Page 5

Whoosh!

The air is knocked out of me, the kids scattering with nervous giggles, as Cort smothers me in a hug. “Shh…” is whispered against my lips, palms raising to cradle my face. He treats me as if I’m made of fragile glass, which has me wondering what expression is etched across my face.

“I’m sorry,” is a raspy gasp against Cort’s lips. We both know what I’m talking about, no need to say it out loud for our children to overhear. “I wasn’t going to do it. It hurts me to upset you.”

“I knew you were going to do it before you did, fucktwit.” Pressing his forehead to mine, Cort’s chuckle warms my lips. “We negotiated it to death. I gave you a deadline. You had less than a week left, waiting for you to get it over with was killing me. The suspense. I knew it would happen, just as I knew you would attempt to deny yourself.”

“Why aren’t you mad at me?” flows numbly from my tongue, confused by this selfless side of Cortez. He barely spoke to me for years after Dexter, and that was less than five minutes of my life, in a highly clinical setting. I was as intimate with Whitt and Dalton as I am with Cortez.

“I’ve been nothing but a ball of guilt for months, since what I did with Marcus.” Cort stumbles over his choice of words, trying to be as ambiguous as possible. “We needed to even the score.” Lips press lightly to my closed eyelids. “I love you to the point I didn’t want to take that experience away from you. I probably knew about it before you did.”

“Me!” Roarke volunteers from his station leaning against the wall, arms cross over his chest protectively. He still wants to snap my neck, and I still don’t understand why. “Aaron called me, then I told Cort. Why do you think he was waiting for us down here?” Roarke narrows his eyes at me, instinctively knowing the direction of my thoughts. “It’s my job to protect you from yourself, idiot.”

“I love how Dad’s enforcers talk to him.” Zane’s amusement draws me from lighting into Roarke, knowing he can take me with both hands tied behind his back. “Julio would never dare talk to Stanton like that.”

“Because your mother does,” flows from inside the ballroom, Wil turning mischievous. “Now Caleb and Pixie tag-team Stan.”

“Poor Stanton,” Roarke and Aaron mutter in unison, the bro vibe ratcheting up since their leader is somewhere in the vicinity, probably rating them on their bro-ness from the security feed.

Ava’s staring at Zane, like she’s imprinting him to memory, with two toddlers gazing up at him in wonder. “Are you my brother?” Marcus Zane asks after a length of time, inspection complete with a conclusion drawn.

“Yes, I am.” Zane crouches down, being surprisingly sociable. “What’s your name?” is an odd question to ask.

“Marcus Zane.” Ever the little gentleman, he puts his hand out for a shake. “I was named after Pop. What’s your name?”

“Hmm…” Zane smiles, causing Ava to release a little gasp of surprise, because my sons are the spirit and image of me. She hasn’t taken her eyes off her brother since I stepped foot into this hallway. “What a coincidence, my name is Zane. I bet you weren’t just named after Pop.”

“Is Pop your grandpa too?” Azrael steps closer, curious yet fiery with anger.

Something about how Azrael is feeling amuses Zane. He fights back laughter but loses miserably. “Marcus? Yes, I call him Pop too.”

Eyes flicking wildly between all four of my children, I ignore how Gwen is practically leaning over the table to watch, with Wil and Faith hovering in the doorway. Aaron and Roarke are holding up the wall, with Cortez looking ready to melt into a puddle next to me. Thankfully no one else has arrived yet.

Gray eyes the size of saucers, Marcus Zane keeps touching his chubby cheek while staring at Zane’s face. “I look like you.”

“We look just like Dad.” What I wouldn’t give to know what Zane is thinking as he suffers the onslaught of all the emotions flowing into him. Usually he’s gritting his teeth, struggling with a migraine, but he looks more amused than anything.

“We don’t look alike,” Azrael accuses, as if she’s personally offended.

