Yours to Keep by Claudia Burgoa
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vance
I’m almost prayingthat what I saw was a hallucination. But I know they were real. My heart is pulsating, and my hands are sweating. This is fucked up, and what’s going to happen? I have so many questions, and I can’t answer any of them. My brothers are going to freak the fuck out.
Before I start running toward the mansion, I pull out my phone and call Beacon.
“Yeah?” he answers lazily.
“Where are you?” I ask, praying that he didn’t jump on a plane for Seattle while leaving some stupid kid in his place.
“At home?”
“Where is everyone? We need to talk,” I urge him. “Call our brothers for an emergency meeting.”
“Are you drunk?” He chuckles.
“Beacon, this is fucking serious.”
“We’re home. After you left, everyone forfeited and put money in the jar. Darren’s father is a killjoy,” he complains.
He has no idea, but I’m not discussing Dare’s parents or Dare. We have bigger fish to fry. But before we can fry it, we have to catch it.
“Pull all the information you can on Dr. Sanders. He works for The Organization,” I order him. “He lived in Happy Springs.”
“I know Dr. Sanders. What are you getting into?”
“I met his daughter.”
“Is she hot, and you want her? I thought you and Dare had something good going,” he jokes, but this is not the time to fuck with me.
“She’s cute if you’re into what would look like an Aldridge-girl cute.” I don’t think that definition makes sense, but I’m stumped right now. I’m dumbfounded.
“Fuck, what are you talking about? You’re on speaker.”
“Pull all the information you can on Sanders,” I insist. “Everything. He knows something about Dad. Maybe this is the guy we’ve been looking for.”
“I’m on the chat with Langdon. I can multitask,” he complains, and his voice is now urgent and worried.
As I’m about to reach the house, I see Pierce waiting by the door. “What do you mean an Aldridge girl?”
“She’s a woman, mid-twenties or early thirties,” I explain, making my way inside the house and recovering my breath as I speak, “There are six of them.”
“Six what?” Henry asks, staring at me nervously.
“Two women and four men who could be family.”
“Whose family?” Pierce mumbles.
“Our family,” I answer.
“We don’t have more family. Beacon and his people searched everywhere. It’s just us.”
Henry runs a hand through his hair. “You know what will happen if there are more children? Parrish can either extend this for another eighteen months or screw us due to a technicality.”
“He can’t screw us,” Pierce says.
“Of course, he can,” Henry insists, panicking. He’s losing his shit. Mills is pale. Hayes is next to Beacon, waiting for the data. He’s our science guy. He needs facts before he freaks the fuck out like the other three.
“If what Vance claims is true, Parrish will be selling everything by Monday.” Henry turns to look at Hayes. “Can you check if Vance is drunk?”
“I’m not drunk. I know what I saw.”
“Legally, Parrish can’t do anything. The will only mentions Henry, Hayes, Mills, Vance, Beacon, Blaire, and me. The wives and significant others are obligated to stay with us too.”
“He could try.” Henry’s urgent voice is driving me insane.
Pierce shakes his head. “He can try, but while you guys were busy crying for Beacon, I used the money from our trust funds to buy our way out of any problems.”
“What do you mean?” Henry asks.
“While we were in San Diego, I was working, remember?”
Henry nods.
“Nyx and I were buying the companies that are allowed to buy all of Dad’s properties under the umbrella company that I established a year ago. We own them.”
“We could’ve gone on with our lives since then?” Henry glares at him.
Pierce shakes his head. “We can’t buy The Lodge. There are lots in Baker’s Creek and Happy Springs that we’ll lose if we don’t follow the stipulations. However, if Parrish tries to screw us now, it won’t be as bad.”
“Okay, here’s the information about Mr. Sanders,” Beacon says. “I emailed you the report so you can read it at your leisure. The highlights are that he owns Sanders Hedgefund, Sanview Enterprises, and other businesses? I thought he was a therapist. Herbert Christopher Sanders was born in Happy Springs. He lives in New York City.”
“I know who Herbert Sanders is,” Henry says. “One of his companies sells me the bedding for my hotels. His daughter, Brie, took over ten years ago.”
“How old is his daughter?” I ask.
“I assume she’s in her early thirties. I never met her. Sophia might know her,” he says.
I read the report. Single, six children. “Why do his children look like us?” I ask out loud.
“What children?” Hayes asks. “You need to slow down for a moment and give me more context. Every time you talk, Henry and Pierce interrupt you and say something stupid. Can we start from the beginning?”
Taking a deep breath, I begin the story. “Things got ugly with Darren’s parents. I went to visit Dr. Sanders. He’s a good listener. Sometimes he’s more like a father than a therapist.” I shrug. “That’s not the point. This woman opened the door to his house, and she looked familiar. Her name is Avery. She might be in her late twenties. I didn’t pay much attention. However, when I was about to leave, I saw his six children. Six adults. They were staring at me. It was like looking at you. I have a hunch they’re related to us.”
