*I don't own Twilight, it all belongs to Stephenie.*

"I assumed as much." Carlisle said detachedly after a minute.

Then he sighed heavily and turned to the balustrade, resting his hands calmly on the stone railing.

Edward felt weird… The weirdest he had ever felt in his life. There was this feeling of inadequacy and shame mixed with fear and sadness although he was well aware he had done absolutely nothing wrong.

And as Carlisle took more minutes to react in any way, the sensations in Edward seemed to intensify… Until he could not take it anymore.

"We're in love, father." He justified in what sounded as a repentant tone. "We love each other truly, we don't know how it happened but what we feel is…"

"Real." Carlisle affirmed placidly before his son could finish the sentence, still looking away from him. "How long?"

Edward released a weighted breath, his hands trembling so much he had to hold them together. He looked down at the floor.

"Jasper's not sure…" He said hesitantly. "And I… I fell for him seven… Nine years ago? I'm not sure anymore, it seems to me I've been in love with him my whole life."

At last, Carlisle turned to his son again, his movement making Edward raise his eyes to his face.

"What I meant was…" Carlisle spoke slowly, looking at him attentively. "How long have you two been together?"

Edward's throat seemed constricted for no apparent reason.

"That's... Recent… About a week." He answered in a choked voice.

Carlisle's eyes were suddenly fierce in Edward's. He stared deeply into his son's eyes before speaking again.

"You've slept together." It wasn't a question, and Carlisle's expression was intimidating.

Again, even though he knew there was nothing reprehensible in what he and Jasper had done, Edward felt deeply inappropriate. He made a huge effort to keep holding his father's stare.

"Once." He provided as if to assuage the weight of the occurrence.

Apparently to maintain control, Carlisle closed his eyes and released a puff of air.

"So I suppose you went to see Emmet in order to break up with him." He looked back at Edward.

"Yes." Edward confirmed with a nod.

"Did you tell him the reason?" Carlisle arched his eyebrows questioningly.

"He has known about my feelings for Jasper for some time… It wasn't difficult for him to deduce why I was ending things."

Carlisle carded his fingers through his hair and sighed once more, his face showing he was way beyond concerned.

"This is very serious, Edward."

Despite the turmoil inside him, Edward was decided to remain honest and clear about everything.

"I know, Dad." He took a deep breath before starting to explain in a passionate tone. "But I'm serious about him, as he is about me. We're not fooling around or indulging some reckless curiosity, we're not trying to be rebels and defy you and Mom, we want to be together for real, we love each other… So much."

Carlisle's gaze flickered with what Edward assumed to be compassion and his countenance softened.

"I can see that, son, but you two…" He sighed despondently. "You two can't..."

"No." Edward cut him off immediately, his face assuming an earnest and confident expression although his heart was thundering in his chest. "You will not tell me we can't be together because we can, and you know it."

"Edward…" Carlisle tried as straightening up and directing a more intense look at him.

"I'm sorry, father," Edward shook his head as raising his hands between them. "I don't want to disrespect you, but I won't back down…"

Carlisle took a step closer to him and held his shoulders with firm hands.

"You don't understand, son…" His voice was steady and subtly severe.

Edward straightened up to his full height and, for the first time since that conversation had started, he was totally focused on what was more important to him… And that was to remain with Jasper.

"Nothing you say can make me budge, so don't even try."

Right then Carlisle lost his endless calm and composure. Edward saw clearly when he turned from the normally loving caring father to the highest authority of the family.

But by then he had already regained his confidence and was feeling strong enough to act adamantly.

So he spoke before Carlisle even opened his mouth.

"I know he's not my brother, Dad!" His voice firm, his face in a frown.

A heavy tense silence fell over them… And Carlisle's intimidating stance vanished as had appeared, giving room to an astonished countenance.

It took him some minutes to recover. Once he did, he shook his head while releasing a breathy chuckle that, to Edward, sounded dry and skeptical.

"Somehow I always suspected that you would find out about this at some point…" He seemingly spoke to himself, but Edward was able to hear it.

Carlisle sighed and became serious again.

"He is your brother though." He stated.

"I have DNA test results that prove it wrong." Edward countered.

Carlisle exhaled slowly.

"He may not be biologically connected to you… But he's still your brother."

"Just because he was raised as my sibling…"

"That… And the fact that legally he is your parents' son." Carlisle reasoned calmly.

"A paper doesn't make our love wrong." Edward argued, his voice rising up just a little.

"It doesn't." Carlisle agreed, but with obvious caution. "However…"

"We're not real brothers and a simple document can't take away our right to be together." Edward insisted.

"It…" Carlisle tried again.