“You two shared your mommy’s belly, but you don’t look anything alike,” Zane offers as a reasonable explanation.

“You’re MZ’s brother, not mine.” Pouting, chubby arms cross over an even chubbier belly.

“There’s no tricking you, is there?” Zane is waylaid by his baby brother crawling onto his thigh for a cuddle. My eldest gets this dreamy look on his face, and it’s the first time I’ve witnessed him look anything like Cortez.

“I’m your cousin, Azrael, but being your stepbrother trumps that.” Distracted by Marcus Zane, Zane fails to notice Azrael gearing up for a fit.

“Do you have any other cousins?” Azrael has never looked more like a combination of Katya and Cortez than she does now, reminding me of when they’re both wicked pissed at me. She wants to be special to Zane, reminding me of how Cortez doesn’t like me to experience anything without him.

“Your daddy.” Zane gestures to Cortez. “Torian’s my cousin too.”

“Oh, like Niel and Prissy are cousins?” Satisfied, Azrael attempts to crawl up Zane’s side, wanting to sit on his hip like we all carry the twins around. Fingertips tug at a curl. “Cool hair.”

“If my hair is cool, then yours is fiery.” Amused, Zane attempts to stand up while holding a toddler on each of his hips. “I’m stronger than I look,” is muttered wryly as Ava comes in with an assist.

“Tori’s hair is like yours.” Azrael is obsessed with hair. She follows Niel around like a lost puppy, just because he’s a fellow gingy. “But brown.”

“We joke.” Zane’s eyes flash up to mine, wearing the naughtiest expression possible. “Tori sucked up all the pigment in the family, leaving me to look like a ghost.”

“Like I did with MZ?” Azrael presses her chubby forearm against her twin’s, showing off the difference. “Your hair’s pretty, but I like mine better.”

“I like your hair better too.” Zane is practically glowing, like maybe he plans on stealing the twins. “You’d look silly with hair like mine.”

“How are you–” Faith hesitates in the doorway, confused as to how Zane is handling so much touch, since the twins are nothing but handsy, practically petting him like he’s their puppy.

“You have no idea how much like Dad and Cort they are.” Chuckling lightly, Zane jerks his chin in Ava’s direction. “She’s the most like me. It forces out everyone else, kinda like how Torian and Cort do for me.”

“Why aren’t you trying to get to know me?” Ava accuses Zane, face paling from hurt.

“I know you almost as well as I know Tori.” Zane flashes Ava another smile that has her gasping, because it looks too much like mine. “After you guys moved to Shadow Haven, I didn’t get to see you as much.”

“What?” Ava is as confused as everyone around us, but Wil and Faith’s knowing snickers clue me in.

The telescope.

“I found other ways to get to know you.” Shifting the twins on his hips, Zane levels Ava with a loaded look. “Whatever Torian hears, it flows out his mouth directly into my ears.”

“You sent a spy?” Ava murmurs in wonder, light eyes widening in surprise.

“I also took a page out of Dad’s playbook by catfishing you.” Zane chuckles at the varying reactions of outrage, most of it flowing from his mother. “Facebook. Instagram. But the best source of info was joining the Generations Next forum.”

“Generation Lost…” Ava trails off, pouty mouth agape. “You were our biggest donor. You sent me everything we ever printed, all your sources checked out.”

“ I was your source,” Zane stresses, trying hard not to laugh, because no doubt Ava’s emotions are bouncing all over the place. “I gave you computer generated numbers that all dropped into my cellphone.”

“But how…?”

“Voice modulator,” Zane whispers with pride, refusing to look at his mother and Wil, knowing he’s in for a world of hurt. “Free reign inside cartel headquarters– I have access to all sorts of nefarious things.”

“You really are my brother.” Head high, shoulders back, Ava faces off with Zane, proving how identical they are other than their gender. “I was worried you’d be saintly from what Niel said.”

