Chapter Twenty-Two
Aiden
Gage answered my call with, “Are you planning on coming back to the office anytime soon? Or am I handling these meetings on my own?”
I ignored his sarcasm and said, “Neither. You’re canceling our meetings. I’m headed to the Sinclair Security offices. Meet me there.”
The sarcasm fell from Gage’s voice. He was all business when he said, “Why? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”
“Cryptic much?” Gage complained.
“I have to call Cooper. I’ll explain when I see you.”
I thought about the comb in my pocket, carefully wrapped in tissue, and Violet’s brother, a carbon copy of my cousin Vance. A little older. But the same blue eyes. The exact same shade of blonde hair. The same build, the same chin, the same nose. He was the right age.
I wasn’t ready to hope we’d found what we’d been searching for. I’d considered verifying his identity before telling Gage, but I wouldn’t shut Gage out. We were in this together.
Wondering if I was jumping the gun, I called Cooper Sinclair at Sinclair Security. Cooper and his brothers had taken over the company from their father and grown it into the premier security company in the southeast, arguably in the entire country.
We’d grown up together. The Sinclairs were like family. Ever since we’d discovered Gage’s mother, my aunt Anna, had given up a child for adoption when she’d been in college, we’d been searching for him. We’d lost enough family already.
My parents were gone, Gage’s parents were gone, all four of them killed over a love affair gone wrong.
Anna’s missing child was the root of it all.
My aunt Anna and uncle James had met in college while she was dating James’s best friend, William.
For reasons none of us had discovered, Anna broke up with William.
She took a semester off, and while she was away she fell in love with James through long letters and brief visits. She’d returned to Atlanta engaged to James. They’d married a short time later and from all reports, and my memory of childhood, had been deeply devoted to one another.
It wasn’t until Charlie stumbled upon the adoption records that we’d learned Anna hadn’t just broken up with William, she’d had his child and given it up for adoption.
William, for his part, played the devoted family friend for years, brushing off Anna’s defection as ancient history.
All the while he’d been seething with envy and rage.
William had been responsible for James and Anna’s murders. He’d stalked my cousin Annalise for years, transferring his obsession with Anna to the daughter who could have been her twin. When my parents discovered the truth, William had killed them rather than face the scandal.
So many lives torn apart over love and jealousy.
Whoever Anna’s missing child was, he was walking into a mess. We were desperate to find him, but he might not be happy to learn that while his biological mother was one of the best women I’d ever known, his father was a murderous psychopath.
None of us believed in the sins of the father. We didn’t blame Anna and William’s child for William’s insanity. We just wanted to find him. But Anna had given her newborn son to Maxwell Sinclair to hide. Even back then, she hadn’t wanted William to know where their child was.
William had seemed to take her engagement to James in stride, but some instinct had driven Anna to keep the child from his father.
Maybe she’d suspected he’d hold the baby over her head or use him to drive James away.
Instead, they’d all remained good friends; my parents, uncle James and aunt Anna, William Davis, and Maxwell Sinclair.
We’d never known the tensions simmering beneath the surface of those lifelong relationships. Had William known Maxwell had hidden his child? Had Maxwell suspected William of my parents’ deaths? We had no answers.
Anna and James had died because of William. William himself had murdered my parents. And Maxwell Sinclair had disappeared. The official story was a car accident. He’d driven off a bridge into a river, and his body had never been found.
I’d known Maxwell my entire life. He was intelligent and he could be ruthless. His death seemed a little too convenient.
Since we’d discovered William’s secret life we’d learned that nothing was as it seemed.
Maxwell hadn’t been content with running Sinclair Security.
He and William had been neck deep in a whole line of criminal enterprises, including arms dealing, money laundering, and a series of private adoptions that involved huge sums of money.
Cooper, Knox, Evers, and Axel were still digging into their father’s death.
Some days it seemed like every secret we uncovered only exposed more lies.
In the face of so much deceit, it seemed na?ve to hope I’d found my missing half-cousin.
I was too cynical to plan for good luck, but I couldn’t deny Chase Westbrook’s uncanny resemblance to my cousins.
He wasn’t just a mirror image of Vance, I could see Annalise in his high cheekbones in the shape of his eyes, Gage in his build, Tate in the sound of his voice.
