Chapter 14 - The Brother My Father Lost
Vance had spent decades manufacturing documents.
Medical records.
Deaths.
Guardianships.
Identities.
The custody petition was only one part.
The hard drive revealed the rest.
He planned to frame me for Tessa's disappearance.
Evidence had already been created.
Messages threatening her.
Financial transfers.
Airport footage edited to make my security team appear to seize her.
If Tessa and I vanished, Gabriel would become the boys' nearest acknowledged Whitlock relative.
Then Vance intended to control Gabriel through information about his past.
Except Gabriel had stopped believing him.
“Why now?”
“Because I found Arthur's original recordings.”
Gabriel handed them to me.
My father had discovered the truth about his own father's experiments.
He tried dismantling everything.
He failed.
But before dying, Arthur changed the Whitlock trust.
Not secretly.
Legally.
The genetic succession clauses could be dissolved by one person.
Tessa.
Vance needed her signature before the amendment became irrevocable.
Midnight.
The deadline wasn't Tessa's birthday.
It was the seventh anniversary of Arthur's amendment.
After midnight, control automatically transferred into ordinary trusts for the children.
The bloodline structure died.
Vance's leverage died with it.
“Then we do nothing,” Tessa said.
Gabriel shook his head.
“Simon won't allow midnight to arrive quietly.”
He was right.
At 9:17 p.m., Whitlock Holdings' security system failed.
At 9:19, my private servers went offline.
At 9:21, Mason received reports of armed men entering an abandoned Whitlock distribution center outside Phoenix.
Vance wanted us there.
So we didn't go.
We sent federal agents.
The building was empty.
Decoy.
Then Lorraine's phone rang.
Hospital.
Daniel Whitlock had collapsed.
Poisoning.
Someone had reached him inside protective custody.
Vance still had people everywhere.
Walter left for the hospital.
Gabriel stayed.
I watched him looking at Noah and Lucas.
“Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Wife?”
“No.”
“Anyone?”
He smiled without humor.
“Simon made sure dependence felt dangerous.”
I understood that better than I wanted to.
Tessa came beside us.
“Then stop giving him that power.”
Gabriel looked at her.
She nodded toward the twins building an airport from couch cushions.
“Sit down.”
“What?”
“They need someone to be the passenger.”
Lucas pointed.
“You.”
Gabriel stared as if he'd been ordered to defuse a bomb.
Five minutes later, my secret twin brother was sitting inside a cushion airplane while Noah charged him twelve imaginary dollars for luggage.
Something inside me loosened.
Maybe family wasn't blood.
Maybe it was repetition.
Showing up.
Again and again.
Until fear learned a new pattern.
At 11:32 p.m., Vance called.
I answered.
“You're running out of time,” he said.
“No. You are.”
Silence.
“Tessa won't sign.”
“She will.”
“Why?”
“Because I finally found something she values more than those boys.”
Tessa's face changed.
Vance sent a video.
A woman sat restrained inside an unfamiliar room.
Tessa covered her mouth.
“Mom?”
Her mother, Diane Monroe, had supposedly died when Tessa was nineteen.
Car accident.
Closed-casket funeral.
I almost threw the phone.
Vance laughed.
“You people really should start checking bodies.”
Tessa began shaking.
Her mother looked older.
Terrified.
Alive.
Then Vance appeared beside her.
“Bring the twins' trustee documents to the original Vance clinic.”
Tessa whispered:
“My mother…”
Vance smiled into the camera.
“Midnight, Tessa.”
Then Diane suddenly looked straight into the lens.
“Don't come!”
Vance grabbed the camera.
But Diane screamed one more sentence before the video ended.
May you like
“Tessa, I'm not your mother!”
The screen went black.
