Arms came around her, a warm body at her back, legs on each side of her, his masculine scent in her nose.
"Xander is with your brother."
Five words.
Five words that tilted her world on its axis all over again.
She gripped his arms to anchor herself, her chest heaving as a noise left her, the burn overpowering her eyes. The shivers wracked her frame and she cried out, sobbing as the facts hit her one after the other.
She had a brother.
Her baby was with her brother.
She had family.
Her baby had family.
Her sobs turned to hiccups and she stared at the water, her throat burning.
"He's a smart kid," he told her, and she soaked his words, letting them water the waiting, parched parts of herself. "I hired an old woman to take care of him for the first few years while I tracked your history and where you'd come from."
"He… he knows you?" she stumbled over the question, unable to believe it.
His arms gave her a squeeze. "He does. I talked to him, explained that he had family he had to go to, and he understood. He's sharp. Then, I placed him in an orphanage and led your brother right to him."
She swallowed. "What's… my br… my brother like?"
There was a long pause. "He leads the mafia operations in Shadow Port. He's determined, lethal, and he's not stopped looking for you since you were taken from him twenty-two years ago."
The honest, matter-of-factness of his words made her close her eyes as she absorbed them. Her brother. He was in the underworld too. And he had been searching for her.
"What's his name?" her voice croaked.
"Tristan Caine," the man behind her spoke, his voice neutral.
"And… what's my name?"
A hand turned her face to the side, her eyes locking with his in the moonlight. "Luna."
Luna. It felt strange. She didn't feel like a Luna.
She looked at him, unable to process it all, unable to understand everything she was feeling. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He stayed quiet for a long minute, so long she almost thought he wouldn't answer her. "At first, I didn't know. By the time I did, you were starting to self-harm in thoughts, and I had to keep you hanging in for the answers."
"And you didn't think telling me I had a brother, that Xander was with family, would have helped me hang on?"
It was odd hearing the bitterness in her voice. He leveled a steady look at her. "Would it have? If I'd told you you had family and the kid was safe, would you have hung on?"
She didn't know. Back then, she'd been a different girl, with a mindset she didn't go into anymore. She didn't know how she would have behaved. But that didn't let his off the hook.
"And what about after? When you took me home? You still couldn't have said anything?"
He sighed, the only outward reaction to whatever was happening inside him. "You would have left me."
She blinked. "What?"
"If I'd told you then, you would have left me, and I didn't know if you'd return. And I couldn't risk that. Dr. Manson also advised me not to put too much on your mind."