Chapter 4 - One of the Twins
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Noah kept eating.
Lucas had fallen asleep against Tessa.
They had no idea an unseen woman had just reduced their existence to a sentence.
I hated her for it.
“One of the twins was never supposed to be born.”
Tessa repeated the words.
“What does that even mean?”
I called Evelyn back.
Disconnected.
Mason's people traced the number.
Burner.
Denver.
I canceled Seattle.
The shipment dispute could become a war without me.
My sons had existed six years without me.
Nothing came before that.
Tessa objected when I offered my plane.
“No.”
“Commercial travel leaves you exposed.”
“Your plane leaves me trapped with you.”
Fair.
“Then we drive.”
“Grant.”
“You want Denver. I want answers. Two SUVs. You and the boys choose who rides with you. Mason stays in the other.”
She studied me.
“Why aren't you ordering me around?”
“Because apparently my family has done enough of that.”
That answer got me permission.
We left the airport separately.
Before entering the SUV, Noah tugged my sleeve.
“Are you bad?”
Tessa froze.
I crouched.
“Sometimes I've done bad things.”
“Do you hurt kids?”
“No.”
“Mom?”
“Never.”
He nodded.
“Okay.”
Again, terrifyingly efficient.
On the highway, Tessa finally told me about the pregnancy.
She hadn't known she carried twins when Lorraine confronted her.
The first ultrasound had shown one embryo.
At twelve weeks, another fetus appeared clearly.
The doctor called it an unusual imaging issue.
Tessa had always accepted that.
Now she wasn't sure.
“Which doctor?”
“Dr. Simon Vance.”
I knew the name.
He had been my mother's physician for years.
Mason searched.
Vance disappeared five years earlier.
Not dead.
Missing.
Another ghost.
We reached Flagstaff after dark.
I booked an entire motel wing under another name.
Tessa hated the excess.
I didn't care.
Noah and Lucas fell asleep in the adjoining room.
For the first time, Tessa and I were alone.
“Did you ever look for me?” she asked.
“Everywhere.”
Her eyes changed.
“Lorraine said you stopped after three weeks.”
“I searched for two years.”
Silence.
“Then why couldn't you find us?”
Good question.
I had access to information most governments would envy.
Yet Tessa had somehow vanished.
Someone inside my organization had been erasing her trail.
“Lorraine.”
“Maybe.”
“You don't believe it?”
“I believe my mother did something. I don't believe she did it alone.”
My phone vibrated.
Mason.
He had accessed old Whitlock security archives.
There was footage from the day Tessa came to our estate pregnant.
Lorraine met her.
Walter stood nearby.
But another person appeared.
My father.
Arthur Whitlock.
He had supposedly known nothing about Tessa's pregnancy.
The footage showed him watching from an upstairs window.
Then a second clip.
Hours after Tessa left, Arthur and Lorraine argued in his office.
No audio.
But Arthur struck the desk and pointed toward a medical folder.
Mason enhanced the label.
MONROE, TESSA.
My father knew.
He died eighteen months later without ever telling me.
Then Mason found one more file.
A payment from Arthur's private account to Dr. Simon Vance.
Dated the day after the twins were born.
Two million dollars.
Payment memo:
SECOND INFANT CONFIRMED.
Tessa stared at the screen.
I felt something cold settle inside me.
May you like
The twins weren't an accident my parents discovered.
My father had been waiting to learn whether both survived.