“Are you sure?” Beacon asks.
If I were him, I wouldn’t believe me either. Suddenly, I say, “We should go there. If anything, Dr. Sanders has answers. One time, he told me that our grandmother called Dad, Billy. He has to know more.”
The six of us head to his house. During the walk, none of us says a word. When we arrive, I ask out loud, “Whatever happens, we are covered, right?”
“Yes,” Pierce answers. “I just hope you’re wrong.”
Henry is the one who knocks on the door. A second later, Herbert Sanders is opening it. He shakes his head. “What a surprise, Henry,” he says, moving away and letting us inside.
“You know me?” he asks, taking a step back.
Dr. Sanders nods and opens the door wider so we can walk inside. “I know all of you.”
“Dr. Sanders, we hate to barge into your house unannounced, but it came to our attention that you knew our father,” Henry says politely.
“Cut the bullshit, Henry,” Beacon says. “Your children. Why do they look like us?”
I look toward the backyard, and I see them. The six people I saw earlier. I don’t wait for an answer. I march toward the door to look at them. They are staring at me.
“What did William do?” I say out loud.
“Let’s go outside, children. I guess it’s storytime,” the good old doctor says.
When we’re all outside, Pierce says, “Holy fuck, they do look like us. How? What happened?”
“I’ll introduce you later,” the doctor says.
“If you don’t mind, I have to sit,” Beacon says, searching for a chair. One of the guys, who I assume is my cousin or brother, brings it to him.
“For you to understand the Aldridge family, you have to know that most of their marriages were arranged. Your great-grandfather left for New York and set up Aldridge Enterprises to run away from his wife and son. Once your grandfather was old enough to go to college, his father called him to New York. After he graduated, he married your grandmother. She was a New York socialite. Your grandmother hated Baker’s Creek, but this is where your grandfather left her with your dad.”
That explains why she always treated everyone in town like they were beneath her. I’m not justifying her behavior, but at least I understand more about her. About everyone.
“What about William?” Henry asks. “I assume you knew him when you were children.”
“Yes, I met William in elementary school. We usually saw each other during summer camps. As you can imagine, he was lonely since his mom didn’t let him play with the other children. We went to the same high school. That’s where we fell in love.”
He pauses for a long time.
“I loved him. It wasn’t hard to fall in love with a guy like him.” He smiles and then continues. “He hated his life, his family, and his destiny. He loved the town, but he also wanted to run away. Unfortunately, the future of so many people depended on him. He was the last Aldridge. Oh, he loathed that too. Being an only child was the one thing he loathed the most. As you might know, his father arranged his marriage.”
“To my mom?” Henry asks.
Dr. Sanders nods. “Yes. The plan was to marry your mom and just have you.”
Henry looks around. “Well, I’m glad that wasn’t the case. These guys drive me insane, but I don’t think I could be doing this without them.”
“William hated when people told him what to do”—He pauses and looks at all of us, even his children— “You all got that from him, and he was happy to know that you wouldn’t let anyone dictate your life.”
“He tried to do that for the last eighteen fucking months,” I complain.
“As I said, it was his way to put us in his place.” Hayes scrubs his face. Then points at Dr. Sanders’s children. “Why us and not them? Who are they?”
“Patience, Hayes. We’ll get to that soon.”
Hayes frowns. I’m starting to think this guy knows a lot more about us.
“So, we made a plan. We’d finish college, start a business, and we’d figure out a way to have children. Lots of them.” He smiles. “I put my career on hold to do what he wanted because I believed in him. We set up not one but three businesses using his trust fund. The companies took off within the first year. The guy is…William was a brilliant businessman. However, things didn’t work out the way he believed. His father started giving him ultimatums. He threatened him with the town. I’m sure you’re familiar with that.”
“He threatened us the way his father did him?” I stare at him. “Is that why he did it? So we can suffer just the way he did?”
“Patience,” he says again.
“But I don’t think he dragged you here so you’d suffer,” he continues. “Now, back to our story. His father didn’t know about us. I’m not sure what he’d have done if he ever knew that his son was in a relationship with another man. We never had the chance to find out. He decided to stall by studying for a master’s degree. That would buy us three years. I didn’t like that he was trying to please his father. It felt as if he was pushing our plans away. Before he moved to California, we decided to start a family. We found the perfect egg donor, and before he left, we created ten embryos. We wanted at least four children.”
“They all look like my father,” I point out.
