Chapter 56 Cal
CAL
The living room of our guest house smells like coffee and the antiseptic from Silas’s bandage changes, a combination that’s become as familiar as breathing over the past two weeks.
We’re all here—me on the couch, Jace in the armchair by the window, Parker perched on the arm of the sofa near me, and Silas in the recliner that’s become his throne since we got him home from the hospital.
He’s moving better now. Slower than his usual predator grace, but better. The chest wounds are healing clean, the doctors said. No infection. No complications. Just time and rest, and the kind of stubborn resilience that Silas has in spades.
Not that he makes it easy on anyone.
This morning, Parker tried to help him down the stairs and got a growled “I can walk down my own fucking stairs” for her trouble.
Yesterday, Jace attempted to carry his laundry and received a string of profanity creative enough that I’m pretty sure he invented new curse words.
I learned my lesson three days ago when I tried to bring him breakfast in bed, and he told me if I treated him like an invalid one more time, he’d shoot me in the leg so we could be even.
The only people allowed to help him are Noah and Liam.
Watching those two five-year-olds bring Silas water, fluff his pillows, and generally fuss over him while he accepts it with patience and gratitude is both hilarious and somehow perfectly right.
They’ve taken their caretaker roles seriously, drawing him get-well cards every day and insisting on sitting with him during his physical therapy exercises.
Right now, though, the boys are up the hill at Charles and Sienna’s house with Lottie and Jimmy. We made sure of that before we agreed to do this. Before Parker pulled up the email that’s been sitting in her inbox for three days, unopened, waiting.
The paternity results.
My stomach has been in knots since she mentioned it this morning.
Not because I’m worried about the results—I know Noah is mine the same way I know my own heartbeat, have known it since the moment I saw him at the funeral with those amber eyes that are an exact copy of mine—but because of what it means.
What it changes.
What it confirms.
Parker’s tablet is connected to the TV, the screen mirrored so we can all see. She’s got the email pulled up, cursor hovering over it like she’s afraid to click.
“You sure you want to do this now?” I ask, even though I know the answer. We’ve been putting it off, all of us dancing around it, but Silas is healing, and the boys are safe, and there’s no reason to wait anymore except cowardice.
“We need to know,” Parker says, her voice steady even though I can see her hands shaking slightly. “We’ve been operating on assumptions, math, and eye color for two months. We need to know for sure.”
She clicks.
The email opens. Three attachments. Three PDF files labeled with clinical precision.
DNA Paternity Test Results - Noah Carter & Calvin Voss
DNA Paternity Test Results - Liam Carter & Jace Moreau
DNA Paternity Test Results - Noah Carter & Liam Carter & Silas Vale
Parker opens the first one. My results.
The document loads, full of scientific terminology and genetic markers and percentages that all mean the same thing.
Probability of Paternity: 99.9%
Result: Calvin Voss is the biological father of Noah Carter
I already knew. Have known since I saw him. But seeing it in black and white, official and undeniable, makes something in my chest crack open.
Noah is mine.
My son.
I have a son.
The thought still doesn’t feel real, even though I’ve been living it for two months. Even though I’ve held him, played with him, taught him how to shift gears on a motorcycle, and how to make the perfect hot chocolate. Even though he calls me by my name but looks at me like I hung the moon.
He’s mine.
“Cal?” Parker’s voice is soft. Careful. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I manage, and my voice sounds rough even to my own ears. “Yeah, I’m good. I just—” I stop, swallow hard. “He’s really mine.”
“He’s really yours,” she confirms, and there’s something in her eyes that might be tears or might be relief or might be both.
Jace is watching me with that steady expression he wears when emotions are running high, and he’s trying to keep everyone grounded. But I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands are gripping the arms of the chair.
He knows what’s coming next.
Parker opens the second file.
DNA Paternity Test Results - Liam Carter & Jace Moreau
Probability of Paternity: 99.9%
Result: Jace Moreau is the biological father of Liam Carter
The silence in the room is deafening.
Jace doesn’t move. Doesn’t react. Just stares at the screen with that blank expression that means he’s processing something too big to show on his face.
Then his jaw works. Once. Twice. And I see the moment it hits him. Really hits him.
“Liam,” he says quietly. “Liam is mine.”
