Chapter 12
The box was full of papers.
Old letters. Financial documents. Photographs.
Ethan picked up the first item.
A birth certificate.
His birth certificate.
He looked at it. Frowned.
There was a mistake.
The father's name was blank.
“That's strange,” he said. “My father's name isn't on here.”
Claire leaned over to look.
“Maybe it was filed before he could sign it?”
Ethan shook his head.
“No. I've seen my birth certificate before. His name was on it. This is... this is a different copy.”
He picked up the next item.
A letter.
Handwritten. Dated the day before his father died.
Ethan unfolded it.
His hands began to shake as he read.
My son,
If you're reading this, then I'm gone. And you've finally learned the truth.
I'm not your father.
Your mother was already pregnant when we met. She never told me who the real father was. I loved her. I loved you as my own. I never said anything because I wanted you to have a family. A name. A legacy.
But there's more.
I've spent years investigating your mother. I've learned things. Terrible things.
She was involved with Richard Hale before we met. They had a relationship. A child.
Vanessa is Hale's daughter.
And I believe... I believe you might be too.
Ethan dropped the letter as if it had burned him.
Claire picked it up. She read quickly, her face growing pale.
“Oh, Ethan.”
Ethan stared at nothing.
His whole life had been a lie.
The man he had called father wasn't his father.
The man who had tried to kill him might be his real father.
And Vanessa...
Vanessa was his half-sister.
It explained everything.
Margaret's favoritism toward Vanessa. The way she had always resented Ethan. The way she had so easily betrayed him.
She had never loved him because he had never been hers to love. Not really. He was a reminder of a mistake. Of a relationship she had wanted to forget.
But Vanessa...
Vanessa was Hale's daughter. The product of the relationship Margaret had never really ended.
Ethan picked up the next document.
DNA test results.
His father had secretly tested Ethan and Vanessa against Hale's DNA. He had gotten samples somehow.
The results were clear.
Both Ethan and Vanessa were Hale's children.
Ethan felt sick.
Hale was his father.
The man who had blown up his plane. Who had tried to murder him. Who had stolen his company.
Was his father.
Claire reached for his hand.
“Ethan, look at me.”
He did.
“This doesn't change who you are,” she said. “You're still the man I married. You're still the man who built a company from nothing. You're still the father of my children. DNA doesn't make a man. Choices do.”
Ethan squeezed her hand.
“He tried to kill me, Claire. His own son.”
“Then he's a monster. And you're nothing like him.”
Ethan looked back at the box. There was more.
A journal. His father's journal.
He opened it.
The entries spanned years. They detailed his father's growing suspicions about Margaret. About her relationship with Hale. About the strange accidents that had befallen business rivals.
And the last entry, written the day before he died:
I believe Margaret knows I've been investigating her. I'm afraid of what she might do. If anything happens to me, if I don't make it through the night, it won't be the cancer that kills me.
It will be her.
Ethan closed the journal.
His father's death.
Cancer, the doctors had said.
But what if it hadn't been?
What if Margaret had poisoned him?
What if she had murdered the man who had loved her, who had raised her child as his own?
Ethan stood.
He needed to call Robert.
He needed to call the police.
Everything had changed.
This wasn't just about a company anymore.
It was about two murders.
His father's.
May you like
And his own attempted murder.
And the woman at the center of it all was the woman who had given birth to him.
