Chapter 13 - Brothers
Daniel drove straight to Charles’s penthouse.
I went with him.
He did not ask me to.
I did not ask permission.
Charles opened the door and knew immediately.
“You found the box.”
Daniel’s entire body went rigid.
“You knew.”
Charles looked older than he had twenty-four hours earlier. “Yes.”
“How long?”
“Since you were five.”
Daniel stepped back as if the words had struck him.
“You raised me knowing I was Thomas’s son.”
“You were Evelyn’s son.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It was the only answer that mattered to me.”
For the first time, Charles’s voice broke.
He told us Evelyn had left him after discovering financial crimes connected to Thomas. She turned to Thomas during the separation. By the time she realized she was pregnant, she and Charles had reconciled.
Charles chose to raise Daniel.
Thomas resented it.
“He wanted you,” Charles said. “Not because he loved you. Because he wanted something that was mine.”
Daniel’s hands shook.
“And Grant?”
“Thomas told him before he died.”
Everything snapped into place.
Grant’s hatred.
His obsession with the Hart trust.
The framing.
He had grown up believing Daniel stole his father’s love, title, and future.
Charles sat down heavily.
“I thought keeping it quiet protected you.”
Daniel’s laugh was bitter. “Your answer to every disaster is silence.”
That sentence hit Charles hard.
It also hit me.
Because Daniel had learned the same habit.
Secrets passed through families like eye color.
My phone buzzed.
Marcus.
He had found Grant’s abandoned SUV near the river.
Inside was blood.
Not enough to prove someone had died.
Enough to scare us.
Then Marcus sent a photograph.
On the passenger seat was Daniel’s company badge.
Charles stood. “He’s setting you up.”
Daniel looked at him. “Or someone is setting Grant up too.”
That possibility changed the room.
If Grant was not running, then who was?
A second message arrived from Marcus.
He had pulled traffic-camera footage from the night Grant disappeared.
A woman had entered Grant’s SUV thirty minutes before it was abandoned.
Marcus sent the still image.
Laura looked at it and stopped breathing.
May you like
I recognized the woman too.
Rebecca Shaw.
