Chapter 134: Outsiders in the Bloodline

Damon’s POV

This old nanny? Hugging a man?

My jaw was practically on the floor. I sat upright in my hospital bed, staring at the two of them with wide, disbelieving eyes. Susan had been with the Silver household since before I was even born. She was the most bitter, strict, miserable woman in this city. She spent her days scowling, barking orders, forcing bitter pills down my throat, and yelling at me whenever I came home past midnight. I had never seen her smile once.

Yet right now, here she was, sobbing hysterically and clinging to a distinguished, silver-haired gentleman in a bespoke suit like he was her long-lost lover returned from the dead.

And not just any man. Noah’s butler.

Wait a minute. Did the Miller house even have a butler?

I had been to the Miller house just last night. It was a cold, imposing house, but Bernard Miller didn’t keep full-time domestic staff living in the house. So where the hell did this polished old man come from? Did Noah have a secret second life? A hidden fortune? A private estate somewhere in the city that no one knew about?

"What’s going on here?" Noah’s sharp voice cut through the room like a cold knife.

The command instantly broke the embrace. Susan stepped back, sniffling hard and dabbing her swollen, red eyes with a white lace handkerchief. David straightened his three-piece charcoal suit, clearing his throat, though the shock was still plainly visible on his aged face.

Even Detective Harris was looking between them, his pen hovering uselessly in the air, his harsh frown completely derailed.

"I apologize, young master," Noah’s butler said, bowing his head respectfully toward Noah. "I lost my composure. I am simply overwhelmed to see my own sister standing before me alive and well."

I blinked.

Not just me. Noah’s cold eyes flickered with genuine surprise, and Detective Harris raised both of his eyebrows in utter bewilderment.

"Sister?" I asked, leaning forward over my hospital bed railing, staring at the old woman. "Old woman, are you telling me you actually have a brother?"

Susan let out a breathless, tearful laugh, shaking her head as she wiped another stray tear from her cheek. "I thought I lost my brother forever, Master Damon. I was certain he died in the flames twenty years ago when the Whitfield family was attacked."

"Whitfield?" I furrowed my brow, turning the unfamiliar word over in my head. "Who the hell are the Whitfields? I’ve never heard of them in my entire life."

"I have," Detective Harris muttered.

The gravelly tone of the cop’s voice instantly pulled everyone’s attention back to him.

The smug, arrogant homicide detective who had spent the last twenty minutes threatening to throw Noah and me in prison for murder suddenly looked like he had seen an actual ghost. The color had completely drained from his weathered face. His dark eyes darted from David’s face straight to Noah sitting on the hospital mattress.

Harris slowly pushed himself up from his plastic chair, his heavy shoes planted flat on the linoleum floor.

"If this man is the head butler of the Whitfield estate," Harris began, his voice dropping into a raspy, disbelieving whisper, "does that mean...?"

Harris’s head snapped directly toward Noah, his gaze sweeping over Noah’s pale skin, and piercing blue eyes.

"You’re the surviving young master of the Whitfield family?" Harris asked, his voice shaking with a sudden, profound shock that had nothing to do with police work.

Noah didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. He sat there propped against his pillows, his expression completely blank, his eyes cold and unreadable. He held the detective’s stare for three agonizing seconds, showing neither fear nor confirmation.

"And if I were the young master," Noah replied flatly, his voice laced with a subtle, lethal threat, "what the hell are you going to do about it, Detective?"

Harris stared at him in breathless silence. The detective didn’t reach for his handcuffs or his service weapon.

Instead, Harris let out a long, shuddering exhale, lifting his head to stare up at the white ceiling tiles as if trying to steady his spinning mind.

"Ha..." Harris whispered, a broken, bitter laugh escaping his lips. "I spent the last two decades believing my boss’s son was dead in that ash pile. But here you are. Standing right in front of me."

Noah’s brow twitched. A sharp spark of suspicion flared in his icy eyes. "Boss? What do you mean, your boss? Do you mean my father?"

Before Noah could say another word, David stepped forward. The butler placed a calm, steady hand on Detective Harris’s broad shoulder, giving it a firm, familiar squeeze.

"He is telling the truth, young master," David spoke quietly, his cultured voice carrying absolute certainty. "Before he joined the municipal police department, James Harris was one of your father’s personal security escorts. He was loyal to the family. He happened to be taking his mandatory leave the night the estate was ambushed and burned to the ground."

"I... see," Noah muttered, the rigid tension in his shoulders dropping by a fraction of an inch.

I sat there on my bed, clutching my hospital sheets, looking from Noah to the butler, then to my crying nanny, and finally to the shell-shocked homicide cop.

My brain felt like it was short-circuiting.

What the actual fuck is happening in this room right now?

Everyone in this goddamn room seemed to share some deep, dark, classified history that went back twenty years, and I was sitting here completely blind. Who was Lord Whitfield? Why did a syndicate butler belong to Noah? How did my own nanny fit into this bloody puzzle? And why the hell was a major crimes detective suddenly treating my college hockey captain like royalty?

I opened my mouth, ready to demand an explanation, ready to scream at all of them for treating me like an ignorant idiot.

Before a single syllable could leave my lips, a soft, fragile groan broke through the silence from the far side of the room.

My heart instantly skipped a beat.

The heavy blue privacy curtain dividing the room rustled.

Micah was waking up.

Noah didn’t waste a millisecond. The moment that tiny whimper reached his ears, he completely forgot about the Whitfields, the syndicate, the police, and the murder charges. He violently ripped the saline IV needle clean out of the back of his hand, ignoring the sudden bead of blood that welled up on his skin. He threw the heavy hospital blankets aside, swung his long legs over the railing, and practically leaped off his bed.

"Noah, wait!" I called out, scrambling out of my own bed just as fast.

The sharp ache in my bruised ribs flared painfully the second my bare feet hit the cold floor, but I shoved the sensation down and followed right behind him. I needed to see Micah with my own eyes. I needed to know that the boy I had caught from that fatal drop was breathing properly.

Noah yanked the blue curtain back on its metal tracks with a loud, metallic clatter.

There he was.