On recollection, they’re right. She could be the girl in the photo that sits proudly on Rocco’s mantel. Long blonde hair, wolf-like eyes, not unlike her son’s, a smile of mischief and joy unmistakable.
“We shouldn’t have come,” the boy speaks, the rough regret in his voice too panicked to be comfortable. “Let’s go.” He turns to the girl, stretching out his hand.
She takes it without issue, holding on like a lifeline.
They’re connected. A set. Inseparable. It’s obvious in the way they lean on one another; both physically and emotionally.
“How do you fit?” Parker steps forward, completely lost to himself.
“That would be none of your concern, Shay,” the boy spits, hate dripping from his tongue like a poison he doesn’t want to touch.
“Jesse and Blake came to me out of appreciation,” my father speaks, moving toward the kids in caution, hoping to make them feel at ease.
Our heads all turn his way, watching on in explanation.
“They were raised by Marcus Dempsey. They tell me they saw news footage of his demise and saw my subsequent arrest.”
Rocco looks ready to explode, his fists clenching and releasing in time with his breaths; quick and sharp.
“You look like us,” Parker imputes, working to understand. “How?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. We want nothing to do with any Shay.”
Rocco steps forward and the boy does the same, placing himself in front of the girl, warning in his stormy gray eyes.
“Are you siblings?” I finally speak, drawing the girl’s attention.
The boy refuses to look away from Rocco.
“Yep. I’m Blake. This bristling hero is my twin brother, Jesse. He’s a little intense.” She rolls her eyes.
I smile. “Seems it runs in the family,” I joke, hoping to put her at ease. “I’m Camryn Rein, Dominic’s daughter. Parker here” —I point— “is my new brother-in-law, and Rocco is his brother.”
“We know who they are,” Jesse grits out, unimpressed by my introductions. “Monsters. Just like their fucking uncle.”
“We’re nothin’ like that piece of shit,” Parker snaps. “Don’t ever compare us to that scum.”
Jesse narrows his eyes. “We’ll be leaving now. Let’s go, Blake.”
“He told us you were dangerous,” she ignores him. “He told us you would want us dead if you knew we existed. That he was our safest option.”
“Marcus killed our mother and our aunt, who also happened to be his wife,” Parker repels her argument with a fervor that sets the room on edge. “The only person ever drippin’ in blood was that asshole. He was evil.”
“Well aware, Einstein.” Jesse pulls at his sister’s arm, working his hardest to get her to move.
“How’d you find yourself with Marcus?” Parker continues. “You can’t be Lila’s. Mira? Did Mira have kids we didn’t know about?”
“No,” Rocco answers stoically. “Their mother is Kendall Montgomery.” His voice is vacant. An empty pool of misery he looks ready to drown in. His body visibly shakes.
Parker turns, questions in his eyes. “You knew?”
Rocco doesn’t speak.
“Rocco knew Kendall was pregnant,” Dominic answers for him.
“You never said anything,” Parker accuses, hurt scoring across his face openly.
“Who is Kendall?” I ask.
No one answers.
“I—” Rocco’s voice cracks. “She left a note, saying she didn’t want me. She told me she would rather die than give birth to something that was part of me, part of my family.”
My heart cracks in my chest.
Rocco.
“You’re our dad?” Blake asks, pushing past her twin brother to move closer to the blonde giant in the room.
Jesse grabs at her, but she shakes him off.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Sixteen,” they answer in unison.
“Where’s your mother?”
Blake looks over Rocco like he’s an artifact in a museum. Untouchable, but beyond intriguing. “Dead.”
“How?” Rocco looks in physical pain.
Someone else left me.
The idle statement he let go in his bathroom weeks earlier.
He meant Kendall. His ex-girlfriend. One he’d knocked up and has spent half of his life searching for.
He’d been searching for his family when I’d been dissecting our every interaction, certain feelings I’d never hoped to feel again were holding me hostage.
“Overdose,” Jesse answers, the word almost too painful for him to speak.
My eyes blink closed in condolence.
These two kids have lived a life no person should. One of loss and betrayal, of pain and mistruths. You can see it in their guarded, gray eyes. Older than their sixteen years, worn down and cynical about the world around them. Not that I blame them; while other kids their age were playing team sports and arguing with their parents about the injustice of their worlds, Jesse and Blake were fighting to live, to survive.
Rocco shakes his head, rejecting their words. “Kendall was no junkie. It doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s the only Kendall we knew,” Blake rebukes. “You didn’t know her anymore. Not after you blew a load and then demanded she abort your illegitimate child.”
“You asked her that?” Parker recoils.
“Of course I fucking did,” Rocco yells unexpectedly. “I was nineteen and in no frame of mind to raise a fucking kid. It was an initial reaction, she told me, we fought. Then before we could actually talk it out, she disappeared.”
“How convenient for you,” Jesse barks out a humorless laugh.
“I searched for her. For you.”
“To what? Make sure she followed through with your demands?”
“What? No. To make sure you were safe,” Rocco argues, begging them to believe him. He’s fraying at the edges. His composure bursting with panic, ready to rip him apart.
“Well, we weren’t,” Blake vilifies, her soft sweet voice delivering the words like a dagger, making sure they maim. “We lived with the devil and when we finally escaped that hell, we were forced to survive on the streets. I didn’t know anything about you. About who you were or what you were like, but I’d convinced myself you were dead.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Rocco, knowing the heaviness that he’d be loading himself with.
“Because if my dad were alive,” she continues. “He would’ve found me, he would’ve found us. He would’ve rescued us from the wretchedness we were caught in.”
“I tried,” Rocco whispers. “Every fucking day. Kendall was a ghost. You, you both were ghosts.”
“That’s where you disappeared to all those times?” Parker asks, the pain in his voice not dissimilar to his brother’s.
“You didn’t try hard enough.” Jesse ignores his uncle, eyes scanning his sister’s profile in concern.
That declaration hangs in the room like a grenade ready to explode. Destruction at the ready, mere milliseconds of panic as it flies through the air ready to blow the final pieces of Rocco’s heart to smithereens.