CHAPTER 4 — THE CHILDREN CHARLES HID
By noon, every fact I knew about my family had become questionable.
Gavin was Charles’s son.
Eleanor was Sarah’s half sister.
Maya was biologically Eleanor’s daughter.
And my father had connected all of us through contracts, lies and money.
Detective Morales arranged for me to speak with Gavin at the station.
He sat behind the glass wearing the same dinner jacket he had worn at my table.
The arrogance was gone.
“You knew we were brothers,” I said.
Gavin leaned back.
“I knew Charles was my father.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Yes. I knew.”
“How long?”
“Since I was seventeen.”
I stared at him.
Gavin was only two years younger than me. While I attended private schools and inherited board seats, he had grown up under his mother’s surname in a small apartment outside Baltimore.
“Did Charles support you?”
“He paid enough to keep us quiet.”
“So this was revenge?”
Gavin smiled faintly.
“You think everything is about revenge because you’ve never needed justice.”
“You starved a child.”
“I never told Eleanor to feed Maya dog food.”
“You helped create the custody plan.”
“That was business.”
“She’s nine.”
“And at nine, you already owned shares worth more than my mother saw in her entire life.”
His words were bitter, but they did not excuse what he had done.
“Did you help Charles switch the embryo?”
“I was twenty-one. Charles had just brought me into his private security division. He told me to transport documents and make payments. I didn’t know what they were for.”
“When did you learn?”
“When Sarah started asking questions.”
“What did you do to her?”
Gavin’s expression changed.
For the first time, fear appeared.
“I didn’t kill Sarah.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You were thinking it.”
“What happened in the hospital?”
He looked toward the one-way mirror.
“You need to ask Charles.”
“My father can barely recognize me.”
Gavin laughed quietly.
“That’s what he wants you to believe.”
I left the room and drove directly to Hawthorne House, the private neurological facility where Charles had lived for three years.
The director met me in the lobby.
“My father’s condition has deteriorated,” she said.
“I want to see him.”
“He may not respond.”
Charles sat near a window overlooking the gardens.
His hair had turned silver. A blanket covered his legs.
When I entered, his eyes remained unfocused.
“Father?”
Nothing.
I placed the fertility authorization on his lap.
His eyes moved down.
Then back to me.
“You replaced Sarah’s embryo.”
No response.
“You used Eleanor’s egg.”
Silence.
“You built a plan that allowed her to take Maya and the company.”
Still nothing.
I leaned closer.
“Gavin told me you are pretending.”
Charles’s right hand tightened around the blanket.
I saw it.
“You can understand every word.”
His eyes sharpened.
The confused old man disappeared.
“You were always slower than Sarah,” he said clearly.
I stepped back.
For three years, he had allowed me to believe his mind was gone.
“Why?”
“Because men reveal more around the weak than they do around the powerful.”
“You destroyed my family.”
“I preserved it.”
“You used Sarah’s sister to create my daughter without our consent.”
“Sarah’s bloodline was acceptable. Her body was not.”
Rage rose in my chest.
Charles remained calm.
“I gave you an heir.”
“You stole our choice.”
“Choice is a luxury families like ours cannot afford.”
The door opened behind me.
Beatrice Sterling entered with her cane.
My grandmother looked from Charles to me.
“You finally told him,” she said.
I turned toward her.
“You knew?”
She shut the door.
“I knew more than either of you.”
Charles’s face tightened.
For the first time, my father looked afraid.
Beatrice lowered herself into the chair across from him.
May you like
Then she looked at me.
“Gavin is not Charles’s only hidden child.”
