CHAPTER 8 — The Brother Everyone Buried
Ethan hadn't spoken his brother's name in over a decade.
Daniel Carter.
Officially declared dead after a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Mexico.
No body was ever recovered.
Only wreckage.
Their parents held a funeral with an empty coffin.
Ethan inherited nothing.
Daniel had owned almost nothing.
Or so everyone believed.
After leaving the prison, Ethan couldn't sleep.
He drove straight to the county records office.
By sunrise...
He found something impossible.
Daniel had never legally been declared deceased.
Only missing.
Someone had quietly blocked the final court order.
Then another discovery.
A shell corporation.
Created eleven years ago.
Its registered mailing address...
Was the same address used to purchase Rebecca's lake house.
Ethan's hands trembled.
Every trail led back to Daniel.
Later that evening, Lily quietly entered Ethan's office.
"Dad..."
"I found something too."
She placed Rebecca's old laptop on the desk.
"I finally broke the password."
Thousands of deleted emails appeared.
Most had been erased years earlier.
One thread stood out.
From: D.Carter@...
The first message read:
"Keep Ethan offshore."
"The farther away he stays..."
"The easier everything becomes."
The second message was worse.
"When the insurance money arrives, disappear."
"He must never learn who I really am."
Lily looked at her father.
"What if Uncle Daniel never wanted your money?"
Ethan frowned.
"What do you mean?"
She opened one final attachment.
A scanned birth certificate.
Ethan stared.
His own name wasn't listed.
Neither was Daniel's.
Instead...
The father listed on both brothers' birth records was a man neither of them had ever met.
Richard Hawthorne.
One of the wealthiest businessmen in the state.
May you like
Everything Ethan believed about his family...
Collapsed in a single second.
