Page 22 of The Arrogant's Surrender

I have to steady myself to avoid trembling. Something tells me what I knew about Moses was just the tip of the iceberg—something I’d already begun to suspect before his death.

"I don’t think I can keep answering your questions if you’re not honest with me, sir," I admit, dropping the mask of calm."How can you expect me to share everything about our life without knowing whether it could hurt me?"

"It won’t, Brooklyn," Zeus interjects. "We’d never let you say anything that could harm you. But I agree that you have the right to know the truth." He looks at the detective, who sighs.

"Fine, I was trying to spare you for now, given your health condition. But if you prefer bluntness, when I said you couldn’t know if your ex-partner had living relatives, it’s because, legally speaking, Moses Raines doesn’t exist."

"What?"

"Let me explain it differently. The man you knew as Moses Raines also went by the name Wren Floding and at least five other . . . aliases, let’s call them. None of them are his real name. They all belong to people who’ve been dead for decades."

"Oh my God!" My gasp sounds like the anguished cry of a wounded animal trapped in a snare.

"Brooklyn, are you feeling alright?" Athanasios, who has remained a silent observer until now, asks.

"No, I’m fine. Just in shock."

Dear God, what have I gotten myself into?

Of course, there came a point when I found his work hours odd, but that was near the end—after the babies were born and I’d decided to leave. Never, though, did it cross my mind that he was using a fake identity. Several, according to what the detective just revealed.

"I had no idea about any of this. Why would someone do such a thing?"

"Possibly because they have a lot to hide," the man replies.

"Are you telling me the father of my children was a criminal?"

"We can’t say for sure yet, but there are several indications that he might have been. Now that I’ve disclosed that you wereliving with a man who doesn’t legally exist, let’s focus on the night of the incident. What exactly do you remember?"

I clasp my hands tightly in my lap, trying to stop them from trembling.

I glance at Athanasios, and he’s looking back at me.

"You can do this. You came out of a coma, Brooklyn. You can do anything."

I nod and turn my attention back to the detective, silently grateful for the doctor’s faith in me. "I think it must have been around two in the morning because I wasn’t in a deep sleep. I’d gotten up not long before to nurse the babies," I begin, praying my voice will remain steady. "I heard a noise downstairs. Nothing too alarming, but after the babies were born, I was always on high alert, listening for any sound on the baby monitor."

"Did you get up?"

"No. I checked the baby monitor on the bedside table. It was positioned above the crib where the two of them slept together, and I saw that they were sound asleep. I closed my eyes again, thinking it was just my imagination. I was almost asleep when I became certain someone was walking down the hallway. I looked to the side and saw Moses was still asleep, so it wasn’t him. That’s when I realized someone had broken into our house."

Athanasios

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Did you get up?"the man asks Brooklyn.

"No. I checked the baby monitor on the bedside table. It was positioned above the crib where the two of them slept together, and I saw that they were sound asleep. I closed my eyes again, thinking it was just my imagination. I was almost asleep when I became certain someone was walking down the hallway. I looked to the side and saw Moses was still asleep, so it wasn’t him. That’s when I realized someone had broken into our house."

My partners weren’t joking when they said the three of us could be described as having what psychiatry callsantisocial personality disorder.I’m self-centered, and empathy is an emotion I don’t understand. Anger, on the other hand, is very familiar to me.

Yet, despite the limited number of people I can connect with enough to understand their pain, I am Greek. Even though emotions and feelings rarely reach me, I understand the concept of family. I was raised by loving mothers—both my adoptive and biological ones.

I think of Soraya and Silas, who were practically newborns at the time of the incident, and then I look at the woman beside me. I try to imagine the terror Brooklyn must have felt waking up in the middle of the night with the certainty that someone had invaded her home. But I can’t, so I focus on her words as she recounts the events to the detective.

"And what happened next?"

She closes her eyes. "It all happened so fast. The father of my babies had a gun he kept on the bedside table."

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