He stood. He liked to do this—loom. With most people, it worked. With me, it just made me want to see if I could break his kneecaps before anyone stopped me.
He looked at the room, one by one, like a judge about to pass sentence. “You want to tell them, or should I?”
My pulse quickened. The mark at my neck flared, then cooled, like an animal that knew it was being watched.
He faced me, his eyes so pale they almost seemed bloodless. “The real reason this company is a nightmare, Ms. Stillwater, is because of you. Or rather, because of your father. He lied to everyone, including you. Did you ever wonder why he gave you so much leash, even when you’d just graduated from college, when you’d never run so much as a lemonade stand? Why you, and not the experienced managers, or the board’s own pick?”
He waited. I let the silence stretch. I didn’t have a comeback, just the tight, hot certainty that he was about to punch a hole in my whole life.
He lifted the envelope and dumped its contents out. Several glossy photos, a birth certificate, and—last—an official report stamped by a private DNA lab.
“Because you’re not his only child,” Marcus said. “He had another. With my mother.”
The words didn’t land so much as detonate. For a second, I heard nothing—just the static in my own head.
He looked right at me, every inch the predator. “I’m your half-brother, Carrie. William Stillwater was my father, too. And the DNA test proves it.”
I don’t remember standing, but I must have, because the next thing I knew my hands were flat on the table, knuckles whitening around the edge. Lila stopped typing. Bennet let out a single, stunned “Fuck.” Celia’s teacup rattled against its saucer. Only Evelyn seemed unfazed, her face unreadable as ever.
I stared at the report. I didn’t touch it. If I picked it up, if I read it, that would make it real. I heard my father’s voice in my head, teaching me how to sample the mash at ten years old: “Truth is best tasted neat, girl. Otherwise it’ll sneak up on you.”
Marcus held the room. “I didn’t want this, you know. The legal fights, the blood tests, the drama. But you forced my hand.I can’t let this company go under because of your personal vendettas and extracurricular choices.”
He let his gaze flick to the bite mark at my neck. I realized, with shame and a touch of fear, that my hair didn’t cover it. I let it show, because I was proud. But now, it was ammunition.
“I don’t care about your sex life, Carrie. I care about legacy. The Stillwater name means something. Or it did.”
I forced my mouth open. “If you really cared, you wouldn’t have burned our entire stock to the ground.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes you have to burn a field to save the next harvest. The market will recover. But if the board loses confidence—if the Feds start sniffing around—there won’t be a company left to fight over. I did what had to be done. And I’ll do it again, if that’s what it takes to protect what’s ours.”
Bennet spat into the trash can, missing by a good foot. “You’re a fucking vulture, Marcus. You always have been.”
Evelyn finally spoke, her voice soft but sharp as a scalpel. “The board will need to verify these claims. DNA can be faked, and so can the motives of a man who’s spent his entire life working in the shadows of better men.”
Marcus smiled. “Of course. But I’d suggest you verify fast, because the shareholders are already demanding answers. There’s a press conference at two o’clock. I’ll be making a statement—with or without you, Carrie.”
I felt the world tilt, just a little. In the shock, the pain of betrayal, something else rose: not anger, but hunger. If this was true—if he was blood—then he’d just made his biggest mistake.
I straightened, adjusting my jacket. “Meeting adjourned,” I said. Then I swept every sheet of paper into my folder and walked out, ignoring the stares, ignoring the sick roll in my stomach, ignoring the fire inside me that was not, for once, from the bite.
I made it to my office before my hands started to shake. The mate-mark pulsed with every beat of my heart, a reminder that I was more than the sum of their secrets. I looked at the DNA report in my hands. Then I tossed it in the bottom drawer, right on top of the whiskey and the loaded Glock, and called the only person I trusted to tell me the real fucking truth.
I didn’t wait for the bourbon’s slow burn to fade before hitting the gas out of Stillwater proper. The Escalade handled like a tank with a grudge, so I pushed it over the posted speed limits on backroads lined with dented mailboxes and kudzu, every turn sharper than the last. The sun hung low, mean and yellow, blinding me whenever I crested a hill. I kept seeing Marcus’s face in the rearview, smiling like the cat that finally caught the canary, only to find out the thing had fangs.
It took twenty-three minutes flat to reach the Ellery farmhouse. If you could call it that. Just a single-story shotgun shack with a peeling tin roof and a yard so sparse the grass had given up. Nothing like the marble-and-brass mausoleum I grew up in. I let the engine idle, then cut it so the quiet thudded in my ears.
Eleanor Ellery was waiting for me on the porch, arms crossed over a faded cardigan, expression set to “I dare you.” Her hair was white, the kind that only happens when someone stops fighting the dye bottle and lets time win. The lines on her face said more than her eyes ever could.
“Ms. Stillwater,” she said, not even asking. She opened the screen door, and I followed, swallowing the bite in my voice for later.
Inside, it smelled like rosewater and cigarettes. The furniture was every kind of old, threadbare, sagging, with those crochet covers people put on the arms to keep them from dissolving. Eleanor waved me to a spot on the couch, then went to the kitchen without another word. I heard the clink of glass and theslow drag of a fridge door before she returned with a jug of sweet tea and two chipped mugs.
We sat in silence while she poured, the liquid gold and too thick for August. She took hers black, I noted. When she finally looked at me, her eyes were sharp enough to cut bourbon.
“Let’s not pretend I don’t know why you’re here,” she said.
“Good. Then tell me why Marcus is trying to murder my company and my legacy in one go,” I shot back.