“Had to beat the truth… out of her… Your mother not only lied… to her husband… about coming to me pregnant with you… but she was unfaithful, too.”
“With her own father?” Reilly squeaked.
He couldn’t think straight enough to ask the questions Reilly was asking. Something had broken inside his brain. It felt scrambled and wouldn’t function properly. He couldn’t grasp what the fuck was going on.
None of this made any damn sense.
He needed to slam the brakes on his spinning thoughts.
“Was she unfaithful, or was she forced?” Reilly grilled his father, one hand still gripping Rev’s arm, the other white-knuckling the bed’s metal side rail.
No, not his father. Not any longer.
The man with one foot in the grave, and about to finish falling into it after Rev shoved him there, ignored Reilly. He only had cloudy eyes for Rev, and they held revenge and pure hatred in the dull brown orbs.
“Who’s Sarah’s father?” Rev demanded since he refused to answer Reilly. He clenched his fingers to prevent himself from strangling the man before he could get the answer he needed. He wanted to know the truth about his sister first. Even if it was a truth he never told Saylor.
He couldn’t ask his mother. She was the type of woman who would take a secret like that to her grave simply to remain being seen as holy and pious. While the man she married preferred to cause pain. And a fuckload of it. He generously sprinkled that shit around like salt on a bland meal.
If anyone was going to tell the truth, it would be him. For exactly what Rev saw in his eyes.
Spite.
“Who?” Rev shouted and slammed his hand on the metal side rail causing the whole bed to jolt sideways and the living, breathing skeleton to rock under the blankets.
“The man who sought you out… without my permission… I told him no… he did it anyway.”
The man who sought you out.
Matthew.
Rev couldn’t breathe. His lungs simply stopped functioning. His heart thumped in his throat, trying to break free, while his ears rang at a deafening volume.
It couldn’t be.
Was that why Matthew hunted him down? In an attempt to find Sarah? Maybe he didn’t even give a shit about Rev coming to see the dying man they thought was his father. His uncle was using John Schmidt’s illness to try to ferret out where Sarah was, or he hoped Rev would have brought Matthew’s niece home along with him.
No…
Christ!
Rev’s eyes squeezed shut and a bolt of pain speared through his chest and down his arm because he was gripping the bed rail so tightly.
Saylor wasn’t only his niece…
Jesus fuck. His niece and his daughter.
That couldn’t be it, could it?
That couldn’t be the reason that motherfucker called him? Did Matthew know the truth? Did Matthew know Sarah was his? If so, how long had he fucking known?
But that meant John Schmidt didn’t share any blood with Rev’s sister, either. They weren’t related at all.
“Did you know this before or after you touched her?” Rev asked, his words sounding like they came down a long, narrow hallway. A corridor closing in around him. Like he was on a bad acid trip.
“I don’t answer to you… I only answer to God.”
Bullshit! A muscle ticked in Rev’s jaw and he snapped free from the mental quicksand he’d been bogged down in. “Before or after you touched her?” he roared into the dying man’s face.
It didn’t matter. It made no difference. John Schmidt was still a pedophile, just not an incestuous one.
“Go away, boy… you don’t belong here.”
“The moral hypocrisy in this family makes me fuckin’ sick.” He slammed the bed rails with both palms, wanting to choke the dying breath out of him.
Reilly grabbed his shirt sleeve and tugged at it. “Rev,” she whispered.
He glanced down at her. Her eyes were focused toward the room’s archway and she lifted her chin slightly in a silent message.
He turned, expecting to see his mother…
Instead, he saw Matthew standing in the opening.
That motherfucker.
His head began to pound when he realized his uncle was also his first cousin. His grandfather also his father. His mother his half-sister.
Was that right? Was any of that right?
Holy fuck, him and Saylor were both born from incest. If he hadn’t come back, he would’ve never known. That secret would have died with his parents.
He never should’ve come back. He would’ve remained in the dark. Clueless that they were inbred like the Shirleys. Born from incest. Born from lies.
Born from deep, dark secrets.
He was called a sinner. Over and over.
He was not the sinner. He was the product of a grave sin.
He and Saylor… They weren’t even full brother and sister.
They were… half-brother and -sister and… cousins? Was he Saylor’s uncle-cousin-brother? He didn’t even know. He was struggling to wrap his head around all of his jumbled thoughts. Trying to straighten out their twisted and fucked-up family tree.
He couldn’t deal with that shit right now. He needed to deal with the man standing there with a worried look on his face.
He should be fucking worried.
His asshole should be puckering tight right about now. Especially if he overheard any of the conversation.
Cursed be anyone who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.
How about the daughter of both?
Rev rushed toward Matthew and shouted, “Did you know?”
Rev could see the tremble in his uncle’s hand as he held it out in front of him like a stop sign. A useless, ineffective shield. “Let’s step outside, Brother Michael.”
Brother was right. Matthew was his actual half-brother.
His pulse pounded painfully at his temple from all the mental gymnastics. “Yeah, let’s, brother-uncle.” Grabbing a fistful of Matthew’s button-down shirt, Rev dragged him the few strides to the front door and flung it open.
“Rev!” Reilly called out, rushing after them and sounding more than a bit panicked.
“Stay in the house,” he ordered over his shoulder.
He continued to yank the older man along with him, making him stumble down the porch steps and into the yard, where Rev flung him to the grass.
“I’m not staying in this house alone! It creeps me out.”
“Reilly,” he growled, not in the mood for her to be a pain in his ass right now. “You don’t step off that porch.”
He had no idea if she argued or not because he blocked her out. Instead, he concentrated on the man before him in a heap on the ground, cowering in fear. The blood had drained from Matthew’s face, making his blue eyes more noticeable. The same blue eyes as his. As Saylor’s. He wasn’t dark blond like Rev’s mother, or Rev himself. Or even his grandfather… No… father.
What the fuck! He didn’t even know how to label his grandfather anymore. He was so damned confused.
No, Matthew’s hair wasn’t blond at all, it was the same color as Saylor’s.
Brown.
Like his grandmother’s. Wait. Was his grandmother still his grandmother? Christ!
His brain hurt. All he wanted to do was jam the heels of his palms into his eyes and collapse to the ground until everything stopped spinning around him. Until things made sense.