Chase fit right in with the rest of Anna’s children. I could see nothing of William in him. Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe Chase had nothing to do with Anna Winters and William Davis. A DNA test would tell one way or the other.
Sitting at a red light, I pulled out my phone and called Cooper’s direct line. It rang through to a beep, then began to ring again.
A familiar voice answered, “You’ve got Evers.”
“Ev, Aiden. Cooper out?”
“He’s in DC on a job, won’t be back till next week. What’s up?”
“I’m headed to you, Gage too. Do you have time?”
“Depends. I have a meeting, but I can push it out. Something wrong?”
“I may have found Anna’s missing son,” I said, feeling the tug of hesitation as the words left my mouth. Was it wishful thinking? Was I jumping the gun? Maybe, for both. But, I had to know.
“I’ll move my meeting,” Evers said, immediately.
“Thanks. See you in a few.”
A tray of coffee and pastries waited on Evers’s desk when I got there.
He had the phone to his ear, but he waved me to a seat and held up one finger.
Carefully, I pulled the tissue wrapped comb from my pocket and laid it on the desk before pouring myself a cup of coffee.
My thoughts were a whirl. If I was right, if Chase Westbrook was Anna’s missing son, we’d have to be careful.
As things stood now, he hated us. Stealing a man’s company and dismantling it wasn’t the best way to bring him into the family. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t done it on purpose. In the end, Chase had nothing to show for his hard work, and we owned what was left of the company he’d built.
Gage showed up before Evers ended his call and took the seat beside me, helping himself to a cup of coffee. He reached for the tissue wrapped comb on Evers’s desk. My hand shot out to stop him.
“What’s going on?” he asked in a low voice.
“I went to Violet’s.”
“Did you fire her?” Gage interrupted.
I slanted him a look. “Yes, I fired her. I also found out what she was doing at Winters, Inc. in the first place. Her brother is the founder of CD4 Analytics. Harrison scammed him out of his company.”
“Which explains why we couldn’t find him,” Gage said, putting the pieces together. “And she was what? Trying to figure out a way to get the company back?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Is the brother open to an offer? We could use his help,” Gage said.
I saw him turning the problem over in his head. Before he could get distracted, I said, “He could be triplets with Vance and Annalise.”
Gage gave me a hard stare. I shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking and this has nothing to do with Violet. I’m telling you, Chase Westbrook looks so much like Vance, it’s scary. He has Anna’s eyes, Anna’s hair, Anna’s face.”
“It can’t be that easy,” Gage said. “Not after looking and finding nothing.”
“Sometimes, you get lucky. Anyway, if he is who we’re looking for, this isn’t easy. He thinks we stole his company. And Violet’s parents sound like a nightmare. He may not want anything to do with us.”
“The name Chase is familiar, but there wasn’t a Westbrook associated with CD4,” Gage said.
“The parents disowned him when Violet was in high school. He may be using a different last name.”
Across from us, Evers set the phone down. “I caught most of that. You think your Violet’s older brother is Anna’s missing kid?”
“He looks enough like Anna, like Vance and Annalise, that I think it’s worth checking out.” Nudging the tissue wrapped comb towards Evers I said, “I stole his comb. How long does it take to do a DNA test?”
Carefully, Evers picked up the comb and unwrapped the tissue.
Pulling a pair of glasses with magnifying lenses from the top drawer of his desk, he examined the hairs caught in the comb.
“Well, you got the roots of the hair. That makes a difference. People think hair is good for DNA, but it’s actually shit unless you get the root. ”
“How fast can you tell us?” Gage asked.
“We have a local lab on retainer. A rush will cost you.”
“I don’t care about the cost,” I said.
Evers raised an eyebrow. “You really think this guy is Anna’s son, don’t you?”
“If you’d been there, you’d understand why I’m so sure. It wasn’t just his eyes and his hair and his bone structure. It was the way he held himself. The way he moved.”
“Find out how fast they can do it,” Gage said. “I want to know what we’re dealing with before Aiden elopes with his sister.”
Evers studied me with sharp eyes. After a lifetime of friendship, I couldn’t hide much. “How sure are you that she’s not playing a game? She hooks you, serves you her brother up on a platter, they get nice and cozy in the Winters family and before you know it—”
“You’re not the only one who thinks something is off with this girl. The brother only makes her more sketchy,” Gage agreed.