Page 145 of Stolen Hearts

“Castle…”

“Just tell me, Callie,” he murmurs.

I nod. “Yeah,” I choke. “Yeah, that’s where I found them.”

He looks away, his eyes stabbing out into the ocean.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, wincing as I pull close and kiss his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

He swallows.

“So Robert wasn’t my real father…”

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to even imagine what’s going through his mind and his heart right now as I shake my head.

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t think so.”

Castle nods slowly as the seconds tick by.

“Good,” he finally growls. “Good.” He looks up at the ceiling, exhaling slowly as his eyes close. “I’m glad.” He shakes his head. “He was a bastard. And I don’t mean he was just mean, or a jerk. I mean he was a fuckingmonster. Beat me, beat my mom—” He flinches. “Well,notmy mom, I guess,” he growls quietly. “Cynthia. She’d always forgive him, for all of it, and usually blame me instead. I didn’t have any forgiveness for that man. But I could look past it. I could bury it. Then he started in on Kelly.”

He looks away as my heart starts to break for him all over again.

“He beat her to death in the back yard, right in front of the woman who was supposed to be our mother.”

I choke back the sob that wrenches through my chest, clinging to him tightly as I wrap my arms tight around him.

“I walked in right afterward, and I just…snapped. I was done. I had no reason left to hold myself back. So I killed him.” He draws in a slow breath. “I killed him right there in our kitchen with my bare fucking hands. Cynthia called the cops, and told them Kelly fell off the roof, and that I had killed my father while high on drugs.”

His eyes close as he draws in another slow breath.

“Dominic Farrell…you’ve probably met him before through Eilish or Neve…I’d done some work for him before. So when I got hauled down to the local precinct, some of the Kildare-loyal cops down there let him know, and he came down and pulled some strings. He couldn’t work miracles, though, so it basically came down to prison or the army. I chose army.”

He turns to smile sadly at me as I lean my forehead to his.

“Did you really want to die?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly, nodding. “Yeah. It’s what made me a good Ranger, actually,” he smirks. “I didn’t fear death. I went actively looking for it. But somehow, I kept on fucking living. I kept making it back from one mission after another, more than anyone has any right to. Because death clearly wanted to fuck with me some more,” he growls bitterly. “He wouldn’t fuckinglet me die—”

“Castle—”

“You have to know I’m not like that anymore, Callie,” he says firmly, eyes locked on mine. “On my last mission…I mean, I didn’t know it was the last one at the time, but it was…we were breaching this house on the edge of Kabul looking for a local warlord shithead named Mahdi Ramin who was strapping bombs to fucking kids.”

My face goes white as I hold him tighter.

“My team and I… We were like brothers. Me, Jeremy who you’ve met now, Jason, Bryce—Loraine’s husband and Teagan’s dad—and Matt, who actuallywerebrothers.” His face twists with grief and he takes a shaky breath. “We had bad intel on the house, though. The motherfucker knew we were coming and rigged the place with an IED.”

He looks away, remembering.

“I was supposed to go in first. It was supposed to bemewho took that blast. But Bryce was always the cowboy. He was also team leader that night and decided for whatever reason to put me in fourth. They all went in before me…”

I don’t have any words. All I can do is hold him and kiss his face as he holds me tight in his arms.

“After that, I was just…” he shakes his head. “Sort of done. I spent two months at a rehab hospital in Germany plotting all the ways I’d find that motherfucker Mahdi and fantasizing about what I’d do to him once I did. And then the idiot goes and drives drunk without a seatbelt, crashes through the windshield, and dies instantly on fucking impact,” he snaps bitterly before turning his gaze back to the ocean. “Lucky fucker. I’d have made it lasta year.”

He exhales and then turns to smile wryly at me. “For some weird reason I came home to bury my mom. Closure or something, I guess. Then Cillian found me, tasked me with guarding his nieces, and that was it.”

He snorts, shaking his head and turning to look pointedly at the letter and the uncashed checks on the table.

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