The price of love…
I need you to understand something before I tell you the rest. Something I should have told you years ago but couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Because the truth was too ugly, too shameful, too monstrous for me to speak aloud.
I trusted Titan, because you trusted him. And I’d let him convince me that between George Stone and William Doherty, our daughter would never have a life free from violence and danger.
So he helped me hide. And I stayed hidden.
And for years, I convinced myself I’d made the right choice.
But that help came with a price.
It wasn’t every brother; there were some good men in the Silver Shadows. Titan just wasn’t one of them. Neither were Steele and Stone. They were just like their father. All three of them were magicians, letting you see only what they wanted you to see.
There were a dozen of them; men who wanted something from me, and I gave it to them willingly, desperately, because every time I spread my legs for one of them, it meant our daughter stayed safe.
I told myself it was protection. That I was being smart, strategic. That it was what mothers did. They sacrificed everything for their children. I rationalized every encounter, every degrading moment, every time I let them touch me and pretended it didn’t destroy a piece of my soul.
But it wasn’t protection, Stephen. It was survival. And it turned me into something I didn’t recognize.
And then I got pregnant.
I don’t know who the father was.
That’s the truth I can barely write. The truth that makes me want to vomit every time I think about it. I got pregnant, and I don’t know which one of them did it because I’d been with so many. Steele one week. Stone the next. Titan when he demanded it. Other brothers when they came calling.
I was a whore, Stephen. That’s what I became. A woman who traded her body for her daughter’s safety and told herself it was noble.
The pregnancy was a nightmare. Every day I woke up knowing there was something growing inside me that was conceived in violence and desperation and shame. Every kick, every movement, was a reminder of what I’d become. What I’d allowed myself to become.
All my life there was one person who could handle the hard things life threw at us. One person who wasn’t bound by the same rules the rest of us were.
She had a willingness to do what others wouldn’t, to cross lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I’d always known this about her, even if I never said it out loud. Even if I was afraid of her because of it.
When I realized I was pregnant, I knew I couldn’t keep it. It didn’t feel the same as when I carried our daughter. That time was filled with hope, with excitement. With love.
Our daughter was a junior in high school, too old to hide the pregnancy from, so there was only one other option. One weekend close to my due date, she was away on a school trip, and the timing felt like a cruel joke from God.
A window.
An opportunity.
And there was only one person I could call who would actually do something about it. Who wouldn’t hesitate or judge or try to talk me into keeping it. She would handle it. She always handled every situation I found myself in.
Not because she loved me unconditionally.
Not because she was my mirror or my anchor or any of the things sisters are supposed to be.
I called her because she was the only person in the world who would walk into this darkness with me and not flinch.
Who would do what needed to be done without asking too many questions.
She came to Arkansas without hesitation. Drove through the night. And when she arrived, I could see it in her eyes—that cold calculation, that willingness to cross into territory most people wouldn’t even acknowledge existed.
I was terrified of her.
But I needed her more.
So I called Caroline.
I knew it was a mistake the moment she walked into the small house I lived in.
One look into her eyes and I remembered why you pulled me away from California, away from her.
But I was desperate, Stephen. Terrified.
I needed someone to hold my hand through this nightmare, and Caroline came without hesitation.
She drove all the way from California to Arkansas. She didn’t come alone. She brought someone with her—a woman who knew how to induce labor, who had done this before. It was planned. Premeditated. There was nothing accidental about any of it.
The birth was in the middle of the night. Just Caroline, the woman she’d brought, and me in that tiny house. The pain was unbearable, but it was nothing compared to what came after.
And then he was born.
A boy.
Tiny and perfect.
Beautiful in a way I wasn’t prepared for. His eyes opened. His lungs filled with air. He cried, this small, perfect sound that broke something inside me.
I held him. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel the weight of him in my arms, to understand what I’d done, to realize I couldn’t take it back.
And then I looked at Caroline.
She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with that cold, calculating expression, and I knew. I knew what came next. What I was asking her to do. What I was choosing.
“What do we do?” I whispered, though I already knew the answer.
Caroline took him from my arms. Wrapped him in a blanket. And walked out of that room.
I never saw my son again.
I told our daughter the baby died. That’s the lie I’ve carried all these years.
That’s the shame that’s eaten me alive. Not that I lost him, but that I gave him away.
I asked my sister to make him disappear, and she did.
No questions. No hesitation. Just the cold efficiency of a woman willing to do the unspeakable.
I held a living, breathing baby boy and then I let him go.
That’s what I became, Stephen. That’s the choice I made.
And then everything fell apart.
Not long after Caroline took my son, something else would happen that would alter my life forever and have me and our daughter running again. This time from everyone we knew. Something I’m not ready to talk about yet.
We settled in New Orleans. I knew you hated the city. Knew it was the last place you would look. I thought we were safe.
But things always get worse.
As I write this, we are living with the Bourbon Kings.
For the first time in my life, I feel safe.
Even though I’m dying, knowing that I’ll never see our daughter fall in love, get married, have children.
I feel free. Free from the legacy of my family, from the mistakes I’ve made.
