Chapter 21
Your name appeared in documents crossing Charles’s network.”
That explained the client meeting.
Everything had collided because my company had grown large enough to reach the very secret that once destroyed my marriage.
Alexander looked at Declan.
“Charles panicked.
If Cassidy reopened Bellweather and anyone examined old family records, everything could surface.”
“So he wanted them dead.”
“Yes.”
I felt sick.
Alexander continued.
“I refused.”
“You expect me to thank you?”
“No.”
“Then why photograph them?”
“Because I needed Declan to start digging.”
Declan stared.
“You could have called me.”
“And said what?
Hello, I’m your secret twin brother, I impersonated you, fathered three children with your wife through deception, and Dad wants everyone dead?”
Declan’s face hardened.
“Yes.
That would have been a start.”
Almost absurdly, I wanted to laugh.
I didn’t.
Alexander leaned forward.
“There’s something else.”
My body tensed.
“What?”
He looked at me.
Then Declan.
“Charles didn’t choose the gala randomly.”
“What does that mean?”
“He knew you would be in Zurich.”
Declan’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because he arranged the Zurich meeting.”
Silence.
“He separated us deliberately,” Declan whispered.
“Yes.”
Alexander looked at me.
“And there’s something neither of you knows.”
I was tired of that sentence.
“What?”
He glanced toward the one-way glass.
Then lowered his voice.
“The triplets were never the inheritance Charles cared about.”
Declan frowned.
“Then what?”
Alexander smiled sadly.
“Cassidy was.”
Agents arrested Charles Hawthorne at a private airfield at 6:41 that evening.
Inside his luggage were three passports, four million dollars in negotiable assets, and a hard drive containing records spanning nearly thirty years.
Those records detonated the Hawthorne empire.
Bribes.
Fraud.
Illegal dumping.
Judicial influence.
Political donations routed through shell companies.
And one file labeled simply:
CARTER.
My maiden name.
Inside were documents about my father.
Thomas Carter.
A quiet civil engineer who had died from pancreatic cancer when I was twenty-three.
Or so I had always believed.
My father had worked briefly for Hawthorne Development before I was born.
He left suddenly.
Never discussed it.
The files revealed why.
Thomas Carter had discovered Charles Hawthorne’s first illegal toxic-waste operation.
He collected evidence.
He prepared to report it.
Then, unexpectedly, he received a settlement and resigned.
I stared at the number.
Twenty million dollars.
“What?”
I had grown up middle class.
Public schools.
Used cars.
Scholarships.
My father clipped coupons.
Where had twenty million dollars gone?
The answer appeared three documents later.