Chapter 4 - Catherine’s Secret
Catherine had lied to me.
The realization should have hurt.
Instead, it felt familiar.
Everyone lied to Alexander Hayes eventually.
The only difference was how long they survived after I discovered it.
But Catherine had been my wife.
The mother of my son.
And she was dead.
That complicated revenge.
Vincent recovered records from the courthouse photograph.
“HAYES CUSTODY PROJECT” had belonged to a private family-risk consultancy called Mercer Child Advocacy.
Richard Mercer wasn't the founder.
Catherine Hayes was.
Claire stared at me.
“Your wife ran a child-custody organization?”
“Apparently my wife ran many things I didn't know about.”
The organization supposedly helped mothers and children leave dangerous homes.
That made sense.
Until we examined the financial records.
Most clients were wives or children of wealthy criminals.
Gang leaders.
Corrupt businessmen.
Organized-crime figures.
Men like me.
Especially men like me.
Catherine had built an escape network.
I couldn't decide whether to admire her or feel betrayed.
Then Vincent found something else.
Claire Ashby had been a client.
Claire stared at the screen.
“No.”
Her name appeared on a confidential file created eight years earlier.
Before she had daughters.
Before she met Mercer.
Before she claimed to know Catherine.
“Explain.”
“I can't.”
“Were you married?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
Her silence lasted too long.
“Claire.”
“Thomas Vale.”
I knew that name.
Everybody in my world did.
Thomas Vale had controlled half the narcotics moving through Chicago's western corridors before someone murdered him eight years ago.
Claire had been his wife.
I stood.
“You're Claire Vale?”
“Ashby is my maiden name.”
“And your daughters?”
“Not Thomas's. They were born later.”
“Who's their father?”
She looked away.
“Dead.”
“Name.”
“Michael.”
“Michael what?”
“I don't know.”
That was ridiculous.
Then I saw her expression.
She genuinely didn't know.
She met him after leaving Thomas.
He claimed to be a financial consultant.
They were together for three years.
Then, while she was pregnant with Ellie, he disappeared.
No body.
No trace.
Exactly the kind of disappearance Catherine's network specialized in.
Vincent ran the photograph Claire kept on her phone.
Facial recognition returned a match.
Michael Arden.
Except Michael Arden had another identity.
Michael Hayes.
My younger half-brother.
The brother my father told me died at seventeen.
I stared at Claire's daughters.
Four girls.
Brown hair.
Catherine's family bows.
Hayes blood.
Claire whispered:
“Alexander?”
I couldn't answer.
If Michael was their father, those four terrified girls were my nieces.
And Richard Mercer had known exactly whose table they were crawling beneath.
Then Ethan approached.
He held an old wooden box.
“I took this from Mom's room after she died.”
Inside was a letter.
Catherine's handwriting.
For Alexander, when the four sisters find him.
My hands went cold.
Seven years before those girls entered that café, my wife had known they eventually would.
I opened the envelope.
The first sentence made Claire sit down.
Alexander, if Claire's daughters have found you, Michael is either dead or Mercer has finally betrayed us.
May you like
Then the second sentence changed everything.
Do not trust the girls' mother until she remembers who she really is.
