marring her beautifully sharp features.
“Ford…” she whispers again, and the tinge of desperation in her usually confident tone shocks me.
He finally looks at her then—but the gaze is cold, flat, stripped of any tenderness. He shakes his head once, slowly and decisively as he releases me.
“Don’t,” he says, voice low and sharp. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
The words land heavier than a blow. I feel her falter beside me, the hope draining out of her as fast as the blood from Hayden’s side. Her lips part as if to protest, but no sound comes. Just silence, a formal dismissal, while he turns his attention back to me as if she were never there at all.
“Don’t?” Dale’s voice cracks, jagged and full of faltering confidence. She stumbles forward, her hand reaching for him against her will like she can claw back what he’s just ripped away.
Her hand falls to her side as quickly as it rose, her shoulders straighten in quiet defiance of the emotions I know are churning within her.
“You disappear, you let me think you’re dead, and now you stand there like I don’t exist? You owe me more than that, Ford!”
Her voice rises to a raw, unrestrained yell, echoing through the dining room. She looks like she’s been gutted, standing there in my pajamas, her short bob sharp and sleek, in a defensive position as though her whole body isn’t begging him just to give her something—anything to hold on to.
She flinches away from my touch, a look of ice and ire suddenly marring her features as she somehow stands taller. It makes her look a little sharper.
Ford doesn’t move; he only narrows his eyes at Dale, and when he finally speaks, his voice is carved from stone. “I don’t owe you anything.”
The silence that follows is brutal, and if you look closely, you can catch the subtle jolt his words send through her. Yet Dale stands as if ice runs in her veins, the rejection plain in the silent tears welling in her bright green eyes.
She wipes them away quickly, her scowl looking misplaced on her otherwise perfect face.
Ford doesn’t even give her the grace of softening. He turns his head, catching Hudson in his gaze. “Get her out of here. Take her home.”
It’s so final that the room stands there in silence, shocked at his reaction.
Dale lets out a broken noise, hiding it quickly by spinning on her heel and leaving the room, trembling, refusing to let them see her collapse.
Hudson stands up from where he was sitting in the corner of the room, drinking coffee so quietly I hadn’t noticed he was there for the entire spectacle, and leaves the room to help Dale home.
Behind us, I hear the jaggedness of Dale’s breathing, the frantic shuffle of her as she grabs her purse and keys. The sounds echo awkwardly through the cavernous room, hollow and out of place, while the rest of us pretend to carry on as if nothing at all has shattered.
I stand there, shocked, tears still dripping down my face.
I’m unmoving as I struggle to digest the morning and listen to Dale leave.
The door slams behind her, and the house falls quiet again, except for the sound of Hayden’s breath hissing through his teeth while Ford slaps the bandage on his side; the doctor must have left it on the table.
My chest is still raw from sobbing, but the anger rises hot, cutting through the grief.
I should be worried about my husband. I should be happy to see my brother. I should be mourning the loss of Dexter, and instead, I’m furious about the treatment of my best friend.
“What the fuck was that?” My voice is sharp, shaking, but I don’t care. “How could you treat her like that? She thought you were dead—she’s been tearing herself apart for weeks—and that’s what you give her?”
His jaw hardens, his hands still sticky with Hayden’s blood as he finishes taping his side. He doesn’t look at me right away, like he can brush it off, like Dale is nothing. And that dismissal, that cruelty, makes me want to claw at him myself.
“She loves you,” I spit, tears blurring my vision again. “How can you treat her like that?”
Finally, Ford lifts his eyes to me, flat and cold, the same way he looked at Dale. “Better she learns that she means nothing to me now than later.”
The words hit like a slap, cruel, meant to end the conversation.
I suck in a sharp breath, trying to steady myself, but the anger boils up again before I can swallow it down. “You can’t just do that to her, Ford,” I snap, my voice cutting across the table.
He doesn’t answer, his attention fixed on the grand dining table, which is full of bloodied gauze and stitching supplies.
