92 More secrets

**Date = 8 August**
**Place = San Francisco (Black Pit)**

**POV - Enrique**

Just as I reach the entrance — just before I run into the kitchen — I hear Rosa’s voice from inside.
It’s not loud. But something in it stops me cold. I lean against the wall and peep through the open door.
“Sky … **garota** *(Portuguese = girl)* … you don’t understand. It’s complicated.”
There’s a tremble in it. No, not just a tremble. A rawness. Like something bleeding behind her words.
Damion’s gone. Mel’s gone. Axel must be waiting down the hall. But I can’t move. I can’t stop listening.
Aria’s hand flies to her heart like she’s trying to keep it from falling straight out of her chest.
Sky’s eyes shine — not with tears, but with that fierce, armored fury that only shows up when grief gets tired of being quiet. She barks a laugh — sharp, humorless, the kind that makes the hairs on your arms stand up.
“Oh, I’m dating complicated.”
Aria elbows her — gently, but enough to remind her she’s not alone.
“Tone,” she whispers.
Sky tilts her head with a brittle smile. “This IS my gentle tone when I’m upset about almost getting killed …” she sneers, holding up two fingers — “Twice!”
The coffeemaker gurgles in the background like it’s trying to weigh in on the drama. No one breathes.
The kitchen, normally warm and bustling, feels off-kilter now — too still, the air too thick. The scent of roasted coffee and old stone presses in around us, grounding and suffocating at the same time.
“I’ve just had enough of all these secrets to last a lifetime … and any future reincarnations,” she continues, voice dropping. “And I’m pretty sure that … even after death … somehow …that man’s finger is in the pie, one way or another. But all of you like to pretend his ghost isn’t still in the room. And the twins can’t move on with his fist still clutched around their throats.”
Harsh. But true.
A hush settles over the room, thick and cold. Even the stone walls seem to lean in, listening.
“Come on … I’ve figured it out already, Aunt Rosa …” Sky snaps — but it’s not her usual sharpness. It’s brittle. Frayed. A spark trying to light in wet air.
The silence that follows tastes metallic — like old blood and old fear. Rosa pours three cups of coffee, stirs in sugar, milk, cream … as if to drag out the inevitable.
Sky takes a sip, swallows hard. I hear the tightness in her jaw even from here. “They were tortured by a man who hated them for reasons they didn’t even know.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it still sounds loud against the cold stone walls.
After I found out that our dad was not our dad, I also figured that was the reason Alexander hated us more than our brothers. He did what he did because we were not his blood.
I lean back against the stone, chest tight, breath fogging in the cool corridor.
She takes a shuddery breath. Her voice cracks, soft as a bruise. “But HE … he knew from the start. He had to.”
The words hit me hard. My back stiffens. My chest burns.
“He hated them long before everyone else found out. Long before that … leg-pierced-blood-transfusion incident,” she continues, her voice is barely a murmur, but I can hear it clearly.

Wait … what?
Pieces start snapping together — violent, ugly, undeniable. She’s right. Damn, this girl is sharp. He tortured us long before that accident. Before everyone supposedly found out.
I want to scream. But swallow instead.
Alexander knew. He hated us. From the start. And I missed it.
The air feels colder suddenly, like the walls exhale frost. I inch closer, peering around the edge of the wall again.
“He knew because it wasn’t a mistake, was it?”
Rosa doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. The way her shoulders cave is answer enough.
“It was a plan.” Sky finishes, the words trembling but final — a verdict sealed in cold stone and colder truth.
Aria clutches her cup as if her life depends on it. Sky’s eyes are still wet with the kind of anger that comes from shaking hands with death. Twice.
Rosa drags in a shaky breath, wipes her eyes with the corner of her apron, and sinks into the nearest chair. The wood groans beneath her like even it feels the weight of the truth.
Sky’s fingers curl into her sling, twisting it. “But he’s not the only one … you also knew …” She stares at Rosa like she’s trying to pull the truth out of her with sheer force.
Sky’s bleached white, one hand on the table like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Aria is frozen stiff.
Rosa’s voice cracks, almost pleading with the air. “Alexander thought himself clever. Thought he could carve the future with his own two hands. He didn’t want fate. He wanted leverage. He wanted bloodlines that weren’t his. He wanted to raise a child with another man’s power in his veins.”
“Instead, he got two.”
Sky huffs a laugh. “Typical — only Jackson can start roasting someone pre-birth.” Even in my haze, I smack a smile at that.
“Barry … he delivered the package to the fertility clinic … the doctor was ready …”
“And you didn’t tell … anyone …” Aria asks accusingly, her voice harsher than I’ve ever heard. Judging. So unlike her.
Rosa sniffs and wipes her nose with her apron. She then folds her trembling hands on her lap — palms weathered, knuckles pale, nails chipped from too much scrubbing and too many years of swallowing truths.