“Niel called me a saint?” Head pitched back, Zane’s infectious laughter has the twins giggling with him. “I may know how someone is feeling, but that doesn’t mean I give a shit. Sometimes I want to smother them for being so needy, clingy, and insecure.”

“Oh, we’re going to be the best of friends.” Ava puts her arm around Zane, propelling him into the ballroom.

“Not your best friend– I’m your big brother.”

“We’re the same age.”

“Nope, today’s my birthday.” Zane turns smug. “I’m fifteen to your fourteen.”

“Okay, truce.” Ava pulls Azrael out of her big brother’s arms, securing the cuddle monkey to her chest. “You can be my big brother, but only between the months of December and March.”

“I see you inherited Dad’s negotiating gene,” fades in the distance at they move into the ballroom. “We have assigned seats next to each other. C’mon.”

A collective breath is released as Faith, Wil, Cort, and I relax, because our children finally met and they’re getting along famously. Aaron and Roarke don’t look the least bit surprised, with Gwen wearing the most radiant smile.

“Come, children.” Gwen gestures to the front of her table, pen in hand. “You’re my first victims.”

“Victims?” Cort squeaks next to me, hand slipping into mine as we approach the table. Wil is standing off to the side, latex gloves covering hands ready to wield what looks to be giant cotton swabs.

“Relax, Cortez.” Gwen rolls her eyes, looking exactly like her daughter ghosting behind her, but Faith misses it because she’s staring at our children inside the ballroom.

The ballroom is set up differently than I expected. I assumed the thrones would be relocated, with the room divided by founder, with the heir seated beside them and a space for their families to stand behind.

No Christmas theme– no decorations at all. The opulent ballroom at Whittenhower Estates is the backdrop for hundreds of wooden folding chairs, each chair displaying a sticky nametag. The most notable is how there are only six sections of chairs, some sections larger than others, rather than the eight founding lines.

No chair is more prominent than the next, everyone seated in this ballroom will be equals for the first time in Dominion history.

Off center slightly, seated in one of the larger sections, Ava and Zane are teaching the twins how to read the nametags, occupying them while we take care of business.

“Let’s begin with the maternal line.” Gwen is positively giddy. “Ezra, you go first.”

“Why?” Cortez immediately questions Gwen’s sanity, fingertip pointing at the leather-bound book in front of her. “It’s already filled out… in your handwriting.”

Gwen just looks at me with endless patience. Besides her, other than me, no one on the planet knows just how lazy Cortez can be.

“Grandparents?” I ask, simply because our branches of the family tree are entirely filled in and accurate.

“Just start with your mother.”

“Diane Holden is my mother. Her sister is Pearl Hastings, married to Richard Hastings. Their daughter is my cousin, Divina. My father is Raymond Hunter. His twin sister was Celeste Hunter. Her son is Cortez, my cousin, whose father is unknown.”

Cortez and I both eye the book, noticing the suspicious white tabs covering the bulk of Cort’s branch.

“Cort’s paternal line was unable to attend.” Gwen says this as if it’s no big deal, when it’s life-altering for Cortez. “I didn’t feel it right to take away from a happy reunion, like the one your children just had. The DNA test will remove all doubt.”

“How long will the DNA test take?” Fingers wrapped around mine, Cort squeezes tightly, but not out of comfort. He’s forcing me to hold him back from peeling off those white labels.

“Six to eight weeks.” Wil answers as the hand without a latex glove peels a label, identical to the ones Cort is dreaming of destroying, from a roll of stickers. The label is filled with handwritten information. Upon closer inspection, the info belongs to me. The label is stuck to a narrow plastic cylinder.

“I thought we were doing Ancestry.com tests,” I ask of Faith, who finally turns to join us. “Divina took one a few months ago. What’s up with the lab DNA tests.”

“Do you really want to open us up to outside forces, Ez?” Faith looks at me like I’m a moron. “That information is public, and we’re a city filled with one-percenters.”

