“What?” Duke demands, turning to him. “Those messages were fromyou?You’re the old guy Harper was texting?”
Baron shrugs. “What about it?”
“Dude,” Duke says, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you tell me? You knew all that stuff about her and Royal?”
“Why didn’t you tellme?” I ask. “She was trying to destroy our family.”
“You weren’t thinking straight,” Baron says flatly. “I was looking out for you. For us. Our family.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us what she was planning?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I had it under control.”
“You had me under control,” Harper says quietly. “If you knew what I was planning, you could keep an eye on me, make sure nothing ever came of it even when I found out about Royal and those women. You could redirect me when you didn’t like what I was doing.”
Baron raises his brows and rocks back on his heels. “Something like that.”
“Did you know she wasn’t a Darling?” I ask.
His gaze snaps to me. “What?”
“She’s not a Darling. Did you know?”
His eyes narrow. “Bullshit. I found the letter from her mom to the grandfather Darling.”
“Her mom’s a junkie and a liar,” I point out. “She was trying to get money out of him.”
“Dad got a DNA test,” Baron argues.
I shake my head, watching him wrestle with this. “It was forged.”
“Or maybe the one she gave you was forged,” Baron says, tossing the sucker over the edge with a disgusted look in my direction. “You know she’s a liar. You know what she was planning. She’s still probably planning it. We don’t know anymore because I lost access to her. You should thank me for finding out all that stuff.”
“You lied to me,” I say flatly.
“And her?” he asks. “Just because she almost died, now you suddenly trust her?”
“She has no reason to lie,” I say.
“How about, so we won’t try to kill her?” he demands. “Or so she can take down our family, like she always wanted.”
“I’m not lying,” Harper says. “One look at me and you should have known. Aren’t you supposed to be the smart science guy? You should know how genetics work.”
“Where’d you get a DNA test?” he asks. “From the Dollar Store?”
“From Preston,” she says flatly.
Baron chuckles. “You believe Preston Darling? And here I was starting to think you weren’t so dumb after all.”
“I believe him over you,” she says. “He had no reason to lie. Your dad did.”
Baron leans back against the side of the bridge and crosses his arms, turning his attention to me. “You believe this?”
“Yes,” I say. “Dad wanted to keep us off the Delacroixs, including Lindsey and Preston, while he worked on the casino deal. We all started out thinking she was a Darling, but when he found out she wasn’t, he kept it to himself. Harper was as good a means to distract us as any.”
“She was keeping us pretty distracted,” Duke admits, leaning back next to Baron. He probably doesn’t even notice that he’s mirroring his twin exactly. It’s one of those things they do unconsciously, like the twin telepathy looks they exchange, that show they’re still part of the same whole. Maybe that’s what went wrong with the twins in this family. Maybe there’s only one soul to go around.
“I want an explanation,” Harper says, glaring at my brothers and lifting the gun a bit, pointing at their feet instead of the ground.