The Secrets We Hide (The Four 2)

“Hey! Be careful.” I frowned at him, but he ignored me, his entire focus on the photo. Cassius came to stand beside him, his face turning to a stony mask as he viewed the image.

What. The. Fuck.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” I stared between them.

Finally, Cade passed the phone back to me, leaning over my shoulder to point at the screen.

“James Granville. Joseph Hyde.” He indicated the two I already knew.

“Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Who are the other two, though?”

“They’re, uh.” He cleared his throat. “Hyde’s brother and sister.”

“Joseph has a brother and a sister?” Now I could see the sibling resemblance. They looked younger than him to me.

“Had.” The word was dragged from Cassius’ lips, low and sombre, and a kind of sick feeling filled me.

“What do you mean, had?”

Cassius and Caiden exchanged glances, a whole unspoken conversation going on between them, before Caiden closed his eyes, scrubbing a hand across his face. He blew out a heavy breath and turned to me, as Cassius crossed back to Weston and began speaking to him in a low tone.

“Come with me.” He took my hand and led me out of the room and out through the kitchen onto the back deck, guiding me into one of the large outdoor chairs. Tucking a blanket around us, he lit a joint, inhaling deeply, before he passed it to me.

“What I’m about to tell you goes no further, okay?”

I nodded, worried by his serious expression. He stared out at the darkened garden, unseeing, lost in memories.

“Right. You know how we have all the cameras and shit everywhere? That’s not only for normal security reasons. It all started the summer we first moved into this house. We have this whole rivalry with the Hydes and Granvilles; it’s been going on for years and years. More so the Hydes, to be honest, at least more recently, although the families are both related.”

James had referred to this rivalry at the ball, so this part wasn’t new information, but I kept quiet, letting him speak.

“At school, we were always playing pranks on each other, getting each other into trouble—mostly me and Z taking the fall.”

He sighed heavily again, his mouth setting in a flat line. “Okay. Mostly me. When we’d left school and moved into this house, Hyde stepped up his games. Him and his brother wanted us gone. Sounds dramatic, I know, but our families were at war. We fucking hated each other.”

“What happened?” I passed the joint back to him and pulled the sleeves of my hoodie down to cover my hands. Even under the blanket, snuggled into Caiden’s warm body, I was fucking freezing.

“There was an…incident. Look, I don’t know the details, but Tim—that’s Joseph’s brother—he died.”

My eyes flew to Caiden’s. He continued to stare straight ahead, but his arm tightened around me. “He’s dead? How? When?”

“I—I don’t know. We don’t speak about it. The girl in the picture? That’s Hyde’s sister. She went off the rails when he died, had a complete breakdown. Her parents shipped her off to some rehab place, and she’s never been back since.”

I didn’t know what to say. I guess that explained Joseph’s hatred of the Four, though, if they’d had a long-time rivalry, and he’d lost his brother. Caiden continued speaking. “After that happened, we came to a mutual agreement that there’d be a ceasefire, whatever you wanna call it. There’s been nothing since. Until—” He gritted his teeth. “—the shit with you and Granville happened.”

“So why now?”

“No fucking clue.”

“And you didn’t retaliate because of the Alstone Holdings deal?” I guessed. He glanced down at me quickly, biting his lip, before his gaze flicked away.

“Yeah…” He trailed off, shuffling a bit in his seat.

“Cade?” I twisted around to face him, bringing my hand up to his cheek to get him to turn to look at me, running my thumb across the light stubble on his jaw. “Are you keeping something from me?”

He shivered, muttering, “Your hand’s freezing.” With yet another sigh, he finally met my eyes, his expression shuttered. “I co

nfronted Granville. I couldn’t let it lie. He fucked with you and me, and he needed to know that was unacceptable.”