“Yeah, imagine the bastards coming out of the woodwork, looking for their cut of our legacies.” Cort chuckles. Finding him cute, I do the same, but Dominion’s grandmotherly record keeper doesn’t laugh.

“Oh.” Cort and I whisper in unison.

“We will choose one person from each family to make a phony account, where we will see who they match with on the global database. We’ll find our bastards, who are most certainly attempting to destroy Dominion.” Wil steps around the table, both hands gloved again, carrying the tube in one and the cotton swab in the other. “Open up and saw ahh, Ez.”

Mouth gaping open, it takes seconds for Wil to scrape the inside of my cheek. He drops the spitty swab into the cylinder, then cuts the end off with a pair of medical-grade scissors before placing the cap on it. A red sticky ribbon seals the cylinder.

This treatment gets repeated to Cortez.

“Children?” Gwen prompts, causing Cortez to gesture into the ballroom with a Duh! expression on his face.

“Zane Wilson–” Gwen’s fingertip taps on the book in example. “Hunter? That’s not his legal name.”

“We’re not doing legalities here, Ezra. Historically, the surname is handed down by the paternal line. Please state the correct surname.”

“You’re getting off on this,” Cortez snarls, getting impatient.

“Ugh, let her.” Wil is good at coddling both Cort and Gwen. “She only gets to do this once– been waiting forever.”

“Zane Hunter is my first born with Faith Simpson.” I raise my eyebrow at Wil, wondering how he likes hearing his wife’s maiden name. Leaning forward, sure as shit, my children’s names are not as on their legal documents. “Ava Hunter, born to Katya Waters.”

“Why are there sticky labels over Kitten’s entries?” Cort’s smarter than me.

Gwen waves him off as usual. “Marcus Zane Hunter, born to Katya Waters. My stepdaughter and cousin, Azrael… okay, why is our daughter’s surname covered?”

Tapping Cort’s side of the tree in example, a crimson fingernail draws to where Cort’s father is blocked out. “I’m proud the little girl carries the Hunter legal name, but that isn’t what will be placed within this book. I will go through and put the legal surnames in brackets at a later date.”

Mentally and emotionally exhausted, more than happy to focus on this than the inundation of information I received when I integrated, I don’t understand where Gwen is going with this.

Watching the emotions flow over my face, Gwen puts us out of our misery. With a flip of the page, we’re on her family tree. “Look at mine.” Crimson nail outlining the issue, everything beneath Gwen’s entry is filled in, but it’s everything above that’s the issue.

There are only two names. Fredrick Meyers and Mitchell Meyers, with Fredrick listed as Gwen’s father and Mitchell as her brother, when common knowledge was always Mitchell as her father.

“This is more for me than anyone else,” Gwen admits, tears evident in her voice. “As the keepers of Dominion’s history, everything matches with the bibles handed down by the other founders. However, my history is missing or altered.”

“Before modern times, every birth was recorded in the front of our family bibles.” Wil leans down to kiss the top of Gwen’s head, then begins rubbing her shoulders. The man is going to go through several boxes of gloves at this rate.

“I don’t even know if it was Meyers or Hunter as the major founder, and everyone I could possibly ask is dead. Coups have been staged since our inception, with allies going along with it. I have no idea who my mother is, who my grandmother is, and if Mitchell and I shared a mother.”

“Doubtful with the massive age-gap.” Faith is one of the least empathetic people I know, and even she is turning affectionate toward her mother, because Gwen is having a difficult time explaining.

“As far back as I can go, one male from both the Meyers and Hunter lines lived in Meyers Manor. Until my generation, no females were in residence.”

“My mother?” Cort croaks, voice breaking with emotion.

“I was raised beside Celeste and Raymond as siblings.” Gwen looks down at her page in the book, fingertip gliding over spaces meant for relatives she doesn’t have. “Before Fredrick lost it, it was assumed Raymond and I would marry once we matured.”

