Chapter 3 - THE FATHER I WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO KNOW
My mother died when I was nineteen.
For thirteen years after that, I had believed one thing about my father.
His name was Daniel Pierce.
He died before I was born.
My mother had shown me photographs.
A handsome young man with dark curls, a leather jacket, and a crooked smile.
She had told me he was killed in a boating accident off Chesapeake Bay.
I had visited his grave every Memorial Day until I moved away for college.
Now, standing in the upstairs hallway with my cheating husband three feet away, I learned that the dead man whose surname I still legally carried might never have been my father at all.
“No.”
It was the only word I could produce.
Kendra was still on speaker.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
I looked at Nolan.
He could barely meet my eyes.
“You knew?”
“Not when we married.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
The same year his company began collapsing.
Of course.
Every horror in my marriage seemed to begin three years ago.
“How?”
Nolan sank onto the bench beneath the hallway window.
“Your grandmother contacted my father.”
“Everett?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was sick. She wanted to correct something before she died.”
My grandmother Eleanor had died two years earlier.
She had been ninety-one.
Sharp-minded until the final months.
“What did she tell him?”
“That your mother had an affair with Gordon Hale in 1992.”
My knees nearly buckled.
Nolan stood.
I raised my hand.
“Don’t come near me.”
He stopped.
My mind filled with fragments.
My mother changing the subject whenever I asked about Daniel.
My grandmother disliking every photograph of him.
A strange man watching from the back row at my mother’s funeral.
Silver hair.
I had never known his name.
Had that been Gordon?
“What did my grandmother want from Everett?”
“To tell you.”
“Then why didn’t he?”
Nolan’s voice softened.
“Because she asked him to wait until she had proof.”
“And did she?”
“Yes.”
The word felt like a blade.
“Where?”
“Letters.”
“What letters?”
“Your mother wrote to Gordon while she was pregnant.”
I suddenly remembered a locked cedar box in my grandmother’s house.
She had called it “old family nonsense.”
After she died, Nolan had handled the estate inventory because I had been traveling for work.
I looked at him.
“You found them.”
His eyes closed.
“Yes.”
“You found letters proving Gordon Hale was my father.”
“Yes.”
“And you never told me.”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“You had three years.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
He stared at the floor.
“From Gordon.”
That answer surprised me.
“Why?”
Nolan looked at the phone.
Kendra was still there.
Quiet.
Listening.
“You should ask her.”
“Kendra?”
She inhaled.
“My father is not a good man.”
“That is becoming obvious.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
Her voice changed.
The shame in it was unmistakable.
“He doesn’t love people. He collects leverage.”
I walked into the nursery and sat beside the bassinets.
The boys slept peacefully.
Nolan remained outside the doorway.
I placed the phone on the dresser.
“Explain.”
Kendra hesitated.
“My father knew about you.”
“For how long?”
“All my life.”
I closed my eyes.
Every answer created another question.
“What?”
“When I was little, there was a photograph of your mother in his private office.”
“What kind of photograph?”
“College graduation. She was standing beside him.”
My mother had attended Georgetown.
So had Gordon Hale.
“Did you ask who she was?”
“Once.”
“What did he say?”
“He slapped me.”
Nolan’s head lifted.
Apparently that was new information even to him.
Kendra continued.
“I never asked again.”
She sounded distant now, like someone narrating somebody else’s childhood.
“My father controlled everything. My schools. My friends. My bank accounts. My first job. When my mother tried to leave him, he proved she had been taking prescription pills after surgery and threatened to use it against her in a custody case.”
“What happened?”
“She stayed.”
I looked at Nolan.
“And you thought joining this family was a good idea?”
He had no answer.
Kendra continued.
“When I started working on Whitmore’s acquisition, my father told me Nolan’s wife was irrelevant.”
I flinched.
“He called me irrelevant?”
“He called you an obstacle.”
Nolan whispered, “Kendra.”
She ignored him.
“He said your assets were more valuable than the company.”
My skin prickled.
“The Fairmont properties.”
“Yes.”
“But those belonged to my grandmother.”
“Before that, they belonged to Gordon’s father.”
I stared at the phone.
“What?”
Kendra had reached the heart of it now.
