Chapter 9 - The Boy in My Father’s File
The first time I saw Alexander cry was two months after we started dating.
We had been sitting on the floor of my apartment eating Thai food.
I asked about his parents.
He told me his father died in a construction accident.
His mother died years later from ovarian cancer.
He said grief made children grow up in strange directions.
Then tears filled his eyes.
Not dramatic tears.
One quick, embarrassed break in his composure.
I had reached for his hand.
Now I wondered whether even that memory belonged to him.
Or whether Walter had taught him which story to tell.
Mercer’s team began rebuilding Alexander’s childhood.
Alexander Michael Morgan was born in 1990.
His mother, Rebecca Morgan, had been twenty-two.
No father appeared on the original birth certificate.
At age six, he became Alexander Hale.
Rebecca married a man named Peter Hale.
Peter died four years later.
That part of Alexander’s story was true.
What he never told me was that Walter Greer served as attorney for Rebecca’s custody arrangements.
And Harold Bennett paid the legal bill.
My father.
The connection existed before I was born.
I called Thomas Reed from his hospital room.
He had regained consciousness.
Doctors believed he had been given a sedative before the private ambulance arrived.
He remembered answering his door.
Then nothing.
His resignation as trustee was fraudulent.
That gave us leverage against the emergency vote.
But I needed another answer.
“Tom, did Dad know a woman named Rebecca Morgan?”
Silence.
“Tom?”
“Yes.”
My heart began pounding.
“How?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
“Rebecca worked at Bennett Financial.”
“When?”
“Before you were born.”
“What did she do?”
“She was an analyst.”
“Did Dad know her personally?”
“Yes.”
“How personally?”
Thomas hesitated.
That hesitation made my stomach turn.
“Tom.”
“They were close.”
I closed my eyes.
“How close?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t protect him.”
“I’m not.”
“Then answer.”
“People talked.”
There it was.
“Did my father have an affair with Rebecca Morgan?”
“I never saw evidence.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I suspected one.”
My hands went numb.
“Was Alexander my father’s son?”
Thomas immediately said, “I don’t know.”
Too fast.
“Did Dad believe he was?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you?”
Long pause.
“Sometimes.”
The room disappeared around me.
Alexander.
My husband.
Possibly my half brother.
I stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
Mercer grabbed it.
Rachel went pale.
“No.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“No.”
Thomas heard me through the phone.
“Sophia, Harold never acknowledged Alexander.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“We need DNA before assuming anything.”
I stared at Mercer.
“Get it.”
“We can.”
“Now.”
Rachel took my hand.
I let her this time.
For one horrific hour, I lived inside the possibility.
Every kiss.
Every touch.
Our wedding.
My stomach churned so badly I nearly vomited.
Then the answer came.
Fast.
Federal databases contained DNA from an old civil paternity case involving Alexander’s mother.
Mercer obtained an emergency comparison using a preserved sample from my father’s medical records with estate consent.
Not his son.
Zero probability.
I cried then.
Not from happiness.
From relief so violent it hurt.
Alexander was not my brother.
But the relief lasted less than a minute.
Because that meant something else connected our families.
Thomas stayed on the line.
“There was another man.”
“Who?”
“Rebecca dated someone at Bennett.”
“Name?”
“I never knew.”
“Walter did.”
“Probably.”
“Dad knew?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because Rebecca came to Harold for help.”
“With what?”
“She said the father was dangerous.”
Mercer looked up.
“Dangerous how?”
Thomas sighed.
“He wanted the baby.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Harold arranged legal protection.”
“Walter handled it.”
“Rebecca left New York.”
“And Dad paid.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the biological father?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought about Walter’s note.
Harold must never know who the father is.
But Harold had known Alexander.
He just didn’t know the father’s identity.
“Curtis.”
The name left my mouth before I fully understood why.
Mercer stared.
“What?”
“How old is Curtis?”
He checked.
“Sixty-one.”
Old enough.
“Did Curtis work at Bennett?”
Mercer searched.
Nothing.
Ellis searched deeper.
Five minutes.
Then his voice came through speaker.
“I found him.”
“Where?”
“Not under Morrow.”
“What name?”
“Curtis Mallory.”
A junior corporate security analyst at Bennett Financial.
Thirty-seven years earlier.
He worked there for three years.
Overlapping Rebecca Morgan.
I felt the room go cold.
“Photo?”
Ellis sent one.
Young Curtis.
Same eyes.