The choices that led me to the darkest places I’ve ever been.
Once I’ve told you everything, then I can leave this earth with my conscience clear. Not free of the guilt I’ve lived with my whole life, but free from the burden of carrying the secrets I’ve lived with.
Four years after she walked away with my son, Caroline found us. I don’t know how, but when she learned I had a daughter I never told her about, she was furious.
I never knew what she’d done with the little boy I gave birth to—not until then. Not until she called me with a demand.
Caroline never judged me for having a child and not knowing who the father was. But she never forgot it either. Or how I’d gotten pregnant with him in the first place.
And then she told me what she wanted me to do.
There were people after her. One of them was her son.
Her son!
Do you remember Max? He was only about four years old when we met. He was a sweet little boy, always running through the clubhouse, his blond hair in his eyes. I didn’t want to believe the story she was telling me, but she was convincing.
It wasn’t until it was too late that I learned the truth. That everything that had happened to Caroline she deserved. Yet, she was still my sister. My twin.
When she called, she told me another chapter in the club was coming for her. The Florida Chapter was closer and would be there first. She just needed time to get away.
So I made another choice.
I met with Toxic and his men in Louisiana. And I gave them the only thing I had left to bargain with. My body. Again. One more time. I whored myself out to delay them from going to that plantation. To protect both of my children the only way I knew how.
Because if they’d gone, Caroline would have killed them. Both of them. And I couldn’t let that happen.
So I became that woman again. The one who trades her body for safety. The one who sacrifices her dignity, her soul, everything she has left, to keep her children alive.
And it worked. Toxic never showed.
But the nightmare didn’t end there.
Because Caroline had lied to me. She had told me our daughter and my son were in danger. Because they were related to her, because Max had lost his mind and wanted to kill everyone related to her.
It wasn’t until after she died that I learned the truth.
She kidnapped my son. Took him from the only father he’d ever known and held him at a plantation in Louisiana. Used him as leverage. As a weapon.
And that was the least of her crimes. A woman died because of what I did. Because I used my body to keep the Golden Skulls from getting to the plantation on time.
When I found out what Caroline had done, that she had my son, that she was hurting him, that he was suffering because of choices I’d made, I wanted to die. I wanted to take it all back. Every decision. Every compromise. Every sacrifice that had led to this moment.
But you can’t take it back.
My brother James had been killed earlier that year. And then I was the only Dougal left. I thought maybe now life would be different. No more James, no more Caroline, no more deception, or lies, or blackmail.
Samuel was returned to Matrix, the man who was raising him, the only father he’d ever known. Please don’t let our daughter look for him. Please don’t let his life be uprooted again. He doesn’t deserve to be saddled with the Dougal name.
Let him be free.
I thought, with James and Caroline gone, I would be free.
I had one year of peace. One year of believing that both of my children were safe. That the terror had ended. That I could finally breathe without waiting for the next threat, the next demand, the next impossible choice.
I thought I’d survived.
And then, I was diagnosed with lung cancer.
The cruelty of it was almost poetic. I’d sacrificed everything, my body, my dignity, my soul, to keep my children alive. And now my own body was killing me.
That’s who I became, Stephen. A woman so desperate to protect her children that she gave one away, let the other be used as leverage for years, and whored herself out repeatedly to keep them both alive. Keep them both safe.
A woman who survived her sister’s torture and blackmail, only to be destroyed by her own cells turning against her.
I’m not asking for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I’m not even asking for understanding, because I don’t understand it myself.
I’m just telling you the truth.
The truth about why I ran.
The truth about what I did.
The truth about who I really am.
A woman who gave away her son to protect her daughter, then spent years being punished for it by the one person who should have helped me.
A woman who sacrificed her body over and over again because it was the only currency she had.
A woman who thought she’d finally escaped, only to discover that survival itself was temporary.
I’m sorry, Stephen. I’m so, so sorry.
I’m sorry for being weak. For not being the woman you believed I was.
For trusting Caroline. For letting fear control me for so long that I stole years from you and our daughter because I was too terrified to face what I’d done.
For becoming someone you could never love. For all the choices that led us here.
This secret has been eating me alive for years.
Every day I wake up and remember what I did, who I became, what I let happen.
And now, as my own body betrays me, as the cancer spreads through my lungs, stealing my breath one day at a time, I realize the cruelest irony of all: I survived James.
I survived Caroline and the blackmail, the threats, the impossible choices.
I survived giving away my son and watching my daughter suffer.
I survived every decision I made that I thought was right.
But I couldn’t survive myself. My cells turned against me. My own body became the final punishment for everything I’ve done.
I always knew my DNA would be my demise.
I just thought it would come from the choices I made, the ones I couldn’t take back, the ones that carved pieces out of me until there was nothing left but guilt and ash.
I thought the Dougal curse would kill me through my own hands, through the weight of my own decisions.
I was wrong.
There’s more. Something darker that lives inside me, something I don’t have the courage to write yet. Not today. Maybe not ever. It sits in my chest like a stone, heavier than all the rest, and I can’t... I’m not ready.
I’m not sure I ever will be.