Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO HAD LIEDEthan's first call was to his private investigator.
“Find out who ordered that DNA test.”
“How far back?”
“Everything.”
“Sir—”
“Everything.”
He hung up.
Lily was still holding his hand.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
Ethan knelt.
“I promise.”
She studied his face.
“You look like Mommy when she's sad.”
Ethan almost smiled.
“She looks like you too.”
“No.”
Lily shook her head.
“She looks like me.”
The surgeon emerged.
Everyone stood.
“She's alive.”
Ethan exhaled.
“But?”
“We've stopped the bleeding. The next twenty-four hours are critical.”
Lily pressed both hands against her mouth.
Ethan put an arm around her.
Then his phone rang.
His investigator.
“We found the person who ordered the test.”
“Who?”
There was silence.
“Your mother.”
Ethan went still.
His mother, Eleanor Parker, had died two years earlier.
“She knew?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She received the paternity results five years ago.”
Ethan's voice dropped.
“Why didn't she tell me?”
“We're still investigating.”
Then the investigator added:
“There's more.”
“What?”
“Your mother didn't just know about Hannah and Lily.”
Ethan waited.
“She paid Hannah to disappear.”
His blood turned cold.
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
Ethan stared at Lily.
“Where did she go?”
“She never went anywhere.”
“What?”
“She refused the money.”
Ethan's jaw tightened.
“Then why did she leave?”
The investigator hesitated.
“She was threatened.”
“By whom?”
“We don't know yet.”
A second message arrived.
A photograph.
Ethan opened it.
It showed Hannah leaving Parker Holdings five years earlier.
Behind her stood Ethan's chief financial officer.
Marcus Vale.
The same man Hannah had accused of stealing from the company.
Ethan's face hardened.
Hannah had been telling the truth.
And Ethan had destroyed her for it.
May you like
But there was one question that mattered more.
Why had Marcus wanted Hannah gone?