Same jaw as Alexander.
Not proof.
But enough to make everyone stop speaking.
Mercer ordered DNA comparison through a sample collected from Curtis during an old federal investigation.
The result would take hours.
While we waited, Daniel Cross reappeared.
Alive.
He walked into the federal office at 3:20 p.m.
Angry.
Embarrassed.
His car had been taken at gunpoint by a masked man near the mill.
He had been left in a maintenance shed with his phone destroyed.
He insisted he had no connection to the recorder.
Mercer did not believe him.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
Daniel’s trustee vote had been postponed because Thomas’s resignation was challenged.
Walter responded by filing an emergency petition in Delaware.
The court scheduled a hearing the next morning.
Everything was accelerating.
At 6:04 p.m., DNA results arrived.
Curtis Morrow was Alexander Hale’s biological father.
Probability greater than 99.9 percent.
I stared at the screen.
Suddenly Walter’s relationship with Alexander made terrible sense.
Walter had protected him as a child.
Curtis had watched him grow.
My father had helped hide him.
And decades later, Alexander had been directed toward me.
But why?
Why would Curtis use his own son to infiltrate the family that had once protected that son?
Mercer found the answer in Khloe’s drive.
A folder marked MORGAN.
Inside was a scanned letter from Rebecca.
Dated thirty-one years ago.
Addressed to my father.
Harold,
Curtis knows about the Meridian structure.
He says the proxy arrangement belongs to him because he designed it.
He says if you freeze him out, he will come after Bennett through the child.
I don’t know what he means.
Please protect Alexander.
The letter ended there.
I read it three times.
Curtis had designed Meridian.
My father had used it.
Then something happened.
Curtis believed my father stole it from him.
And thirty years later, he had used his own son to reclaim it.
Alexander hadn’t simply been chosen because he was charming.
He had been raised near the conspiracy.
Possibly inside it.
I asked Khloe one question.
“Did Alexander know Curtis was his father?”
She looked genuinely shocked.
“No.”
Mercer agreed.
“There’s no evidence he did.”
For the first time, Alexander became something other than villain or husband.
He became another person standing inside a lie Walter and Curtis built decades ago.
It did not absolve him.
He still betrayed me.
He still cheated.
He still planned to exploit my marriage.
But perhaps Alexander did not understand who had written his script either.
At 7:31 p.m., my phone rang.
Alexander.
Mercer nodded.
I answered.
“Sophia.”
His voice sounded strange.
“What?”
“I need to see you.”
“No.”
“Please.”
I almost laughed.
“You don’t get to use that word.”
“I know about Walter.”
“Good for you.”
“No.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I know Walter paid for Hale Strategic.”
Silence.
“I know he knew you as a child.”
Longer silence.
“And Alexander?”
“Yes?”
“I know who Curtis Morrow is.”
Nothing.
Not breathing.
Not movement.
Then Alexander whispered.
“What are you talking about?”
“Ask him his original last name.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mallory.”
The line went silent.
Then I heard movement.
A chair.
Footsteps.
“What did you say?”
“Curtis Mallory.”
Alexander’s breathing changed.
I could hear the shock.
Real shock.
“You’re lying.”
“No.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because Curtis Morrow is your biological father.”
The silence afterward lasted almost ten seconds.
Then Alexander said something I never expected.
“He killed my mother.”
My blood turned cold.
“What?”
“I was twelve.”
“You told me she died when you were twenty.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because Walter told me never to say her real name.”
My grip tightened on the phone.
“How did she die?”
“Car accident.”
“That doesn’t mean Curtis killed her.”
“No.”
Alexander’s voice cracked.
“But the night before she died, she told me if anything happened to her, I should run from a man named Curtis Mallory.”
Every person in the room heard it.
Then Alexander whispered one more thing.
“Sophia, I think Curtis has been planning this longer than either of us have been alive.”
Before I could answer, a loud crash sounded through the phone.
Alexander shouted.
The call cut off.
Mercer’s agents reached his resort suite six minutes later.
The door was open.
The room had been destroyed.
Alexander was gone.
On the wall above the bed, someone had written three words in black marker.
LIKE FATHER.
LIKE SON.
And beneath it sat a copy of tomorrow morning’s Delaware court petition.
The petitioner was not Walter Greer.
It was Alexander Hale.
May you like
Someone intended to make it look as if my husband had willingly taken the final step against me.
Whether Alexander was alive to deny it no longer seemed certain.
