Chapter 13 - Amara's Father Had Two Names
Daniel removed the mask.
Grace stared at him.
“Why?”
His weapon remained lowered.
“Give me the ledger.”
“No,” Evelyn said.
Daniel's face hardened.
“You promised.”
“I changed my mind.”
Grace stepped between them.
“Promised what?”
Daniel looked at her.
Something broke behind his eyes.
“I never abandoned you.”
“I know that now.”
“No. You don't.”
Daniel Cross wasn't his real name.
He was Daniel Hale.
Victor's son.
But Victor hadn't raised him.
Evelyn had.
Secretly.
That meant Grace and Daniel grew up in separate worlds controlled by the same woman.
Evelyn knew exactly who Daniel was when Grace met him.
“You let us fall in love?”
Grace whispered.
Evelyn looked ashamed.
“I didn't plan that.”
“But when I became pregnant?”
“I panicked.”
Amara stood behind me holding Sophie's hand.
Daniel looked at his daughter.
“I wanted to stay.”
“Then why didn't you?”
“Evelyn showed me evidence that Victor planned to take Amara.”
Victor shouted from the doorway:
“That's a lie!”
He had arrived behind Marcus.
Daniel aimed at him.
Victor stopped.
“You're my son.”
“You're a biological accident.”
Victor flinched.
Daniel returned his attention to the ledger.
He wasn't attacking for Victor.
He was working for someone else.
“Who sent you?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“My grandfather.”
Alexander froze.
“Our father?”
“No.”
Daniel looked at Victor.
“My mother's father.”
Nobody knew Daniel's mother.
Victor had always refused to name her.
Evelyn closed her eyes.
I understood before she spoke.
“Vincent.”
Daniel nodded.
Vincent wasn't merely Shepherd.
He was Daniel's maternal grandfather.
Meaning Victor had fathered a child with Vincent's daughter.
Another family knot.
Another hidden motive.
“Vincent ordered this?”
“No.”
“Then?”
Daniel smiled bitterly.
“My grandfather is missing.”
Three hours earlier, Vincent's rescue facility had been attacked.
He disappeared.
Before vanishing, he sent Daniel one instruction.
Retrieve Evelyn's ledger before Alexander gets it.
Everyone looked at my father.
Alexander's expression hardened.
“Why me?”
Daniel tossed a phone onto the table.
Video.
Alexander meeting Cole six months earlier.
Then another.
Alexander paying Owen.
Another.
Alexander inside the private clinic where Sophie had been hidden.
My father stared.
“Fabricated.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I was finished believing footage simply because it existed.
Then Sophie whispered:
“That's not Grandpa.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
She pointed at the video.
“That man.”
Same face.
Same voice.
Same posture.
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn't walk like Grandpa.”
Everyone stared at Alexander.
Sophie demonstrated.
My father favored his left leg slightly.
The man in the video favored his right.
A small detail.
A child's detail.
The kind adults ignored.
Alexander whispered:
“Vincent.”
Victor shook his head.
“Vincent doesn't look enough like you.”
“Not naturally.”
Grace understood.
“The clinic.”
Reconstructive surgery.
The clinic hadn't only hidden people.
It had changed them.
Someone had altered a man's face to resemble Alexander Hale.
But why?
Then Marcus received a call.
He listened.
Went pale.
“What?”
“DNA results from the blood found at Vincent's attacked facility.”
“Whose?”
He looked at Alexander.
“Yours.”
Silence.
Alexander laughed.
“Impossible.”
Marcus shook his head.
“Not just related.”
He swallowed.
“Identical.”
Alexander stopped smiling.
Victor stared at his brother.
“There were three.”
Alexander looked at him.
“What?”
“Father told me once Mother delivered three boys.”
Alexander whispered:
“No.”
Victor nodded slowly.
“Me. Vincent.”
Then he looked at Alexander.
“And another.”
A third Hale brother.
Another child erased at birth.
Someone genetically identical to Alexander.
Someone who could use his biometrics.
Someone who could impersonate him.
Someone who had been operating inside our family for decades.
Then the dining-room speaker activated.
My father's exact voice filled the mansion.
“Julian.”
Alexander stood beside me.
The voice laughed.
“You've finally met almost everyone.”
I looked toward the ceiling.
“Who are you?”
“Your father.”
Alexander shouted:
“I'm his father!”
The voice answered:
“Biologically?”
Silence.
Then it laughed.
May you like
“That's the final lie, brother.”
And Alexander Hale went completely white.