"Just don't, Dad." Once more, Edward cut him off. And suddenly he started to rant. "I won't give him up, there's nothing you can say or use as argument that will make me leave him, I did it once for the sake of everybody else, but he and I went through hell because of that, and I will not hurt him, or myself, ever again, especially when there's no reason for it, there's nothing real impeding us, we are not blood-related, and honestly, even if we were, we would still be together 'cause we can't be apart, we wouldn't bear it, we can't be separated, we are everything for each other, we…"

"Edward, Edward, calm down!" Carlisle spoke loudly while grabbing his shoulders and shaking him a bit, so to be heard and stop his son's rambling. "Listen to me!"

"It's no use…" Edward tried to keep arguing.

But Carlisle was simply not having it anymore.

"Shut up and listen, Edward!" He demanded firmly, tightening his grip on his son's shoulders. "I never intended on trying to separate you two."

That stunned Edward and in his shock, he eased up a bit. Carlisle huffed and let go of his shoulders before speaking again.

"If you had not panicked and started to rant," He started calmly. "you would have heard me saying that... I can see the love that connects you two, it is obvious enough... But you need to be careful, you two cannot let anybody else know about it."

Edward heaved out the air he had unconsciously held in his lungs.

"So you… You are not trying to separate us… You will not try to…"

"I'm not, and no, I won't." Carlisle promised, understanding the fear in his son's eyes. "I'm not here to hurt you or your brother, I know my children well, I can see what's essential to them and I would never do anything to take it away…"

Edward swallowed hard, squinted and jerked his head back a little.

"So you'll accept this… You're telling me that… You'll accept us… As we are now… You'll accept us as a couple...?"

"I already have." Carlisle said in a loving tone. "It was a bit of a shock when I found out, it's true… And I honestly still am having a hard time processing it… But… I overheard you two talking... Declaring yourselves to one another…" Edward's eyes widened but he remained silent. "I knew right then how serious about this you both were, and I knew I could not interfere or else I would hurt you profoundly… And probably lose the two of you. I don't want that, I can't lose my sons." He sighed heavily. "And I want you to be happy, I just… I need you to be careful…" Carlisle's eyes became guarded all of a sudden. "And I need you to keep what you know about your brother to yourself."

Edward was promptly baffled.

"What?!"

Carlisle closed his eyes for a fleeting second while heaving a deep breath.

"Jasper can't know the truth…" His tone, as his expression, was beyond dejected.

Edward took a couple of minutes to react, so astonished and confused with his father's request he was.

"You want me to lie to him?!" It came out in a grave almost threatening tone.

"Please, trust me, son, I have a very strong reason for keeping this from him."

"No reason is strong enough to deprive him of the truth about his origin, Dad." Edward was categorical. "You can't ask me to deceive him."

"Edward, please, listen to me." Carlisle asked rushedly. "If Jasper learns about this he will want to know the whole truth, I won't be able to lie to him, and that will definitely devastate him…"

"Why have you kept this from him, to begin with? Why haven't you ever tried to tell him that he is adopted?"

Oddly, Carlisle went silent abruptly, his eyes suddenly showing more than just concern…

Edward felt weird as he recognized the fear in his father's stare.

"Son, just understand that if you disclose this, it will provoke a disaster chain… And it's not only your brother's life that'll be torn apart…"

"Jasper seems fragile right now, and I understand you fear his reaction but… Dad, he has the right to know."

Carlisle's gaze then went glassy, and Edward realized he was considering something.

"Follow me." He asked while already turning toward the living room.

Edward followed him quietly, feeling increasingly nervous with each step they took. He assumed his father was about to show him documents or something like that since they got into the office. He didn't ask, he just observed as Carlisle opened a drawer and picked up a thick folder. And as Edward had suspected he would, he took a document from there and handed it to him.

Forcing himself to calm down, Edward analyzed the paper carefully.

"It's Jasper's birth certificate." He said in a low voice, pensively.

Then he looked at his father with guarded, slightly confused eyes.

"It was forged." Carlisle confessed in a sigh.

Edward's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He needed more than a minute to collect himself.

"What are you saying?" His voice cracked in the end.

Carlisle fidgeted and carded his fingers through his hair before taking in a deep breath.

"Jasper was never adopted." He clarified. "Technically… He was kidnapped."

Edward felt as if the floor had started spinning, and suddenly he needed to sit down. He did so on one of his father's chairs and spent whole five minutes trying to assimilate Carlisle's words. Once he realized he wouldn't be able to make any sense of them without an explanation, he opened and closed his mouth multiple times, trying to speak, but he didn't even know what to say or ask.

Carlisle waited, staring at his face attentively, waiting for when he seemed a little less stunned. He knew the shock he had caused.

"Explain it to me." Edward finally said in a broken voice, unable to look at his father's face.

"I had a best friend when I was a child… His name was Jason." Carlisle started to speak in a quiet voice and sighed before pausing.

