Page 16 of Callum

“Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“About her baby?”

The shock on Grant’s face is genuine, and I feel something loosen in my chest. He didn’t know. If Grant doesn’t know, it means none of the MacAlisters know. How the fuck did the GiGi’s keep it a secret?

“She had a baby? When?”

“I don’t know.” I swallow thickly around the last sip of bourbon, stepping toward Grant’s desk with my hand extended. He pours another three fingers of the amber liquid into my moving glass as I drop heavily into the chair across from him. Looking up, I breathe out the first thought in my mind. “It could be mine.”

“How do you feel about that?”

I have no fucking idea. “Confused?”

Grant laughs softly, his head shaking from side to side in disbelief. “I would imagine so. How did you find out?”

“She has a C-section scar.”

His brows pull between his eyes, and I see what he’s about to ask. “Don’t,” I stop him with a raised hand. “I know what I saw, and I’m not wrong. It’s a C-section.”

“An old one?”

“She didn’t have it before,” I take another sip of the bourbon, reveling in the burn of it against my throat. “But it doesn’t look fresh.”

“No idea where the kid is now?”

“No,” I admit, meeting his gaze again. “Could they have it in the Convent?”

Grant mulls that idea over, but I can see he thinks as little of it as I do. There is next to no chance that the GiGi’s have been secretly raising a child inside the Convent—especially if that child is a MacAlister.

“I’m going to put some ears to the ground on this, but Callum,” Grant sighs, pouring more bourbon into his glass. “I can’t guarantee anything.”

“I know. Thank you, brother.”

He nods once before straightening his shoulders again. “There’s no way the Father will allow the MacAlisters to protect Rosalind. We will have to keep it under wraps.”

Of course the old ball bag won’t make this easy on us. “How are you going to do that?”

Grant’s darkened gaze meets mine, and I know the next words out of his mouth are the ones he’s been waiting to say since he called me home eight months ago. “We are going to create a distraction. Something he will care about more.”

My heart flutters against my ribs, hope and dread warring with one another. “Me.”

“Exactly. We’ll present a united front against a common enemy, just like he did,” Grant raises his glass toward a photo at the back of the room, a solemn look on his face. I don’t have to turn around to know he’s looking at a black-and-white photo of our great-grandfather, Aulay MacAlister. Nothing in this office ever changes, but I’m certain that everything in Grant’s world could be flipped on its head, and that photo would still hang right there.

Grant’s steady gaze meets mine across the room as I put the pieces together. There are only five MacAlister leadership positions, including the Father. It’s clear Grant sees an opportunity for me to step in, but there isn’t anywhere for me to be unless someone else steps down.

Or dies.

When it finally clicks that there is nothing else he could be implying, my eyes snap to Grant’s face. The corner of his mouth ticks into a smile as he swirls the liquid around his glass again. “What do you say, Callum? Are you up to the task?”

“Do the Brothers know?”

“Why do you think Lachlan sent you here?” Grant’s eyes flash with something so dark it nearly matches the void I feel in my own chest. “Do you want in?”

“Of course I fucking do.”

“Good,” Grant slaps his hands together, pushing into a standing position. He moves across the room on quiet feet, but I hear him shuffling through the shelves near the spot I had been just moments before. “Your first order of business as a MacAlister can be taking over our newest charge.”

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