She hesitates as if looking for the right words. But no words can ever be right enough to explain that guilt. The remorse hangs around her like the apron she keeps wringing in her fist.
“I tried to warn … was going … but Alexander shot Mathias in the leg. He did … he didn’t even blink … said the next time it would be in the head.” She sobs. “My boy was three.”
The room seems to draw closer, warm shadows pooling around them while the cold truth stretches long and merciless across the table. My fingers curl into fists, my nails carve crescents into my palms.
“Who is their father?” Aria asks, her tone hushed, like she already fears the answer. She grips the table like she needs to anchor herself. Sky looks like she might pass out or punch a wall. “Do you know?”
Rosa closes her eyes — long, slow, like she’s trying to unsee decades of choices.
And that silence … it carries every answer no one wants to hear. She slowly shakes her head.
Sky’s mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. “No?”
Rosa lifts a shaking hand as if she can push the truth back into her throat. “Barry … I never asked …” Her breath stutters. “Made the nightmare … the guilt … feel a little less real.”
It doesn’t. It obviously doesn’t. Her shoulders tremble like she’s holding up a cathedral made of shame.
“I only know it’s someone powerful. Someone Alexander hated. Maybe even feared a little.” Rosa wipes her eyes again. “Someone he desperately needed leverage over.”
Sky shifts, eyes narrowing, jaw working like she’s chewing on shards of disbelief.
Rosa’s jaw tightens too, like she’s mirroring it unconsciously. “But Jackson … it wasn’t just hate,” Rosa says softly. “It was punishment. Alexander saw something in him … something he feared … so he didn’t just beat him. He tried to break him.”
A slow exhale bleeds out of her — long, hollow, defeated. “But Jackson wouldn’t break. That’s the part that scared Alexander the most.”
Sky snorts, sharp and humor-cracked. “What? That he’s the son of a devil?” The girl isn’t just pretty, she’s quick-witted, too.
“I didn’t say devil,” Rosa whispers.
“But you meant it,” Sky cuts in, clean and merciless.
Rosa hesitates, rubs her palms down her apron, then tilts her face toward the ceiling like she’s trying to call down divine help that’s definitely not coming. “Barry once said … the twins’ father isn’t a devil you summon lightly.”
Sky throws her hands up, exasperated. “See? I knew it. I knew he was spawned in hell, that one.” She tries to lighten the mood, but it falls like a joke thrown into a grave. The air is just too somber.
Aria makes a soft, broken noise. “Barry … who else knows?” Rosa’s eyes flicker.
There’s a beat of silence. The kind that crawls. The table groans. I hear Rosa’s voice, quieter, harder to make out. “Jackson … he tends to find out stuff.” A bitter truth.
He always finds out. He just never shares.
My heart stutters, then trembles like it wants to break free from my ribs.
He knew about the blood. Didn’t tell me.
And now this. Another fucking secret.
How many more are there?
Anger surges — hot, violent, sharp enough to blister. Fury follows — the cold kind that bites instead of burns. Sadness pools underneath, heavy as wet stones.
And hurt … God, the hurt is the worst. The kind that bruises everything it touches.
I inhale. The breath snags like it hits broken glass. Something cold settles in my stomach. Not fear. Something worse. Something that feels like self-condemnation, stabbing me in the back.
“Of course that asshole knows,” Sky mumbles sarcastically, the exact same hurt audible in her voice. Let me guess, he didn’t tell her, either.
I want to walk out. I want to find him. I want to punch him in the face for every truth he buried. I want to shake him for thinking I couldn’t handle it.
Why doesn’t he trust me?
Deep down, I know the reason. But I refuse to say it. Refuse to think it. Refuse to look that regret in the eye because I already know it would swallow me whole.
That cold thing in my stomach? It spreads.
I press a hand to the wall to steady myself.
The stone is cold. Too cold.
Somewhere inside, an awareness cracks open — small, sharp, unstoppable.
And I know … the ghosts are not gone.
“Jackson knows?” Aria asks softly. “Why didn’t he tell Enrique?”
“Because he thinks he’s protecting him,” Sky snaps.
That last part undoes me. He always does that — fucking shields everyone without even asking if they want to be shielded.