“But–” It’s Faith who interrupts but doesn’t have the balls to continue. Meyers Manor should be renamed Incest Manor.

“Fredrick coddled Celeste like a granddaughter, never touching her inappropriately. He also respected Nathaniel, both of them teaching Raymond all they knew. This would be where you say nature versus nurture, Ezra.”

“Which was it?” I demand, getting impatient for the punchline. “Nature or nurture?”

“Nurture. Celeste, Raymond, and I had a good childhood, and we were good kids. But once Mitchell was diagnosed as being impotent, Fredrick lost it, with Nathaniel and Raymond as collateral damage. With the loss of Nathaniel, Fredrick really lost it. Raymond’s resulting mental issues were ignored out of guilt and love. Greed kept our family small, and we were at risk of losing our legacy.”

“The legacy was passed from father to son, same as the surname,” Cort whispers in pain.

“Precisely, Cortez.” Sighing, Gwen flips back to the Hunter page, fingertip gliding over Raymond’s name. “Fredrick became obsessed with me propagating amongst the founding lines, but it was Raymond who was irrevocably changed, as was Diane.”

“You don’t have to keep going, Mom.” Faith looks concerned, and Cortez looks as if he’s going to choke someone if they don’t get to the point soon.

“Fredrick destroyed the fabric of Dominion with his quest for immortality through his grandchildren. With Nathaniel gone, Raymond took up the mantel, since both Fredrick and Mitchell were unable to have children– old age and impotency. Celeste was allowed to choose, picking someone she had a crush on for years.” Gwen whispers with fond wistfulness.

“Charismatic, Celeste got anything she wanted. Diane needed a constant companion after what happened to Ray and her at the hands of her parents. Celeste thought if they were both pregnant, it would help Diane’s mental state.”

“We’re three months apart,” Cort whispers in abject horror.

Gwen snorts, remembering a side to Celeste we never had the pleasure of meeting. “Celeste’s crush was married with a kid, but she didn’t let that stop her. She walked right up to the wife and kissed her in the middle of a meeting, then asked to borrow them for a few nights. She immediately moved into Shadow Haven, and no one demanded the son to be delivered to the father like with every other child. Celeste was determined to raise her son and her twin’s son as her own, knowing Diane wasn’t emotionally capable.”

“That doesn’t sound like my mom.” Fists curled, Cortez is on the verge of beating the shit out of his own elder. “Mom wasn’t a homewrecking slut! She never dated.”

“A woman who owns her sexuality is not a slut.” Faith snarls at Cort, ready to bash his skull in. “Sounds like no homewrecking was done, since she asked the wife’s permission. Besides, I’m pretty sure there’s a reason Celeste and Diane never dated. Do the math.”

Chuckling lightly, Gwen’s face glows. “Celeste was intoxicating, over-sexualized and bisexual, and got whatever she wanted, because we all allowed her to do whatever the hell she wanted. Kind of like–” Gwen gestures to Cortez. “ You .”

A cute growl has all of us laughing at Cortez, which makes his hackles rise.

“Have you ever asked yourself why I have children with certain families and not others?” Gwen hits us where it counts. “These are the most important DNA tests to be taken– they’ll be weighed against each other, mine, and Faith’s, because we need a baseline on how we’re all related.”

“You think you’re part Hunter?” I hazard as a guess.

“I believe the Meyers line originated as Hunter, with my greedy father rewriting history by removing every matriarch besides me.” Gwen taps on the fact that our legal names are not the surnames written in the book.

“Who was Raymond and Celeste’s mother? What about Nathaniel’s? Mitchell’s or mine? Who was Fredrick’s mother? I believe the Meyers was the matriarch line, with the Hunter the patriarch, however many generations back. Out of sheer greed, history was erased to ensure Fredrick kept the money and power, and Nathaniel was too young and easily brainwashed to realize he was the master of our house, not the servant.”