Edward risked looking at him and noticed how far away his father's mind apparently was as he began telling the story looking ahead with unfocused eyes.

"We met when Mr. Murley, his father, came to work for my grandfather as a driver." Carlisle continued, unaware of his son's scrutiny. "His mother was already deceased by then, and my grandmother became affectionate of him… So he would spend a lot of time in the house. We were the same age, he was an only child like me... And even though we were from totally different backgrounds we connected, and we did so in a way that we'd never connected to anybody else."

Carlisle bent his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Edward leaned on the backrest of the chair, noticing how fragile and sad his father seemed all of a sudden.

Pulling his armchair and sitting down on it, Carlisle decided that if he was to tell that story, he would be absolutely honest.

He then looked at Edward, and his dark blue eyes were determined.

"Jason was the brother I had never had... As I was his." He said serenely. "We grew up like that despite the differences." He sighed once again, heavily. "When I went away for college, things changed though. He went away too, despite my family's and his father's efforts to convince him to stay and attend the community college. He got a job at a car factory and moved, leaving without looking back. We kept sporadic contact, I didn't know much about his life as he knew about mine, but he was still my best friend, my confidant, so I didn't change with him and neither did my affection or trust."

After a brief pause, Carlisle looked away from his son again.

"I was in my last semester at university when I got the news... Mr. Murley had died. Jason and I finally saw each other again, after so many years, at his father's funeral. And that was when I got to know that my best friend had become a drug dealer."

Edward started to finally make sense of where that story was going and sat straighter. Carlisle took another deep breath.

"I tried to talk him out of it, I told him I would help him with anything, that I would do anything in order to support him so he could get out of that criminal life… But Jason was too deep into it…" He shook his head while looking down. "We distanced ourselves from each other after that. I graduated a while later, met your mother and fell in love with her. A year and a half later we got married... You were born two years after that."

Becoming silent, Carlisle seemed to take a moment to collect himself… Edward realized it was hard on his father to share that piece of his past, he was clearly hurt by bringing those memories up.

"You were four when it happened…" He resumed, then bringing his eyes back to Edward's. " I got a call in the middle of the night… It was Jason, and he sounded desperate on the phone, I could barely make up his words. All I understood was that he needed my help, and so I went to him without even blinking. I didn't even explain to your mother why I was going out in such a hurry…"

By then Edward was already feeling beyond fidgety. He could predict that plot development but still not how it would explain Jasper being kidnapped. He didn't notice he was nipping at his lower lip because of the anguish that was taking over him.

Carlisle carded his fingers through his hair while his eyes glinted with melancholy.

"He was in this horrible house that seemed to be about to fall apart… It was located in one of the dingiest neighborhoods of New York. There was a lot of screaming when I got there, and it didn't take long for me to find out they belonged to a young woman who was obviously in labor." Edward felt his heart accelerating. " Jason introduced her as 'his girl'... She was really young… Later I learned she was only seventeen. Her name was Ashley, Ashley Arykov… " Carlisle paused as he perceived his son's eyes widening. "I had the same reaction when I heard the surname…" He said while pointing briefly to Edward. "The Shark was already known and feared back then…"

"She's the daughter of the mafia guy? The one the FBI has been trying to catch for..."

"Thirty years." Carlisle completed. "She was, yes." He confirmed in a light intonation, but Edward caught the past tense. "Jason had married her a year before against her father's will and ignoring his promise to kill them both. Things had gotten even worse once he learned Ashley was pregnant… He swore their child would never see the light of day…"

"Oh my God…" Edward uttered, feeling goosebumps on the back of his head.

"That was why he reached to me… Ashley was in labor but he couldn't take her anywhere, The shark's men had been watching them, seemingly waiting for an opportunity to catch them."

"What did you do?" Edward's voice was urgent but low.

"What I could do… I called Doctor Grinspoon and explained the situation as fast as I was able to." Carlisle spoke with what sounded as repentance to Edward. "He used to be my grandfather's best friend and had promised him he would always take care of me, so… He told me to go to him. We went to the hospital where he was the head physician and he attended to her with only two of his assistants. Unfortunately, due to some complications, Ashley died during childbirth."

Both, father and son, fell in a saddened silence. Edward felt his heart so small that tears came to his eyes…

Carlisle sighed for what seemed to him to be the millionth time.

"When the baby came to Jason's arms, he cried… And although I wasn't sure of the reason, I did too." And as an echo of the past, those words elicited the same emotion that took him over two decades before, and some twinkling tears trickled down his face. "Jason told me he had just lost the love of his life. He was looking with deep affection at his baby when he said that he couldn't put their child's life at risk… And that was when he begged me to take the little boy and hide him, to pretend he was mine, in order to protect his son, to save his child's life." Carlisle paused briefly to breathe and dry his tears. "Given the whole situation, I didn't even consider saying no… I knew that even with my help Jason wouldn't be able to protect him.

