Chapter 9 - VICTOR’S SECRET WAS OLDER THAN EVELYNVictor did not answer immediately.
That told Evelyn more than words could have.
“You knew Anna.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He looked toward Garrett.
“This conversation should be private.”
Garrett laughed.
“Convenient.”
Evelyn looked at Garrett.
“Leave.”
He stared at her.
Then nodded.
When the door closed, Victor sat.
“Anna and I were married.”
Evelyn felt the air leave her lungs.
“What?”
“Secretly.”
“Why secretly?”
“I was working for Richard. Anna was Richard’s financial analyst.”
“And Thomas?”
“Her brother.”
Evelyn froze.
The DNA result.
First-degree relation.
Thomas was not her father.
He was her uncle.
“Thomas is Anna’s brother.”
Victor nodded.
“Then you…”
Her voice failed.
Victor looked away.
“Were you my father?”
His silence was unbearable.
“Victor.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I didn’t know Anna was pregnant when she disappeared.”
Evelyn stared.
“She disappeared?”
“She told me Richard had discovered we were married. She said we had to run.”
“Did you?”
“I told her I needed forty-eight hours.”
“To do what?”
“To copy evidence from Richard’s security files.”
“And?”
“She vanished the next morning.”
“You never found her?”
“I searched for two years.”
“She was with Charles.”
Victor’s eyes filled with something raw.
“I didn’t know.”
Evelyn felt anger rising.
“Charles adopted me.”
“Yes.”
“You worked for Charles.”
“Yes.”
“And you never recognized me?”
“I met you once when you were ten.”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t remember.”
“How could you not—”
“I suspected.”
Evelyn stood despite the pain.
“You suspected I might be your daughter and said nothing?”
“Charles told me Anna’s child had died.”
She stopped.
“What?”
“He said Anna died in childbirth. The baby too.”
“So he lied.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You still worked for him?”
“I left for three years after learning Anna was dead. Charles found me later.”
“And you never knew.”
“No.”
Evelyn wanted to hate him.
But the grief in Victor’s face looked decades old.
“DNA can prove it.”
He nodded.
“Do it.”
No hesitation.
A nurse collected samples.
Results would take hours.
Meanwhile Samuel returned from Virginia with Box 417.
Victor immediately recognized Anna’s photograph.
His hands trembled when he touched it.
Evelyn watched.
This wasn’t acting.
He had loved her.
The recorder was repaired enough to recover additional audio.
Martin’s voice continued.
“Anna feared Richard because he learned she possessed documents proving he had stolen millions from Mercer Holdings.”
Samuel looked at Victor.
“That explains why Charles hid her.”
Martin continued.
“Charles arranged a false death for Anna and the baby. But Anna died several months later from complications related to childbirth.”
Victor closed his eyes.
“Charles promised to protect Evelyn. He adopted her legally and raised her with Elizabeth.”
Evelyn’s eyes filled.
Then Martin said:
“Victor Hale was Evelyn’s biological father.”
The room became completely silent.
Victor lowered his head.
Evelyn stared at him.
A father she thought dead.
A biological father she had never known.
Garrett’s family had been hunting both of them.
The absurdity might have been funny if it didn’t hurt so much.
Victor whispered:
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Not knowing.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“You couldn’t know.”
It was the first kind thing she had said to him.
Then Samuel removed another document.
“There’s more.”
It was a birth certificate.
Not Evelyn’s.
Garrett Blackwood.
Mother: Eleanor Blackwood.
Father: Richard Blackwood.
Except someone had written across it in red ink:
FALSE.
Attached was another DNA report.
Garrett and Richard.
Probability of paternity:
0.00%.
Evelyn stared.
“Garrett isn’t Richard’s son.”
Victor looked stunned.
Samuel turned another page.
Garrett and Thomas Vale.
No relationship.
Then another.
Garrett and Charles Mercer.
Evelyn’s heart stopped.
Paternity probability:
99.999%.
Victor whispered:
“Charles had a son.”
Evelyn stared toward the door Garrett had walked through minutes earlier.
Her husband was Charles Mercer’s biological child.
The man Evelyn had called Dad had secretly fathered Garrett.
Which meant Garrett had married the adopted daughter of his own biological father.
Not incest.
But close enough to make Evelyn’s stomach turn.
Then another realization struck.
If Garrett was Charles’s biological son—
he might have a claim to Mercer Holdings.
Samuel whispered:
“That’s what this was always about.”
And outside the door, something crashed.
They opened it.
May you like
Garrett stood there.
He had heard everything.
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