Chapter 10 - The Brother Who Was Still Alive
Brandon could barely speak.
“Elias?”
Silence stretched across the line.
Then the man answered.
“You sound like Dad.”
Brandon sat down on Helen’s porch steps.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“I was four.”
“I know that now.”
Brandon explained Luke’s collapse, Madeline’s cruelty, and the doctors’ questions.
Elias listened without interrupting.
When Brandon described the kick, Elias’s breathing changed.
“She used to knock food from my hands too,” he said. “She said sick children didn’t deserve treats.”
Brandon closed his eyes.
“Luke may have the same condition.”
“Then stress can be dangerous. He needs a specialist who understands inherited arrhythmias.”
“We have one.”
“Good.”
“Why did Mom ask whether Luke was mine?”
Elias became quiet.
“That is how she isolates people. She plants a doubt, then offers herself as the only source of truth.”
“So there’s no reason?”
“There may be one.”
Elias explained that Madeline had contacted him shortly after Luke’s birth.
She sent a photograph of the baby and asked whether he noticed a resemblance.
“She knew the condition could pass through our father’s side,” Elias said. “But she refused to accept that her family carried anything imperfect. She convinced herself Luke must belong to someone else.”
“She knew from the beginning?”
“She suspected.”
“And said nothing.”
“She would rather watch a child suffer than admit she was wrong.”
Brandon’s anger became almost unbearable.
Elias agreed to send his medical files directly to Luke’s doctors.
But he refused to return to Nashville.
“I built a life without her,” he said. “I can’t let her destroy it.”
Brandon understood.
Then Elias added one final detail.
May you like
“Madeline has a copy of Dad’s original will. If she thinks you found me, she will go after your house and everything Dad left you.”
👉 Before Brandon could warn Nicole, Madeline arrived at the hospital carrying legal papers and demanding access to Luke.