"We made an agreement. I would do what he was asking me, and once the boy got old enough we would revisit the situation… I even thought that telling him the truth would be an option someday. So I said yes and called your mother. By the time she arrived, Doctor Grinspoon and I had already talked and decided what to do and how… Even before we brought her up to date on the situation she had already accepted our decisions… Just as had happened to me, your mother loved your brother as she landed her eyes on him." A nostalgic smile graced Carlisle's face, but it soon faded. "It was really early in the morning when your mother and I left the hospital with Jasper in my arms."

"I remember when you brought him home…" Edward said evenly, but his eyes showed he was deeply affected by the whole story.

"You do?" Carlisle was obviously surprised. "You were only four…"

"It is my first memory of Jade… I remember it clearly."

They both nodded, acknowledging the mutual emotiveness.

"Who named him?" Edward indulged his simple curiosity.

"Jason. Something about it being Ashley's favorite gemstone and the reason for them to fall in love... " Carlisle explained shrugging slightly.

They were silent for a moment.

"Where's Jason now?" Edward asked bluntly.

Carlisle took longer than necessary to answer. When he did, his eyes were glossy.

"He was found dead five days later…" He stated with a controlled voice.

Another heavy silence fell over them… And Edward started to feel he could understand why his father had kept all that a secret.

And because he was thinking of everything related to Jasper's true origin, an urgent question popped up in his mind and he blurted it out.

"Is Jasper safe?" His voice sounded as tense as he promptly was.

Carlisle closed his eyes for just an instant, but Edward's heart thundered in his chest as fear crept up inside him.

"Only if I guarantee this story will never come out." He stated seriously.

"Why is it so crucial, Dad?"

"Well, if it does come out… Doctor Grinspoon, your mother and I are bound to be indicted for kidnap and forgery… It will certainly be all around the media since I am who I am... So it will become public knowledge that The Shark's grandson is alive. I honestly fear what he might do if he finds out… He'd never wanted Jasper to be born, to begin with." Carlisle confessed with obvious concern written all over his face.

Edward took a moment to breathe and mull over his father's words… He thought about them carefully, also considering what Jasper had told him about his feelings regarding the hypothesis of being adopted.

"I understand where you're coming from, Dad, and I want nothing more than to protect Jade…" He said cautiously. "But I believe we should tell him all this."

"Edward…"

"Just listen to me…" He asked with pleading eyes. "We don't need to tell him now, because he's fragile and I'm not sure how he will take all this… He needs to be well first… But it's not fair to keep him in the dark. Also… We don't want to be a secret… We want what we deserve, and that's a normal life…"

Carlisle sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before carding his fingers through his hair and looking at his older son with understanding and compassion.

"You are right, and I will not stand in your way. I just want to protect you both."

"I know… And that's why we need to think about all this together, you and I, so we can find a solution that guarantees the whole family's safety and mine and Jasper's freedom." Edward reasoned. "Can we do that, Dad? I will help you disclose the truth to Jasper when the right time comes… And you'll help us get what we want…"

"Of course I can." Carlisle assured seriously. "All I want is yours and your brother's happiness."

Edward knew then there was nothing more to say… The conversation was obviously over, at least for the time being. He nodded and held his father's gentle stare for a moment, trying to convey his gratefulness to him.

Then he sighed, his heart calling for Jasper.

"I need to check on Jade…" He said as standing up.

Carlisle assented with a nod.

Once he got to the door, Edward remembered something he wanted to know… He turned and found his father looking at him.

"What did you tell Jacob?" He asked unfazed. "I know he told you he'd seen us."

"I lied to him, to protect you." Carlisle revealed. "I told him I knew about the nature of yours and your brother's relationship, and that there was no problem with it since you were adopted."

Edward released a huffed breath, making it clear how surprised he was.

"Did he believe you?"

Carlisle nodded.

"He asked me for proof… And I gave it to him."

Edward swallowed hard.

"What kinda proof?"

"Adoption documents."

"So you…"

"Another forgery, yes…"

"Dad…" Edward uttered concernedly, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Don't worry." Carlisle reassured him with a subtle smile and kind eyes. "Yours and Jasper's safety is more important than my integrity."

Feeling dubious, Edward heaved a sigh. He wasn't happy about his father committing crimes to protect him and Jasper, but he was definitely relieved he didn't have to worry about his brother's ex.

"Go to your bro…" Carlisle cut himself off midsentence. "Go to Jasper." He corrected in a knowing smile. "He must be wondering where you are, and it's almost time for our New Year's dinner."

Edward nodded, his mind still reeling, and hurried back to his love.