“What did you mean when you said Harrison wasn’t a Riscoff?”

Commodore’s lips press together. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I should’ve let it die with your mother.” His dark gaze turns sharp. “But blood always tells.”

“You’re saying my mother had an affair . . . and Harrison was the product of that affair?”

Lead settles in my gut when he nods. My brain spins with the confirmation, and I can’t help but think of how often I thought she showed her favoritism with my brother. How she protected him when my father would turn the nasty side of his temper on Harrison.

Wait . . . “Did my father know?”

A vivid memory comes back, when I was ten and Harrison was still using training wheels on his bike. My father ridiculed him for it and said that a Riscoff would be able to ride a bike without them already.

He had to have known.

Commodore shrugged. “I think he assumed, but there wasn’t much he could say. He was off fucking around with God only knows who for most of his marriage to Sylvia.”

Except his marriage to my mother wasn’t valid because he was already married to Renee Rango, and the lawyer never filed the damn divorce papers.

Our family history will never be anything but muddy, but I keep slogging through it. “Who is Harrison’s father then?”

My grandfather lays his head back against the white pillow. At least his color seems to be coming back. “Does it really matter?”

“I think we’ve all kept enough secrets to last a lifetime at this point.”

“Some lawyer that worked for the company for a while. He came out to the house a few times and caught your mother’s eye. He got fired shortly after for screwing something up, and went back to the city to find another job.”

It’s almost impossible to imagine my mother having an affair, but like I just said to Commodore, we’ve all kept enough secrets to last a lifetime. At this point, there isn’t much that would surprise me.

“How did you find out?”

His gaze narrows. “I know everything, boy. People might pretend they’re good at keeping secrets, but something always slips. You just have to know the signs.”

I glance toward the door that Whitney’s great-uncle walked out. “I saw the signs about you and Magnus Gable being friends, but the fact that you were bleeding because he shot at you threw me off.”

Commodore grins. “It was all in good fun. Just another upside of moving out of the estate. Not getting poisoned, and I needed some entertainment in my life. Gable makes damn good coffee too.”

Against all odds, my shoulders shake with laughter. “I’m glad you found something to keep you entertained.”

“If our places get burned down, he and I are both rebuilding. We’re too old to start over anywhere else.”

“I’ll make you a deal, Commodore. If you let the doctors take care of you, I’ll make sure there’s a path built for your chair between the two cabins.”