He nods. “I had mumps when I was a child. I can’t be a father. We knew he’d be the biological father, but they were going to be ours. During his first year away from me, something happened. I’m pretty sure he and his father had a fight. He broke up with me, handed me the companies…everything we planned was over.”
He closes his eyes for a long minute. No one says a word. One of his sons stands next to him and says, “You don’t have to do this, Dad.”
“They deserve to know the truth,” he says. “Sometime later, I heard he was getting married. I tried not to pay attention to what he was doing. Later, I learned that he moved to New York and destroyed the lives of many people. He was in pain, and he transformed that pain into anger. After I learned that he married, I decided to forget about him. I took the best part of William and started my family. He didn’t want us, but I wanted them—our children.”
“Did you ever talk to him again?” Hayes asks.
“The first time was before the world learned about his seven children. One day, he came to my office and said, ‘would you take me back with my seven boys?’ I would’ve, but you had mothers, and I don’t think he was thinking straight. He told me all about you. He adored you. His dream was to take you into one house so you could grow up as a family. By then, I had four children, and the surrogate was expecting another set of twins.
“A few months later, I read the news of his mistresses and his boys. I wish I knew what was going through his head. After he let you go, he wanted to be a part of my kids’ lives. I didn’t let him. He was angry with the world, and I didn’t want that for my kids.
“Sometimes, we’d get together to talk about the thirteen children we had. I thought of you as mine.” He shrugs. “I tried to support him after Carter died. I didn’t know he was sick until he was about to die. My kids never met him.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I told him he couldn’t be a part of them until he released all the anger he harbored in his heart. He never did.”
“You were at the funeral,” Beacon says. “You stood at a far distance with my bandmates.”
Dr. Sanders nods.
“Did you know what he was going to do with us?”
“Yes, and I told him he didn’t have the right, but he never listened. He thought it was the best way to fix everything he fucked up and a last fuck you to his father. At the end of this, the Aldridge fortune will be split into seven parts.”
“Thirteen,” Henry says. “We’re thirteen.”
“We don’t need the money,” the guy who stands next to Dr. Sanders says.
“I’m not talking about the money, but the responsibility of being an Aldridge. You can’t just wash your hands and say it’s not my circus. You’re part of it. Also, I want to get to know you.”
“Do we?” Pierce asks.
We stare at each other, and in unison, we all say, “Yes, we do.”
“I’m glad. See, Dad, I told you it would be simple,” says the woman, who I assume is Brie Sanders. She smiles and steps forward. “I’m Brie. The guys next to Dad are Maxwell and Hutcheson. We call them Max and Hutch. They’re the eldest and twins. The one over in the corner watching us is Maverik. He’s a loner. The other two twins are Brice and Avery. The babies.”
“So what, we exchange information, we’ll call you, you’ll call us?” Beacon says.
Avery grins. “Can I have your autograph too?”
“Please, don’t inflate his ego,” Henry pleads. “I’ll get you an autograph but wipe that fangirl grin off your face.”
“He’s bossy,” Avery complains.
“You’ve got no idea,” I groan.
“We have a lot to digest. Our wives are going to be blown away. Why don’t we have dinner tomorrow at the Aldridge mansion? You’re all invited,” Henry offers.
“Why are you giving me therapy?” I finally ask. “Isn’t that unethical?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not related to you. I want to think that I helped you. I wanted to help. Learning that Beacon almost died and you felt responsible was breaking me down. If William had handled things differently, I would’ve been a part of your life. When I got your request, I took it as a sign. A sign that it was time to meet you and your brothers. One thing you should never doubt is that he wanted all of you, and in his twisted way, he loved you.”
On our way back,everyone is quiet. When we enter the house, Blaire, Grace, Leyla, Hadley, and Sophia are in the living room waiting.
“Are you okay?” Sophia asks, marching toward Henry.
“I don’t know if I want to feel sorry for your father or hate him,” Leyla says.
Pierce frowns. “Wait, how do you know?”
Beacon grins and waves his phone, brushing Grace’s cheek with his lips. “You could work as an undercover agent.”
She winks at him. “I’m just a musician.”
“Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy?” I ask.
“Wait, what happened with Dare?” Hayes’s question seems out of order.
I frown, pacing around the dining room. “Shouldn’t we be talking about our father?”
“No. He’s dead. That won’t change. We have six new siblings. That’s not going to change either. We’re going to get to know them. They aren’t here for the money. That guy Sanders seems genuine. I’m not trusting him completely, but I want to know more about him. I need time to assimilate everything he said. However, I’m more concerned about you.”
“I’m fine.”
He gives me that fatherly gaze, and I smile. “You’re going to be a great father, you know?”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m giving him some time to solve his issues. Is that okay with you?”
He nods, satisfied, and we decide to take a break from everything that’s happened outside our circle.