“They might look identical, but oh my god, those boys couldn’t be more different,” Rosa whispers. “Enrique is sunshine. Jackson is darkness. But somehow, they even each other out.” Her eyes soften.
“Enrique was the only thing that pulled his brother out of the abyss. Jackson knew it. So he shielded that tiny spark from going dark.”
My hand finds the doorframe, fingers curling around it just to stay upright, heart in my throat, not quite able to move. My legs feel like wet cement. My head spins like someone opened Pandora’s box and shoved it straight into my brain.
That fucking asshole.
“You think I can be a spark for him?” Sky asks slowly.
“Oh, my dear, you are already lighting up his darkness. That’s why he’s taking on the world for you.”
I can’t stand on the outside any longer.
I step into the kitchen. Their eyes land on me simultaneously — messy, guilty, startled, too-soft, too-loud.
No one speaks a word. But their faces speak in entire paragraphs.
Behind us, a pot boils over, shrieking — like even the kitchen can’t hold the tension anymore.
Somewhere outside, a crow screams three times. Tradition, or omen, or the universe being dramatic — who knows at this point.
And then Axel shouts from the corridor.
I swallow around the lump clawing its way up my throat and yell back that they should go without me, before I slam the door closed. I can’t deal with that shit now.
I cross the room on unsteady legs and drop onto the bench across from Aunt Rosa.
The silence is thick. Close. Breathing down my neck.
“So …” My voice is steady, even though my pulse is anything but. “Now that we’re alone, you’re going to tell me everything I don’t know about Alexander.” I meet her eyes — tired, guilty, glistening. “I want to understand how all of you knew, but no one ever thought that I might want to know why my childhood was so fucked up.”
Aria slides her hand under the table, finds mine, and squeezes.
“I want to know too,” she says, voice gentle but anchored in steel.
Rosa shifts, the cold coffee in her cup long forgotten. “Sometimes … it stinks to dig up the past,” she murmurs, her tone a dodge wrapped in nostalgia and exhaustion.
Not this time.
I lean in slightly, refusing to look away. “I’m done with polite versions. I need to know.”
Sky, legs bouncing nervously, runs a palm down her face. “Come on, Aunt Rosa,” she pleads. “We’ll need to dig through the stinky shit to find peace … the boys need to heal … give us something here.”
The kitchen holds its breath.
Rosa looks at each of us — one by one — like she’s measuring whether we’re ready for the truth.
Then her shoulders sag, and she sighs — not the tired kind, but the kind dragged up from somewhere deep, somewhere old. Like she’s hauling her thoughts out of a grave she hoped would stay sealed.
“Leverage …” she starts, bitter, then moves to a different point — “That’s what he was all about … Alexander …” — rolling the name like it’s a sharp stone. There’s no lost love there.
I feel the air shift. Heavy. Damp. My shirt sticks to my spine, suddenly too warm, but my hands are cold. Rosa’s voice threads between us, weaving tension tight enough to touch.
“He was a coward,” she says, quiet but sharp. “But a clever one. Ambitious too — not the good kind. The kind that rots. The kind that spreads.” She flicks flour off her fingers, the dust catching the dim kitchen light like little ghosts. “He wanted power … control. If he couldn’t rule the world, the States would do.”
My jaw clenches. I remember the man’s smile — that thin, polished blade of a thing that never reached his eyes. I can almost taste the disgusted tang of hate from every time I’d seen it.
Rosa keeps going, her voice steady even though her hands tremble. “He never went to war … didn’t have the balls … instead, he strategically won battle by battle before they even started. He meticulously planned every detail, every angle, every possible outcome, and catered for it.” Her eyes glimmer, dark and too knowing. “He never made a move — unless he knew he could control all the players.”
My stomach knots. I swallow hard. He did that to us. Controlled one by breaking the other. Tried twisting our loyalties. Forced us into choosing who took the hit, who walked away, who paid. And even after his death, his imprint remains — an icy fingerprint smudged across every part of our story.
