“That’s not true.” Kona twists out of his mother’s touch, stepping back. He can’t breathe, can’t make his lungs inflate enough to catch a deep breath. “That can’t be true.” Luka and Keira? No. That just didn’t make sense. He glares at his mother, knees wobbling when he sees her tears. She’d told him her suspicions years ago; it had led to the biggest fight he and his twin had ever had. He’d bloodied Luka’s bottom lip and his brother had returned the favor by bruising his eye.
Keira had sworn she didn’t want Luka and then later, his twin told him what a jackass he was for even thinking he’d touch Kona’s girl.
They couldn’t have lied that well. They couldn’t have been together without Kona knowing.
“Luka told me, son,” he mother says, leading him into a chair near the window. She sits next to him, takes his hand and as a distraction, Kona wipes her face dry. “He told me he loved her, but he didn’t want to betray you any more than he already had.”
He refuses to believe her, brushes her hand from his arm when she touches him. His gut tells him that this is wrong, that it just can’t be true. But his mother was a good woman; she was a little overbearing, a little protective of him even now, but she would never lie about something like this. She would never taint Luka’s memory.
When she stands, steps back and stares down at Kona, he glances up at her, waiting for an explanation he’s not sure he wants to hear. “She named the boy Luka, didn’t she?” Kona opens his mouth, a question tipping his tongue, but she waves him off. “I kept tabs. He’s my grandson, after all, but I knew she’d never let us in their lives and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I knew how badly it would hurt.”
His head feels so heavy, like he’d had too much to drink and Kona leans forward, elbows on his knees and his hands covering his face. “Keira would have never, and Luka…” The thought of his twin is like a splinter in his chest; it always had been. Most days Kona could bury his memory, his face, so deep that he often forgets the sound of Luka’s voice. He doesn’t want this to be true. It is hard enough forgetting what Luka’s death had done to their family, what his loss had cost Kona; he couldn’t have this betrayal added to that pain.
It just can’t be true.
“Ask for a test. You’ll see for yourself.” Kona recognizes that tone; it’s the same one his mother has always used to end most arguments. She stands, walks away from him and lingers by the door. He can feel the weight of her revelation and the subtle joy he knows she gets now that she’s told Kona what kind of person Keira had been. “I’m sorry you had to find out like this, son. I know how much you loved them both.”
He thought he did, he thought, one day, he still could. Now, he just didn’t know.
Seething. It’s the only word Keira can think of to define the bubble of rage pounding in her mind. She can’t even look at Kona, but she feels his eyes on her, that steady glare she knows is in his gaze as they sit across a long conference table in his lawyer’s office.
The battle ax at Kona’s side is smiling.
Keira has suspicions. She knows how the old professor works. She was always Kona’s one flaw—the thing that annoyed Keira the most about him when they were together. He’d believe anything that mean bitch told him. A slip of her gaze at that wide, phony smile and Keira knows it was her idea to ask for a DNA test.
Kona, at least, seems to feel the awkward air of anger in the room. Keira glances at him, catches his frown, that simmering calm she knows is forced and then looks away.
“Okay,” the chubby lawyer with the ridiculous name, Martin Martin says, coming through the door to sit at the head of the table. In his hand is a manila envelope and he waves it around like it’s a winning Lotto ticket and not the results that Keira knows have been forged. “We have the tests results, Ms. Riley.” The man looks to be in his mid-fifties with gray hair above his ears and at his temples. The smile is professional, friendly, but too polished, teeth too white. He would have fit into her mother’s social circle with little difficulty. “Keep in mind, Ms. Riley that since Mr. Hale and his deceased brother were twins, the lab expanded the testing to thirty-two loci instead of the usual fifteen. Brothers will typically match and so the lab tested Mr. Hale’s sample as well as Luka’s.”
“How?” Keira asks, wondering what lengths Kona’s mother had gone to, to make sure Keira looked like an idiot.
“The autopsy. Professor Alana had the samples stored.”