Chapter 3
Chapter Three
SOPHIA
The patriarch of the Cage family had been dead for five years now.
Five years in which Loren Cage was no longer a physical menace in our lives.
His presence would always be felt in the ramifications of his lies and treachery, but he no longer lurked in the shadows, ready to take so much away from those he professed to care about.
He would never be a grandfather, never be the one the next generation would look up to.
He’d gone to ash and bone and remained deep within his secrets until death.
When we were growing up, my section of the family had rarely seen my dad. It had been Isabella, then myself, then the lone boy in our family—or so I thought—with Kyler, and then Emily, and finally, Phoebe.
The five of us had been a close-knit family and had run our mother to exhaustion sometimes with all our extracurriculars.
That was probably why Isabella had stepped up at a far too young age to fill in wherever she could.
I’d had years of ballet, dance, gymnastics, and countless other classes in order to be a dancer. I had finished high school in a special program because I needed to dance full-time and didn’t have time to be in school all day. Scholarships had helped pay for it, or so I’d thought.
It turned out that my father had paid for it out of guilt when Mom had forced him into it. But he hadn’t wanted his children on this side of the family to know he had any money. Because then someone would start to ask questions.
The Cage family was well-known, but thanks to his friends, and other people connected within the higher-ups in Cage Enterprises, he’d been able to keep his identity a secret. And we had been none the wiser until he was gone.
He’d lived with us and yet hadn’t. He had been on the road for so long, and our mother had covered for him. I remember once he had come to a recital when I’d been in high school. I cried in happiness that he had shown up and had been so proud of me.
Isabella had scowled at him, and Emily and Phoebe had soaked in his attention, so happy that he was there.
Kyler had been in his emo phase, his hair dyed dark black and over his eyes, and had just glared at our father, before storming away.
Kyler still wouldn’t tell me why he hated our father so much back then, because I knew it had to be for some reason beyond his neglect.
Or maybe I was just seeing what I needed to, because Kyler wasn’t in town often.
While the rest of us lived in the state, either in the Denver Metro area, or within Cage Lake—a town that the Cages owned a majority of—Kyler technically didn’t.
He was in a band called Caged and Reckless, the lead singer and lead guitarist, and amazing. He performed in sold-out stadiums and had just finished a tour in Europe. He had a house in Denver, near me thankfully so he could see the girls, but he was rarely home.
Tonight, however, he was home.
And all of us were at our big brother Aston’s mansion, enjoying a family dinner.
Because in those five years since dear old Father had died, we had become a family of our own. All twelve siblings, creating connections that I don’t think he would have ever thought of.
Part of me had wondered if perhaps maybe he wanted us to get closer.
To find out who we were together. That had to be a pipe dream.
Because our father was not nice like that.
He wouldn’t want us to be happy or to find any sense of solace in his passing.
Because that would let the power slip through his hands—even if he was dead.
I had always thought that he had stipulated in the will that we needed to have dinner once a month, with five members of the family meeting, a blend of each section, so we would fail. Because we were different than the other Cages.
The other seven were all boys and had grown up in privilege. They had made something for themselves outside of who Loren Cage was. But their childhood had been far different.
I didn’t resent them, and I knew my sisters didn’t either. I didn’t think Kyler did, but he kept his secrets so close to the vest, I couldn’t tell.
Either way, we had defied our father’s wishes and had actually become a family.
I saw Flynn with his short dark hair and kind eyes, often, and Dorian, with his longer hair, bright eyes, and perpetual smirk, practically kidnap the twins just to be the best uncle.
With a regal grace that screamed royalty rather than businessman in his suit, Aston stood beside Isabella most days as the new patriarch and was the big brother that anyone could ever want.
Aston’s dark hair was always perfectly done unless he was around his wife Blakely, and then it looked as if one of them ran their hand through it often.
When I went to Cage Lake, Hudson with his scowl and long, messy hair, would be there, and he would keep us close and make sure that we were always taken care of.