That’s why the new choices don’t shake us the way they should. After a man like that, everything else feels survivable.
“He was a brilliant dictator, I give him that,” Rosa admits with a grim nod. “He understood the game, understood the people in it, every weakness, every crack in a person’s soul … and he used it.” She rubs her arms as if she’s cold, but the kitchen feels like it’s shrinking, heat pressing against my chest. “Called it leverage.”
I can feel my pulse thudding behind my ribs. My throat feels tight. Because in every word Rosa speaks, I’m seeing the secrets everyone learned to swallow so deeply that it became a habit.
“Well, he mastered it,” Rosa says, her voice thinning to a whisper. “Perfected it. Twisted it. And he made damn sure no one could escape his plan.”
“He had leverage over a lot of powerful men … judges, politicians, even royals …”
A chill crawls up my arms, raising goosebumps.
“For years,” Rosa continues, staring down at her shaking hands, “Barry and I tried to help in the ways we could. A warning here. A distraction there. A meal left where it wasn’t supposed to be. A door unlocked.”
She shuts her eyes, voice breaking. And I remember. The memories hit me like cold water.
The plates of food when we weren’t allowed to eat.
The rope in the pit we used to climb out.
The voice pulling him away from our hiding spot.
The iron door yawning open.
The coal stove’s heat when we were freezing.
The handcuffs clipped just loose enough for little wrists to slip free.
None of it was chance.
“But the truth is … we were all just too deep in it … deals were made … sacrifices.” Rosa lifts her head, meeting each of our eyes like she’s bracing for judgment.
“You can judge all you want,” she whispers. “You wouldn’t be wrong. But we all did what we could when we could. Small things. Quiet things. Things that looked like nothing from the outside but were everything at that moment. Things to survive.”
Her voice breaks completely.
“Like sending your kids away.” Does she mean us going to military school, or her own kids who grew up in Porto Santo with their grandmother? “And still … it was never enough.”
A tear slips down her cheek, tracing old lines carved by regret. And in the quiet that follows, I feel it — the enormity of everything we never knew. And it deepens the regret already living in my bones. Because now, for the first time, I’m seeing it from their side … and every judgment I ever held crumbles into some embarrassing misconception.
Rosa finally goes quiet.
But the silence she leaves behind is louder than anything she said. We sit there. Just sit, each with our own thoughts.
“Everything he touched had purpose. Calculated, intentional … cruel,” she starts again.
A lone tear flows down her cheek. “Even Barry …”
The girls freeze. So do I.
“He was rescued from a drugged-out mother selling her eight-year-old for sex,” she says softly.
“So Barry owed him … that’s why he was loyal,” Sky adds.
“At first,” Rosa nods, heavy as gravity.
“Barry grew up here.” She gestures vaguely toward the door, like the memories are too heavy to point directly at. “Little room at the end of the corridor. Friends with the boys. Ate at this very table.” She presses her palm to the wood as if she can feel the ghosts of their laughter embedded in it. “He had a childhood here. A real one.”
Her voice dims. Shadows stretch across her memories.
“For a bit.”
I gasp. “He tortured him, too?” I ask. My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, thick with something I can’t name. Because suddenly it hits me — maybe we weren’t the only ones walking around with invisible fractures.
Rosa doesn’t answer at first. She stares at me with this haunted, hollow look — like she’s trapped in a moment she can’t get out of.
Then she lets out a long, brittle sigh.
“What they went through … it took their souls … and more.”
A soft gasp leaves Aria. “They?” she whispers. But I know the names before she lists them quietly, reverently.
“Barry … Xander … Alberto … William.” Rosa’s eyes flicker around the room as if expecting my father’s spirit to appear in the corner.
“What about Uncle John?” Aria asks. Cause she doesn’t know. I never told her that part.
I swallow … maybe I’m more like my twin than I would like to admit. I’m doing exactly to Aria what Jackson is doing to all of us.
“Not him,” Rosa says abruptly. Then she falls back to the main point.