“He’s yours,” Parker confirms, and now she’s definitely crying, tears streaming down her face even though she’s smiling. “He has your eyes. Your way of thinking. Your—everything.”
Jace’s hands are shaking where they’re gripping the chair. “I have a son.”
“You have a son,” I agree, and my own voice is thick with emotion. “We both do.”
We sit with that for a moment. The weight of it. The reality of it. Two men who never thought they’d have children, who’d made peace with that loss, suddenly became fathers to two perfect five-year-old boys.
It’s overwhelming.
It’s terrifying.
It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us.
Parker’s looking at the third file now. The one with all three names. Noah, Liam, and Silas.
She looks at Silas, and something passes between them that I can’t read.
“You don’t need to open it,” Silas says, his voice rough. “We already know what it’s going to say.”
“Silas—” Parker starts.
“I was eighteen,” he interrupts, and the words come out flat.
Clinical. Like he’s reporting tactical data instead of sharing something that’s clearly been eating at him.
“My parents had me meet them at a clinic. Had a vasectomy performed. Permanent sterilization. They said—” He stops, and I watch him struggle with whatever memory is attached to this.
“They said I was too violent. Too damaged. That I’d hurt any child I had.
That the world didn’t need more monsters like me. ”
The rage that floods through me is instant and overwhelming, even though I’ve known about this for seven years.
But hearing him say it out loud now, hearing the clinical way he describes his parents deciding he wasn’t worthy of having children, makes me want to resurrect them just so I can kill them again. Slower this time. More painfully.
“I know,” I say, because he needs to hear it. Because keeping this particular secret doesn’t help anyone anymore. “I’ve known for seven years. Since you spent those three days in the infirmary, I got curious about why routine bloodwork required that much recovery time.”
Silas’s head snaps toward me, his storm-gray eyes wide with something that might be shock or might be betrayal. “You knew? This whole time?”
“I hacked the clinic records,” I admit. “Found the file. Read what they did to you.” I hold his gaze. “And I never told anyone because it wasn’t my secret to tell. But yeah. I knew.”
Parker’s face has gone pale. “Aria told me. When she had me. She said—” Her voice breaks. “She said you couldn’t have children. That you’d been sterilized. I thought she was lying. Thought it was just another way to hurt me, to make me think—”
“She wasn’t lying about that part,” Silas says quietly. “She was telling the truth.” He looks at Jace now, and there’s something heavy in that look. “Jace knew too. He’s the one who drove me to the clinic that day.”
My head snaps toward Jace. He’s staring at Silas with an expression that’s equal parts guilt and grief, and suddenly a lot of things about Jace make more sense. The way he’s always been protective of Silas. The way he carries himself, like he’s atoning for something.
“You knew?” I ask, even though Silas just said it. “This whole time?”
Jace nods slowly. “I drove him. Your father and Silas’s father called me, told me to pick Silas up, take him to an address, wait, and bring him home.
Didn’t tell me what it was for.” His voice is raw, scraped clean of its usual control.
“I waited in the parking lot for three hours. When he came out, he could barely walk. They’d sedated him for the procedure, but it was wearing off, and he was—” He stops, swallows hard.
“I drove him home. Got him settled. And I’ve felt guilty about it every day since. ”
“So you all knew,” Parker says slowly, looking between the three of us. “Everyone knew except me.”
“We all knew, and none of us knew the others knew,” I clarify. “Classic dysfunctional family communication.”
“Don’t,” Silas says, and there’s steel in his voice now, cutting through the moment of dark humor.
He’s looking at Jace specifically. “Don’t carry that guilt, Jace.
You were following orders. If you’d refused, if you’d tried to stop it, Dominic would have made it worse.
Would have done it anyway and then punished you for the disobedience.
Probably would have made you watch. You did what you had to do to protect me from something worse. ”
“There’s nothing worse than what they did to you,” Jace says quietly, but there’s doubt in his voice. Like he’s not sure he believes his own words.
“There is,” Silas counters. “And we both know it. So don’t carry that guilt. It was never yours to carry.”
The tension in the room is suffocating. I want to say something, do something, but what do you say to that? What do you say to the fact that Silas’s parents were so convinced he was a monster that they sterilized him before he was old enough to have a say?
What do you say to the fact that Jace has been carrying the guilt of that day for thirteen years?