“I’ve heard enough.”

“Sit down,” I said.

“You do not give me orders.”

“Then leave, but the Sutton merger ends today.”

Her hand remained on the doorknob.

“My father will dismantle your company before lunch.”

“He can try.”

At that moment, Lottie climbed down from her chair and approached me. Around her neck hung a small silver locket.

“Mommy said you used to smile more,” she said.

Eliza rose quickly.

“Lottie, come back here.”

But the child had already opened the locket. Inside was a photograph of me standing beside a sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay. It had been taken shortly after Eliza disappeared and had never appeared publicly.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“Grandma gave it to Mommy.”

The door opened behind us.

My mother, Margaret Pierce, entered carrying a closed black umbrella. At sixty-one, she was still an elegant woman, though that morning she seemed to have aged years during the walk from the elevator.

Eliza moved protectively toward Lottie.

“You promised you would keep him away.”

My mother looked at me.

“I promised to keep both of you safe.”

“Safe from whom?” I demanded.

She glanced toward Arden.

“From Conrad Pierce and Preston Sutton.”

Conrad was my father. Preston was Arden’s.

My mother explained that Eliza had come to the estate shortly after learning she was expecting a child. Before she could speak to me, Conrad discovered her visit. He persuaded her that our marriage had placed her in danger and claimed I had agreed to end it.

“I didn’t believe him,” Eliza said. “Not until your mother showed me the papers.”

The documents carried my signature, but I had never seen them. Margaret admitted that Conrad had copied it from company records.

“Why did you help him?” I asked.

“Because Preston had already begun watching Eliza. Your father told me that if she remained in the city, Preston would use her to stop the merger. I arranged an apartment in Maine and gave her enough money to begin again.”

“You sent my wife away while she was expecting my child.”

My mother’s eyes filled with regret.

“I thought distance would protect her until I could understand what they were hiding. By the time I did, she had returned the money and disappeared from the address I had found.”

Eliza lifted her chin.

“I didn’t want payment. I wanted my husband.”

The room became painfully quiet.

Then Silas spoke from beside the window.

“Lottie may not be Callum’s biological daughter.”

I turned toward him.

Eliza looked as though she had misheard.

“What are you talking about?”

Silas removed a small flash drive from his pocket.

“When you visited Dr. Nolan Baird’s clinic three years ago, you were told you needed a routine procedure. The clinic concealed what it actually did.”

Eliza stared at him.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I found the original laboratory records.”

The Brother No One Acknowledged

Before Silas could explain, the conference room windows rattled from an impact in the street below. His attention shifted instantly. He moved Eliza and Lottie away from the glass and drew his service weapon.

A dark vehicle had struck one of our security cars outside the hotel. Through the damaged window of the vehicle, a man raised something toward the entrance.

Silas aimed past Eliza’s shoulder.

“Get down!”

He fired once. The man outside dropped what he was holding, and hotel security quickly surrounded the vehicle.

Silas immediately lowered his weapon.

“I’m sorry,” he told Eliza. “I couldn’t warn you without warning him.”

My mother looked toward the street.

“Preston knows the clinic records survived.”

Arden gripped the back of a chair.

“My father arranged this?”

Margaret’s expression offered no comfort.

“Your father has spent three years trying to ensure that child’s identity remained hidden.”