Chapter 7
I don't know how long I sat on that bathroom floor.
Minutes.
Hours.
It felt like forever.
Gerald knocked on the door a dozen times.
Called my name.
I didn't answer.
I couldn't answer.
My brain couldn't process what he'd told me.
Daniel was alive.
My brother.
My twin.
Alive.
For ten years.
And no one had told me.
Gerald.
The CIA.
Daniel himself.
They'd all lied to me.
The people I'd trusted most in the world.
They'd let me grieve.
Let me bury an empty casket.
Let me think I was alone in the world.
For ten years.
I heard the front door open.
Voices.
Gerald's.
Another one.
Deep.
Familiar.
So familiar it made my chest ache.
"Megan?"
My name.
Spoken in that voice I hadn't heard in a decade.
I closed my eyes.
More tears.
I stood up on shaking legs.
Unlocked the door.
Pulled it open.
He was standing at the bottom of the stairs.
Older.
Tired.
Scars on his face that hadn't been there before.
A little gray at the temples.
But it was him.
Daniel.
My brother.
He looked up at me.
His eyes filled with tears.
"Meg," he whispered.
I walked down the stairs.
Slowly.
Like I was in a dream.
Like I'd wake up any second and he'd be gone again.
I stopped in front of him.
Reached out.
Touched his face.
He was real.
Warm.
Solid.
Alive.
I slapped him.
Hard.
Across the face.
His head snapped to the side.
Gerald made a sound of protest from the living room.
Daniel held up a hand to stop him.
He turned back to me.
His cheek was already red.
"I deserved that," he said.
"You think?" I screamed. Hitting him again. In the chest. Over and over. "Ten years, Daniel! Ten years you let me think you were dead! I buried you! I visited your grave every week! I talked to you! I told you about the kids! About Dad dying! About everything! And you were alive! You were alive and you didn't come home! You didn't call! You didn't send a letter! Nothing! How could you? How could you do that to me?"
I collapsed against him.
Sobbing.
He wrapped his arms around me.
Held me tight.
Just like he'd done a hundred times when we were kids.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into my hair. Over and over. "I'm so sorry, Meg. I wanted to come home. Every single day. I wanted to call. To write. To tell you something. Anything. But they told me if I did, if I made even one tiny mistake, they'd find you. They'd kill you. Kill Mom and Dad. Kill anyone I ever loved. I couldn't risk it. I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you because of me."
He pulled back.
Wiped the tears from my face with his thumbs.
"When I found out about the kids? About Lily and Noah? That they were mine? I almost came home then. I almost blew the whole operation. Three times. Gerald had to talk me down. Remind me that if I came home too soon, I'd be putting all three of you in danger. I had to finish the mission. I had to take down the people who wanted us dead. It was the only way to keep you safe. The only way I could ever come home for good."
I looked into his eyes.
I saw the truth there.
The pain.
The regret.
The ten years of hell he'd been through.
I didn't forgive him.
Not yet.
But I understood.
And I pulled him back into my arms.
Held him as tight as I could.
"Don't you ever leave me again," I whispered. "Ever. If you do, I'll kill you myself. And this time, I'll make sure you stay dead."
He laughed through his tears.
"Promise," he said.
We stood there for a long time.
Holding each other.
Crying.
Catching up on ten years of lost hugs.
Then Lily and Noah came running down the stairs.
They'd woken up from the noise.
Lily stopped when she saw Daniel.
Noah hid behind her leg.
"Mom?" Lily said. "Who is that?"
I wiped my face.
Took Daniel's hand.
Pulled him toward the kids.
"Guys?" I said. My voice was shaking. "Remember what I told you about your Uncle Daniel? Your real dad?"
They nodded.
"Well," I said. Smiling through my tears. "He's not in heaven anymore. He came home."
Daniel knelt down in front of them.
He held out a hand to Lily.
"Hi, bug," he said. "You probably don't remember me. I held you when you were this big." He held his hands a foot apart. "You had the tiniest little fingers. And you screamed so loud the whole hospital heard you. Just like your mom."
Lily stared at him.
Then she looked at me.
I nodded.
She stepped forward.
Slowly.
She reached out.
Touched the scar on his left cheek.