The family secret was not simply sexual.
It was financial.
Decades old.
“In 1991, my grandfather and your grandmother were partners in a real estate venture called Fairmont Industrial Development.”
I had seen that name on old documents.
“My grandmother said she started Fairmont herself.”
“She did after the partnership collapsed.”
“How?”
Kendra paused.
“My grandfather went to prison.”
I remembered that too.
Howard Hale.
Wire fraud.
Tax evasion.
A major Maryland business scandal when I was a baby.
“My father believes your grandmother testified against him.”
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
The answer came from Everett.
I turned.
He stood behind Nolan.
I hadn’t heard him return.
His uniform jacket was gone now. He carried a leather folder.
“What happened with Gordon?” Nolan asked.
Everett’s expression was hard.
“He refused to meet after he realized Kendra was no longer under his control.”
On the phone, Kendra whispered, “Good.”
Everett stepped into the nursery.
“Your grandmother helped federal prosecutors expose Howard Hale’s fraud. In exchange, she legally acquired several properties that had been purchased using her own capital.”
“So Gordon thinks she stole them.”
“He has spent thirty years saying exactly that.”
A chill spread across my arms.
“And now I own them.”
“Yes.”
“And Nolan put them up as collateral.”
Everett nodded.
I looked at my husband.
“Did Gordon encourage you to do that?”
Nolan swallowed.
“At first, no.”
“At first?”
“He discovered the guarantees during due diligence.”
“And then?”
“He changed the acquisition terms.”
Everett opened the folder.
Inside was a copy of the proposed Hale Continental acquisition.
He placed one page in front of me.
A clause was highlighted.
Upon closing, certain Fairmont assets would be transferred into a subsidiary controlled by Hale Continental.
My stomach turned.
“He was getting the properties back.”
Everett nodded.
“And Nolan would keep his company.”
The betrayal became almost mathematically perfect.
Gordon wanted revenge against my dead grandmother.
Nolan wanted to save his empire.
Both men had decided I was the currency.
Kendra spoke again.
“There’s something else.”
We all looked at the phone.
“My father didn’t just want the Fairmont properties.”
“What else?”
“He wanted proof you were his daughter.”
I stared at the sleeping twins.
“That’s why he gave Nolan his DNA.”
“Yes.”
Everett understood first.
“He expected some portion of his genetic markers to appear if the sample actually came from Claire’s children.”
Exactly.
But Nolan had switched the samples before the lab ever saw my babies’ DNA.
So Gordon’s DNA had simply been compared to itself under a different name?
No.
I looked at Nolan.
“Wait.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You said you used Gordon’s DNA as the twins’ sample.”
“Yes.”
“Then what did you submit as your own?”
He froze.
Nobody spoke.
I stood.
“Nolan.”
His face went white.
“What DNA was used as yours?”
Everett suddenly grabbed the laboratory report.
He scanned it.
Then scanned it again.
His expression transformed.
Not anger.
Recognition.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
Everett looked at his son.
“Nolan.”
Nolan backed against the wall.
“I didn’t know.”
Everett’s voice became terrifyingly calm.
“Whose sample?”
Nolan’s lips trembled.
“Kendra’s father gave me two vials.”
Everett went still.
“One labeled Hale. One labeled Whitmore.”
My stomach dropped.
Everett looked as if someone had struck him.
“You never provided your own sample?”
“No.”
“Then whose DNA was submitted as Nolan’s?”
Nolan whispered:
“I thought it was mine.”
Everett sat down heavily.
For the first time since entering my house, the retired colonel looked afraid.
Kendra said, “I found another report.”
Her voice shook.
“One my father kept hidden.”
“What report?” I asked.
She began crying again.
“A kinship test between Gordon and Nolan.”
Nobody moved.
I heard Everett whisper, “No.”
Kendra continued.
“The probability of a biological father-son relationship was 99.97 percent.”
I stared at my husband.
Then at Everett.
The room became silent except for two sleeping newborns breathing softly in their bassinets.
Everett Whitmore was not Nolan’s biological father.
Gordon Hale was.
Which meant the mistress Nolan had impregnated—
Kendra—
May you like
was not merely his business partner.
She was his sister.