I turn, looking at my husband with worry and then back to my brother, who was once presumed dead, and is now standing next to my bloodied husband.
“Where have you even been?” I demand, my voice rising. “All this time—where the hell were you?”
His jaw tightens, but he says nothing, and that silence makes me want to shake him until he breaks.
I drag my eyes back to Hayden, to the blood darkening the bandages around his side, and my chest clenches with fear. “And what about you?” I whisper, the sharpness draining into panic. “Why are you hurt? What happened to you?”
I reach for Hayden’s hand, desperate for him to answer, desperate for something that makes sense in this nightmare of a morning.
Hayden pushes back from the table before Ford can even answer, the chair scraping harshly against the floor.
He rises slowly, one hand pressed to his side, and for a terrifying second, I think he’s going to collapse.
But then he’s crossing the space between us, steady despite the blood and the stitches, his eyes locked on me.
“Darling,” he says, low and firm, the way he always does when he wants to quiet the storm building in me.
His hands find my shoulders, warm and steady, drawing me in until my forehead rests against his chest. The scent of iron and smoke clings to him, but it doesn’t matter.
I cling back, desperate for his solidity.
“You know I can’t tell you everything,” he murmurs into my hair, his breath rough against my ear. “Not the details. It’s Brotherhood business, and you know what that means.”
He caresses my hair, pulling me closer to him as he continues to speak, “Ford has some things to share with you, though.”
My throat burns. I want to scream, to demand answers. But the finality in his tone, the way his arms tighten around me as if he’s both shielding me and keeping me in place, tells me there’s no use.
“You’re bleeding,” I whisper instead, my voice trembling. “I thought—”
“I’ll be fine,” he cuts in, a hint of steel beneath the softness.
I wipe at my face with the back of my hand, forcing myself upright even as my body trembles. My voice comes out raw, but sharp enough to cut through the room. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Hayden’s eyes flick to mine, hard and unyielding, the cigarette burning low between his fingers. “Martine—it's not going to be easy.”
“No,” I snap, louder than I mean to. “But you can’t hide things from me forever.”
For a moment, the only sound is the hiss of the smoke curling from his cigarette. Then Ford speaks, his voice calm, steady. “She’s right. Some of this does involve her. She has a right to know.”
Hayden exhales hard, the kind of sigh that sounds more like a growl. He releases me to walk to the dining table and crushes the cigarette into the ashtray, jaw tight. “Fine,” he mutters, his gaze still fixed on me. “Go ahead.”
The words hang heavy in the air, permission wrapped in resentment, and I feel my chest tighten as I turn to Ford, waiting for the truth that has been locked away from me for too long.
Leave it to Hayden to overcomplicate a situation with his suffocating obsession with control.
For the first time since he stepped back into this house, Ford really looks at me. His expression is steady, almost too calm, and it terrifies me more than the wound seeping through Hayden’s side.
“I wasn’t dead,” he says quietly. “I was in training. Special training. Because we’re Legacies.”
“What do you mean by training?”
“They put me through hell, and I stayed there longer than I should have.”
“Am I supposed to go through training?” I ask hesitantly.
Ford chuckles, “No, you won't have to, Martini. But you should know we’re Legacies, so we’ll always be expected to contribute more than other members.”
I’ve always known this. Being a descendant of a founding member means you owe more than just your bloodline. Our family fortune was the foundation of the Brotherhood.
My chest tightens, every breath sharp and shallow. “Then why are you here now?”
His mouth presses into a line. “Because Hayden negotiated for my release. But it wasn’t free. In exchange for bringing me back, you now owe them a favor.”
The words land like a blow, and I shake my head hard, as if I can make them vanish. “No. No, I never agreed to that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ford replies, his tone blunt, merciless. “The Brotherhood only cares about your status. Hayden had to negotiate for something regarding you, because you're his wife.”
“Why?” My voice splinters, rising with desperation. “Why me?”
