I ignored him.
“Isabel.”
My sister breathed.
Then she whispered:
“Blue Moon.”
Wrong.
Mom hated Blue Moon.
Her favorite song had been Dream a Little Dream of Me.
When we were children, she sang it while washing dishes.
I felt sick.
“Okay,” I said carefully.
“Rachel—”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Don’t.”
The word came so softly I almost missed it.
Then Isabel raised her voice.
“Don’t forget the ceremony starts at four.”
The line disconnected.
I stared at the phone.
Ethan stood in the doorway.
He had heard enough.
“She warned you.”
“She’s scared.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
“Tell me everything.”
He remained silent.
“Now.”
For the first time since meeting him, Ethan Callahan looked uncertain.
Then he crossed the room and placed an old photograph on the table.
Three people stood outside a Chicago brownstone.
A young man I recognized as Ethan’s late father from newspaper photographs.
A teenage Ethan.
And a dark-haired woman maybe twenty-five years old.
My lungs stopped working.
She had my eyes.
My smile.
My mother’s face.
“Where did you get this?”
“That photograph was taken thirty-one years ago.”
I touched the woman’s image.
“My mother never lived in Chicago.”
“Yes, she did.”
“No.”
“Her name wasn’t always Marisol Morales.”
I looked up.
Ethan’s next words changed everything I believed about my life.
“Her name was Marisol Callahan.”
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes disbelief escapes your body sounding like laughter.
“You’re lying.”
“She was my father’s oldest child.”
I stared at him.
“Your—”
“Half sister.”
The room went completely silent.
Ethan looked at Sophie sleeping in a bassinet near the fireplace.
Then back at me.
“Rachel, I’m your uncle.”
I slapped him.
Hard.
One of the guards outside took a step toward the room.
Ethan raised one hand.
The guard stopped.
My palm burned.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“You sat beside me knowing?”
“I suspected.”
“You let me tell you about my diner. My sister. My life.”
“I needed to be certain.”
“You could’ve asked!”
“Would you have believed me?”
“No!”
“Exactly.”
I wanted to slap him again.
Instead I collapsed into a chair.
Ethan remained standing.
“My father had Marisol before he married my mother. Her mother was Mexican-American. My grandfather considered the relationship an embarrassment. Marisol grew up inside this family but never belonged to it.”
My throat tightened.
“My mother told us her parents died when she was young.”
“That’s what she wanted you to believe.”
“Why?”
“Because she discovered what my father was becoming.”
The feared Ethan Callahan suddenly looked very tired.
“By the time I was twelve, my father had stopped pretending Callahan Holdings was only construction and shipping. Bribery. Extortion. Smuggling. Anyone who challenged him disappeared.”
I looked around the mansion.
“And you?”
“I inherited his name.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His eyes met mine.
“No.”
One word.
Flat.
Absolute.
“I’ve done things I’m not proud of, Rachel. But the empire people whisper about is mostly the ghost of my father’s. I’ve spent thirteen years dismantling it piece by piece.”
I wanted to believe him.
Which made me distrust him more.
“Why does Grant care about my mother?”
Ethan took another folder from the table.
