Chapter 9 - THE FIRST SON
We left the twins with Nathaniel and flew back to Chicago that night.
Evelyn came with me.
I didn't ask her to.
She simply put on her coat and said, “If this began with my mother, I deserve the truth too.”
For the first time in three years, we sat beside each other on a plane.
Neither of us slept.
The lake house was empty when we arrived.
Vincent's car sat outside.
His phone lay shattered near the fireplace.
There was blood on the floor.
Not much.
Enough.
Marcus found a hidden room behind my father's wine cellar.
Inside were tapes, ledgers, photographs, and letters spanning decades.
Evelyn picked up one photograph.
Her mother, Caroline Carter, stood beside my father when they were both barely twenty.
They were smiling.
On the back, my father had written:
Caroline and Julian, 1984.
“Julian?” Evelyn whispered.
My mother's face changed.
She knew.
“Who is Julian?”
Victoria sat down.
“My husband's first son.”
The room went silent.
“Where is he?”
“I don't know.”
“You knew about him?”
“After I married your father.”
“And you stayed?”
Her expression hardened.
“Life is complicated when you're twenty-three and already pregnant.”
Vincent was the one who finally appeared.
A panel beneath the stairs opened, and he stumbled out, clutching his shoulder.
Evelyn rushed toward him.
He had locked himself in an old storm passage after someone attacked him.
“Who?”
“I didn't see his face.”
Marcus helped him sit.
Vincent pointed toward an old cassette recorder.
“Play it.”
The tape crackled.
Then my father's voice filled the room.
If Adrian marries Caroline Carter's daughter, Julian will see it as theft. He has waited his whole life for recognition. Do not let Evelyn bear an heir.
Evelyn covered her mouth.
My father's voice continued.
If necessary, convince Adrian she betrayed him.
I felt sick.
Three years of divorce.
Three years without my children.
All because someone had poisoned our marriage from the inside.
“Who convinced me?” I whispered.
Vincent looked toward Mother.
She shook her head.
“Not me.”
Then Marcus found another page.
A payment ledger.
Private investigators.
Forged photographs.
Anonymous messages.
Every lie that had made me suspicious of Evelyn near the end of our marriage had been purchased by the same account.
J. Carter.
Evelyn stared at the initials.
“Julian used my mother's surname.”
Then Marcus went very still.
“What?”
He pointed to a mailing address.
I recognized it immediately.
It belonged to a private estate outside Boston.
Nathaniel's family estate.
Evelyn shook her head.
“No.”
I understood before she said it.
Julian Carter wasn't some stranger hidden across the country.
He had been close to Evelyn for years.
And Nathaniel had already told us his mother and Evelyn's father were half siblings.
Which meant Nathaniel might know exactly who Julian was.
May you like
Or worse.
Nathaniel might be Julian's son.