For the first time, Ford’s eyes flicker with something softer—regret, maybe, or pity. He drags a hand down his face before speaking. “Because there’s a secret, Martine. A secret about you. The Brotherhood knows, and they’re leveraging it against us.”
The room feels too small, the air sucked out of it. My stomach lurches. “What secret?”
He hesitates, just long enough to make me want to scream, and then he says it. “Henri wasn’t your real dad. Hudson’s father is. Sullivan Taft is your father.”
The ground tilts beneath me, and for a moment, I can’t hear anything but the rush of blood in my ears. Hayden’s hand grips mine, grounding me, but it’s not enough. The world has just cracked open, and I don’t know how to stand inside it anymore.
My head spins. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I whisper, as Hayden comes back to me to pull me close to his chest. I reach out, clutching at Hayden’s hand as if it will anchor me.
“I was the heir—the Huntington-Russell fortune—the arguments with the lawyer. Now you’re telling me I’m a Taft?
That’s—” My voice breaks. “This is all impossible to understand.”
Ford doesn’t answer, and that silence is almost worse than the truth.
The sound of footsteps cuts through the tension—a spark flares in the doorway, followed by a curl of smoke. Archie strolls into the dining room as though he’s been here all along, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes narrowing with amusement as he takes in the scene.
“Well,” he drawls, exhaling a ribbon of smoke toward the ceiling, “she’s not technically a Huntington-Russell anymore, is she? Her mother was a Belmont. Which means, little Martini, you’re a Taft now.”
The words are more complicated to digest than Ford’s silence.
I blink at him, stunned, the weight of his smirk pressing down like a boot on my chest. “What the fuck does that even mean?” I demand, my voice shrill, cracking. “What does any of this mean?”
Archie only grins, tilting his head as the smoke curls lazily around him. “It means the bloodlines aren’t as clean as everyone pretended. And in the Brotherhood, that’s a problem.”
Before I can catch my breath, Hayden’s voice cuts through the room, low and dangerous. “It will never be a problem.”
His hand comes down heavily on my shoulder, possessive and unyielding.
“She’s not a god damn Huntington-Russell or a Taft—She’s a Herron,” he says, his eyes locked on Ford first, then sliding to Archie with a glare sharp enough to kill.
“Titles, fortunes, names—it doesn’t matter.
I’m the richest and most powerful man in this Brotherhood, and nothing will touch her. Not now, not ever.”
The weight of his words fills the air, suffocating, final. My heart stutters in my chest, torn between fear and the sharp, twisted comfort of his dominance.
Archie takes a long drag of his cigarette, watching Hayden with lazy amusement. Then, with perfect timing, he exhales and smirks. “Christ, Herron. If you’re done pissing on the floor to mark your territory, maybe sit down before you rip your stitches open.”
Hayden’s chest rises like a storm about to break. The sound that rips out of him isn’t a word at first—it’s a roar, guttural and unrestrained, echoing off the high ceilings. He surges forward, swinging wide at Archie with a fist meant to shatter bone.
But his side catches fire mid-motion, the stitches pulling viciously. The blow cuts short, his body folding as his hand shoots to his ribs, blood already seeping through the fresh bandage.
Archie doesn’t flinch. He only throws his head back and laughs, the cigarette bobbing at the corner of his mouth. “Careful, Herron.”
Ford's fresh laughter rolls through the room, light and merciless, a sharp contrast to Hayden’s ragged breath.
Hayden’s breath comes in rough gasps, his knuckles white where they clutch his side. Archie is still chuckling, smoke curling lazily around his grin like nothing in the world could touch him.
Then Ford walks closer to the three of us, shaking his head as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. His voice cuts through the madness, dry but edged with something almost like relief.
“Fuck,” he mutters, a crooked smile tugging at his mouth. “I missed you guys.”
For a beat, the whole room stills, suspended between blood and laughter, between old wounds and new ones. And somehow, the absurdity of it makes the silence even heavier.