“Wrecking them didn’t happen overnight. It never does. It happened slowly … little step by little step. A deal here. A threat there. A reward. A punishment. A choice that wasn’t really a choice.”
She folds her hands tightly, wringing her fingers as though trying to squeeze out memories.

“And by the time they realized they were henchmen for evil, losing their humanity …” Her voice thins. “It was too late.”
The kitchen light flickers, or maybe my vision does.
Rosa inhales shakily.
Something ugly twists in my chest — guilt, anger, sorrow, all knotted up. All the time, I would blame my father, Mom, Barry … for so many things … without knowing the bigger picture.
Her shoulders slump in a way that makes her look smaller. Too small for all the weight she carries.
“Do you know what their first *‘mission’* was?” Rosa asks, using sharp little finger quotes, venom dripping from the word.
None of us answers. None of us breathes.
She continues anyway.
“To rescue Liliana.” She spits the name like a gruesome memory, then crosses herself with a trembling hand.
“But …” Aria’s voice falters. Her brows draw together. “I thought … he … didn’t he kill her?”
That story I have shared with her. Or rather … she fished it out of me while I was still drifting in the after-sex stratosphere — weightless in that warm, euphoric afterglow only she leaves me in.
Rosa fixes her with a hollow stare. “Yes. But at the time … no one knew that. Not even Barry.”
Her mouth pulls tight, grief etched deep. “She’d been gone for over a year. And Alexander—” she practically hisses the name — “was oh-so-eagerly helping George look for her.”
My stomach turns.
“That night they got an anonymous tip,” she says. “A lead on a burned house. The boys were barely seventeen.”
Her voice shatters into a whisper. “They found her corpse there. Butchered. Charred. Only distinguishable by her Saint Christopher necklace, given to her by her mom for protection.”
“A lot of good that did,” Sky sneers, the truth. I’m slowly starting to catch a liking to the girl.
“He killed her,” Sky murmurs, more to herself than us, “and toasted her as a forensic countermeasure …” Her jaw clenches with horror. “Fucking clever bastard.”
But sometimes the girl officially scares me. The way her head works. It’s not normal.
“What about Uncle Ash?” I ask, dread sliding icy fingers up my spine.
“Oh, no one even knew about his existence …” Rosa’s tone drips disgust. “Until Alexander needed a bargaining chip to get George to do whatever he needed.”
“George knew?” I ask, surprised.
“Eventually,” Rosa whispers. “You know … George was bad … but not like Alexander,” she adds. “He was cruel when he had to be. Not for fun.”
A smaller monster … is still a monster. After all, George did terrible things — slightly less bad, but still terrible.
The room stills. Sky shakes her head, horrified. “Alexander used Ash to control him …”
Rosa sighs, heavy, exhausted. “He used everyone.” Her voice rasps. “He used the kids and me to keep Barry in line. Did the same with Xander.” Her eyes darken — old, heavy shadows surfacing. “And that’s why he had the sperm swapped. He needed leverage over that devil.”
A sudden smirk turns the corners of her mouth upward.
“Too bad for him, he got blown to pieces before he could use it.” She snorts, a bitter, vindictive sound. “Joyous day, that one. The day he died … everyone celebrated. Everyone.” I remember. There was no mourning, no tears … everyone was happy. Singing. Dancing.
“Do you know who planted the bomb?” I ask. My pulse stumbles. “Was it my father?”
Rosa stares at me like she didn’t hear a single word. Then she breathes out … soft, strange.
“A hero. That’s who did it.” She shakes her head.
“But it wasn’t Barry or your dad. They were still locked up under the stables … tortured … had been since the day before … your mom … died.”
“The day Darren made that phone call …” I whisper, connecting the dots, putting two and two together. I didn’t know Dad was captured. Am I that clueless?
Aria gasps.

