Smolder (Steel Brothers Saga 22)

I nod.

“Brock, our family made it through the horror of those years, and we will make it through this. I promise you that.”

“How can you make such a promise?”

“Because I will will it if I have to. That’s how much I love you and your brother. That’s how much I love your mother. That’s how much I love this entire family. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done for family.”

Then my father does something completely unexpected.

He laughs.

I turn to look at him, regard his profile once more.

“What the hell is so funny?”

“It’s not funny, Brock. Just something that occurred to me, and it made me laugh. The absurdity of it all.”

“Okay. You will have to clue me in here because I really don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“My own father,” Dad says. “That was my own father’s excuse for so long. For everything he did in his life. He did it for family. For my mother. For his children.”

I say nothing. I don’t like where this is going.

“And now here I am. Sixty-three years old, and I’m making the same excuses. We buried all of this for you. For your brother, your cousins. So you wouldn’t have to live with the darkness that our family had been through. And I’m laughing because…in the end, it didn’t work for my father. Everything he tried to protect my mother from, us from, came barreling into our lives twenty-five years later.”

And then I understand.

History is repeating itself.

Now.

The horrors of the past are resurfacing.

And I vow. I vow here and now as I stare at my father, his laughter finally subsiding, that I will never, never bury the past again.

“Tell me, then,” I say. “Tell me about your father’s half brother. The descendants who have come out of the woodwork. Do they have names?”

“Only one so far. The report came in late last night.”

“What’s the name, then?”

“It’s a grandson, or so he says.”

“Okay. Has he consented to a DNA test?”

“A DNA test may not be conclusive. We’re talking about a half-sibling from two generations ago. Every family has second and third cousins floating around that have no claim to anything.”

“It’s a start, anyway.”

Dad nods.

“What else do you have? Anything?” I ask.

“A last name,” Dad says. “Lamone."