James, Theo, and Ford constantly checked in on us, had family dinners, or invited us out with them. Ford had a husband and a wife, and a beautiful baby boy, who was cousins with my girls. And they would all grow up together, along with Aston’s son, Stone.
We had countless group chats with a mixture of each other, and it was no longer the main siblings versus the bonus siblings. And it depended on which Cage you were speaking to as to which group was called the other.
Our father wanted us to fail. He wanted the company that he had put his blood, sweat, and tears in to perish without him, because he thought he was the linchpin. He wanted the town to go under and hate the Cages.
And he had failed.
Because now, here we all were, with our families, laughing at a catered dinner and enjoying ourselves.
“You know, I could have cooked, but really, there’s just too many of you,” Blakely, Aston’s wife, said. She’d let her long curly hair grow out so it lay in deep layers. She’d done her light eyes up in a dark shadow and her smile brightened like no other.
“And you’re getting better at cooking every day,” Isabella teased. She pushed her short brown hair from her face and grinned.
Isabella and Blakely had been friends for years. Longer than Blakely and Aston had even been together. That had been a point of contention, of course, but they had overcome it, and now Blakely was another sister.
Phoebe giggled at something her husband, Kane, said, and I smiled at my baby sister, grateful that she found happiness in a man who was honorable, and was worth everything.
She smiled at me, and yet I saw the way that she studied my face, and the worry there. I ignored it, and tried to brush it off, just like I did with everyone else.
I loved my family, but they worried about me. They were waiting for me to break, for me to scream into the void at the unjustness of it all. But I wouldn’t. I had married a man just like my father apparently, in the cruel ways of irony. And I had made a terrible choice.
Part of me thought maybe I had married him in the first place because I’d been missing my father, but I didn’t want to think I had those kinds of father issues.
But Cale had preyed on me, and now I needed to deal with the consequences.
“When are you getting down to Cage Lake again?” Hudson asked, his arm around his wife, Scarlett.
Scarlett was the manager of the Cage Resort, an honest to God ski resort up in town that, once again, the family businesses owned.
I had a small stake in Cage Enterprises because Aston had made sure each of us did.
But I sold mine before I had gotten married, wanting to use the money to work towards my dance practice.
I was grateful that I had done that, because it had closed another avenue that Cale would’ve had into the family finances.
And when the divorce was over, and the paperwork settled as far as it could be in this moment, Aston had forced me to take another slice of the company.
He had wanted all of us to be part of it.
Even Ford, the youngest on that branch, had bought back into the family business.
He owned the security company that kept my home and my business safe now, and he had walked away from the family long before all of the secrets had come to light.
Considering our father had been a bigot and an asshole—some things we hadn’t realized until too late—it made sense.
Ford was a bisexual man in a poly relationship, and damn happy about it.
Of course, nearly every single one of my siblings was either bi or pansexual, so it was no wonder that our father had wanted us to fail.
We were everything he hated.
And most of us were finding happiness.
“You’re not eating,” Weston whispered, and I looked over at my brother-in-law, and smiled.
He and Bella had been married for a little while now, and alternated between living in Denver and Cage Lake, depending on which business they were working on in the moment.
With Weston’s adult siblings in Denver now, they were visiting for a while.
And it was like having yet another big brother when I already had far too many of them.
“I am. I ate all of my soup and a second helping,” I said.
He gave me a look, and Isabella tapped him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear.
I glared at her, knowing that she was only wanting to keep me healthy, but everybody was so worried about me that it enraged me to no end.
The conversation grew louder, as everybody began speaking to one another, and I continued my perusal of the group.
Theo and Flynn were in an animated conversation with Emily, and I smiled at the three of them.
Emily, I knew, was in the middle of changing careers, figuring out what she wanted, and I was grateful that she had the time and space to do so.
Our father had pushed her into one area and hadn’t let her do anything else.
Now, she had time to grow and was working hard at it.
I was surprised Theo and Kyler were here though, considering Theo owned two high-end restaurants, and Kyler had just gotten back from tour.