Chapter 9 - We returned home before dawn.Mia was still sleeping.
I sat beside her bed and watched her breathe.
My daughter.
The girl who had unknowingly become the center of a war.
Alexander crouched beside me.
“We can take her and disappear.”
I looked at him.
“And spend the rest of her life running?”
“No.”
He gently touched Mia’s hair.
“We make sure nobody can ever reach her again.”
Daniel stood at the doorway.
“There is one problem.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“Mia’s fifth birthday is in eleven months.”
Alexander sighed.
“We know.”
“No.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You don’t understand.”
He handed us a legal document.
“The trust activation date isn’t her birthday.”
I read the page.
My blood ran cold.
“It’s the anniversary of Lucas’s disappearance.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s in three weeks.”
Alexander looked at me.
Three weeks.
We didn’t have a year.
We had nineteen days.
Daniel continued.
“If the trust activates, whoever presents proof of custody controls the shares temporarily.”
“Who has custody?”
“Technically you.”
I frowned.
“Technically?”
Daniel nodded.
“Because someone filed a challenge six years ago.”
“Who?”
He slid the paper toward me.
Marcus.
My hands went numb.
“He filed for custody before she was even born.”
Alexander’s voice was quiet.
“That’s impossible.”
“It means someone knew Mia existed.”
I looked at Daniel.
“When?”
“Before Claire did.”
I felt sick.
Someone had known about my pregnancy before I even knew I was pregnant.
Then another document fell from the file.
A birth record.
Mia’s mother.
Claire Bennett.
Father.
Blank.
Alexander frowned.
“That was intentional.”
Daniel nodded.
“They erased Lucas.”
I stared at the document.
Then I noticed something.
The hospital name.
St. Vincent.
The same facility where Lucas had been held.
“Wait.”
I grabbed another page.
The date of Mia’s birth.
It was wrong.
My blood froze.
“That isn’t her birthday.”
Daniel looked at me.
“What?”
“My daughter was born two days earlier.”
He stared.
“Then this record is fake.”
“Yes.”
Alexander’s expression hardened.
“What happened two days before the official birth date?”
I remembered.
A power outage.
A doctor telling me the records system had crashed.
A woman taking Mia from me.
I had spent that entire night in a state of confusion.
Then the next morning, the doctor told me everything was normal.
I never questioned it.
Until now.
Daniel whispered:
“They switched records.”
My throat tightened.
“Why?”
He looked at me.
“To make another child disappear.”
I stared at him.
“What other child?”
Daniel didn’t answer.
Instead, he handed me a photograph.
Two newborn babies.
One was Mia.
The other was a baby boy.
Both had hospital bracelets.
My hands trembled.
“Who is this?”
Daniel looked at the photograph.
“The child Marcus’s father believed was supposed to inherit Lucas’s shares.”
“Where is he?”
Daniel’s expression was grim.
“Dead.”
I stared.
“How?”
“Officially?”
He hesitated.
“Stillbirth.”
I looked closer at the photograph.
The baby’s bracelet had a name.
I read it.
Then froze.
The name belonged to a child I had never heard of.
Alexander stared at the same bracelet.
“That name…”
I looked at him.
“You recognize it?”
He nodded slowly.
“It was my brother’s first son.”
My blood ran cold.
Lucas had another child.
A son.
And suddenly Mia wasn’t the only heir.
Daniel whispered:
“That’s why your father wants her alive.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“Because your father believes the other child didn’t die.”
Silence.
Then we heard footsteps in the hallway.
Mia appeared at the door.
She was holding the silver key.
“Mommy?”
I crouched.
“Where did you get that?”
She pointed downstairs.
“A man gave it to me.”
My heart stopped.
“What man?”
She frowned.
“The man who looks like Daddy.”
Alexander went completely still.
Because Lucas was upstairs.
May you like
And there was only one other man in the world who looked exactly like him.
His dead brother.
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