Sky glares into the distance like she wants to strangle time itself.
“Yeah,” Rosa says with a humorless laugh. “Barry told me he confessed. No one knew. That ungrateful moron started a domino effect that crushed us all,” she hisses.
“First, he took Jackson … tried to get the boy to admit it … to squeal.” She presses a hand to her chest.
“He didn’t. But he also didn’t know about the call … didn’t know that the monster already knew everything … who rescued Harry … how they helped him escape with his kids … poor Diabo never saw it coming …”
“But still he feels guilty … feels as if he’s responsible for his mother’s death,” Sky whispers. Rosa nods, eyes shining. He also feels guilty? Another thing I missed.
“It was the first time Alexander went off script. The first time, he didn’t plan ahead. The first time he acted impulsive … because betrayal is the thing he hated most on earth.”
“Let me guess,” Sky mutters, voice flat with bitter predictability. “He killed their mom as punishment?”
“He forced Xander and Barry to watch,” Rosa says. Her voice cracks. “— while he … slit her throat.”
The words hit like a sledgehammer.

“They finally snapped.”
My lungs seize. A cold shiver rips straight through my spine.
I gasp. “They were there … they saw it all …” I ask, horrified.
She presses her hand to her heart like she’s trying to stop it from collapsing. “The rape. The killing. All of it.” She takes a breath. “Then he locked them up, tortured them for more than a month, starved them …”
The room tilts. My vision blurs. It’s too much. Too ugly. Too real.
“Until Jackson found them after Alexander’s death,” she continues quietly, “Broken but alive. Down in one of the old cells.”
She looks up at me. “That’s when Xander gave him this property. When Barry gave him his loyalty.”
Something inside me buckles — something I didn’t even know was load-bearing.
I realize … my twin — the person who breathed the same air as me our entire childhood — is a stranger. A mystery wearing my brother’s face.
Before I realize it, I’m standing. My body moves without permission. The walls feel like they’re folding inward, trying to swallow me whole.
I stumble out of the kitchen, out of the thick air and the memories that aren’t mine but now feel tattooed under my skin.
I need to get away.

Away from the weight of their eyes. Away from the stories dripping blood. Away from the ghosts — the ones I didn’t know existed until five minutes ago, but now won’t stop clawing at my throat.
I step into the corridor, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

My lungs feel too small. My chest too tight.
Even my conscience feels like it’s holding its breath, frozen in horror.
And Aria … she doesn’t follow me. Not because she doesn’t want to — but because even she can’t touch this.

Not yet. Not now.
I lean against the cold wall, pressing my palms to the stone as if it can anchor me.
And I swear I can hear Alexander’s laugh echoing through the corridor.