"You have the same eyes as me," she said.
Daniel smiled.
Tears ran down his face.
"We have the same everything, bug," he said. "I'm your dad. And I'm so sorry it took me so long to get here. But I promise you. I'm never leaving again. Not for a single day. Not for a single minute. I'm going to be at every one of your horse shows. Every one of Noah's baseball games. Every school play. Every birthday. Every Christmas. Every everything. I missed ten years. I'm going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Both of you."
Noah stepped out from behind Lily.
He walked right up to Daniel.
Stared at him for a long moment.
Then he threw his arms around Daniel's neck.
"Can we play catch tomorrow?" he said.
Daniel hugged him so tight Noah squeaked.
"Tomorrow," Daniel said. "And the next day. And the day after that. And every day for the rest of forever."
Lily joined the hug.
And then I did.
And for the first time in my life, I felt complete.
Whole.
Like the last missing piece of my puzzle had finally snapped into place.
The next few weeks were magic.
Chaotic.
Exhausting.
But magic.
Daniel moved into the guest house on our property.
He was there every morning when the kids woke up.
Making pancakes.
Telling stories.
Lily discovered that her dad had been a spy.
And that he could kill a man seven different ways with a paperclip.
She thought he was the coolest person who had ever lived.
Noah discovered that his dad could throw a baseball faster than anyone in the world.
And that he knew every dinosaur name by heart.
Even the weird ones with 18 letters.
They were inseparable.
The three of them.
And I watched.
And I cried happy tears.
And I tried not to be angry at the ten years we'd lost.
But the anger was still there.
Under the surface.
Not just at Daniel.
At the system that had taken him from us.
At the people who had used him.
Who had used all of us.
And there was one more secret Gerald had told me.
One he'd waited until Daniel was safe to reveal.
The terrorist cell Daniel had infiltrated?
It had been funded by the Moretti crime family.
The same family Jack had been laundering money through.
The same family Carol had been working with for years.
None of it had been a coincidence.
Jack hadn't just randomly chosen to steal from me.
To cheat on me.
To kill those patients.
He'd been groomed.
By the Morettis.
They'd found him in medical school.
Seen his ambition.
His greed.
His lack of morals.
They'd paid for his training.
Gotten him his job at the hospital.
Introduced him to me.
Because they'd known about my father's money.
About the trust fund.
They'd planned the whole thing.
Our meeting.
Our marriage.
The fertility clinic mix-up.
The car accident that had nearly killed me.
All of it.
A ten-year operation to get their hands on my father's fortune.
To use my husband as their personal doctor and money launderer.
To destroy my family from the inside out.
And Daniel had spent ten years taking them down.
One by one.
Without ever knowing he was fighting the same people who had destroyed his sister's life.
Who had fathered his children without his knowledge.
It was too much.
Too big.
Too impossible to be real.
But it was real.
Every last bit of it.
And the Morettis weren't gone.
Not all of them.
The old boss was dead.
Most of the family was in prison.
But the youngest son.
Marco Moretti.
He'd escaped.
Vanished.
And Daniel was sure he'd be coming for us.
For revenge.
For everything Daniel had taken from him.
"He's smart," Daniel said one night, after the kids were asleep. We were sitting on the porch again. Gerald was there too. "Patient. He'll wait. He'll watch. He'll learn our routine. Our weaknesses. And then he'll strike. When we least expect it. When we're happiest. When we think we're finally safe."
He looked at me.
"He wants what the Morettis have always wanted, Meg. Your father's money. And now? Me. Dead. Because I took everything from him. His father. His brothers. His whole organization. He won't stop until one of us is dead."
I looked out at the dark pasture.
At the shadows of the trees.
For the first time since we'd moved to the country, I didn't feel safe.
I felt watched.
Hunted.
"So what do we do?" I said.
Daniel smiled.
It was a cold smile.
May you like
Nothing like the warm smile he gave the kids.
"We do what we Carters have always done," he said. "We protect our own. We fortify the property. Marcus brings in more men. We install every security system known to man. We make this place impregnable. And then? We wait. Because Marco Moretti isn't the only one who knows how to be patient. And when he comes? We'll be ready. And this time? We finish it. Once and for all."
