Chapter 4 - THE NAME ON MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE
For eighteen years, I had believed Richard Valentine was my father.
For thirty seconds, I believed Daniel Mercer might be.
Then someone outside started shooting.
Belief became less important than survival.
Bullets hammered the SUV.
Brennan threw the vehicle into reverse.
One motorcycle blocked us.
He hit it.
Metal screamed beneath the tires.
“Down!” Matthew shouted.
I was already there.
Colin fired through the shattered passenger window.
A man near the vans dropped.
The others scattered behind concrete pillars.
Matthew grabbed my emergency bag.
I ripped it back.
“Touch that again and lose the hand.”
“Fair.”
Brennan accelerated backward through the tunnel.
A black motorcycle pursued us.
Matthew leaned through the broken rear window and fired twice.
The rider swerved.
Brennan spun the SUV hard onto a service ramp.
We climbed toward street level.
My heartbeat finally caught up with what had happened.
“Who were they?” I demanded.
Matthew reloaded.
“Not mine.”
“That narrows it down to the rest of Chicago.”
“We need another vehicle.”
“We need answers.”
“We need to stay alive long enough to have the argument.”
He had a point.
I hated that too.
Twenty minutes later, we abandoned the SUV inside an underground parking garage beneath a luxury hotel.
Brennan stole—Matthew called it “borrowed”—a gray sedan from one of his associates.
I refused to ask why the keys were already available.
We drove north.
No one followed.
At 4:11 a.m., the city finally began to quiet.
Matthew took us to a three-story brick townhouse in Lincoln Park.
No visible guards.
No cameras that I could see.
Which meant there were probably twenty.
Inside, he locked the door behind us.
I kept my coat on.
“Talk.”
Brennan started toward the kitchen.
“Boss—”
“Leave us.”
Brennan glanced at me.
His bruised throat had started turning purple.
“You sure?”
Matthew raised an eyebrow.
Brennan thought about the diner floor.
“Right.”
He left.
Matthew and I stood alone in a living room that looked nothing like a gangster’s home.
No gold statues.
No weapons mounted on walls.
Books.
Old records.
A piano.
Family photographs turned facedown on a shelf.
I walked toward one.
Matthew said, “Don’t.”
I turned it over anyway.
My mother.
Older.
Maybe forty-five.
Alive.
The room tilted.
I grabbed the shelf.
“When was this taken?”
Matthew did not answer quickly enough.
I turned.
“When?”
“Eleven years ago.”
My voice came out almost inaudible.
“You knew she was alive.”
“Not then.”
“But you have the photograph.”
“I got it six months ago with the letter.”
My anger lost direction.
I looked at my mother’s face again.
She had the same eyes I remembered.
But there were new lines around them.
A scar near her jaw.
She stood outside what looked like a train station.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe you couldn’t identify a train station?”
“No metadata. No visible signs. I had people examine everything.”
“And?”
“Eastern Europe, maybe. Could be staged.”
I placed the photograph down.
“Tell me about Daniel Mercer.”
Matthew poured himself water.
I didn’t accept any.
“Mercer was a federal prosecutor,” he said. “Ambitious. Clean. Too clean for Father’s liking.”
“My mother had an affair with him.”
“I don’t know.”
“My birth certificate says he’s my father.”
“It may be forged.”
“You recognized the document.”
“I recognized Mercer’s signature.”
I looked down.
At the bottom of the certificate was a looping signature.
D. Mercer.
“Did Richard know?”
Matthew hesitated.
“I think that’s why he hated you.”
The sentence hit somewhere deep.
Richard had never seemed to hate me.
That was the worst part.
Cruel men were easier to understand when they looked cruel.
“But he acted like I was his daughter.”
“Appearances mattered to him.”
I remembered birthday parties.
Horses.
Private schools.
My father carrying me on his shoulders.
Maybe every memory had been theater.
“What happened to Mercer?”
Matthew walked toward the window.
“Officially? Car accident. December 2008.”
“After the fire.”
“Two months after.”
“Unofficially?”
“Father had him killed.”
I closed my eyes.
The man whose name was on my birth certificate died two months after I disappeared.
Convenient.
“Then who sent those men tonight?”
“That’s the question.”
“They claimed my real father sent them.”
“Maybe they wanted you to believe Mercer is alive.”
“Is that possible?”
“I watched his funeral on television.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Matthew looked at me.
“Anything is possible in our family.”
Our family.
Again.
I walked toward the couch and emptied the black box.
Photograph.
Cassette recorder.
Birth certificate.
The photograph showed Helen holding me at age nine.
We stood in front of a motel.
On the back, written in Helen’s handwriting:
THE FIRST LIE IS YOUR NAME.
The cassette recorder was tiny.
Old Sony.
A tape was already inside.
Matthew stared.
“Have you listened to that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Helen told me not to open the box until the Valentines found me.”
He laughed bitterly.
“She always did enjoy dramatic instructions.”
“You knew her.”
“I told you.”
“You found her.”
“I met her once.”
I turned sharply.
“When?”
“Three weeks before she died.”
My hand moved before thought.
I punched him.
Matthew stumbled into the armchair.
Brennan rushed in from the hall.
Matthew raised a hand.
“Out.”
Brennan looked at me as if reconsidering every life choice that had brought him here.
Then left.
I stood over Matthew.
“You met Helen three weeks before she was killed?”
“Yes.”
“And you forgot to mention that?”
“I didn’t forget.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“Did your father?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I was trying to get Helen out of Chicago.”
“She died outside Milwaukee.”
“I know.”
“You knew where she was going.”
“Yes.”
I grabbed his shirt.
“You could have led them to her.”
His eyes met mine.
“I have wondered that every day for eight years.”
That answer stopped me.
Guilt.
Real guilt.
Not polished.
Not theatrical.
I released him.
Matthew straightened his collar.
“Helen contacted me first.”
“Why?”
“She wanted money.”
I almost laughed.
“Helen hated your family.”
“She wanted enough money to disappear with you permanently.”
“She already had me hidden.”
“Not from Father.”
I said nothing.
Matthew continued.
“She believed he was getting close. She wanted two million dollars, new passports, and transportation.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t we leave?”
“She disappeared after our meeting.”
Three weeks later, Helen died.
I had always thought the accident was random.
Now nothing felt random.
I picked up the cassette recorder.
“Batteries?”
Matthew opened a drawer and removed two.
Of course he had batteries.
He inserted them.
I pressed play.
Static.
Then Helen’s voice.
My knees weakened.
“Evie, if you are hearing this, then something has gone very wrong.”
I sat.
Matthew remained standing.
Helen continued.
“I’m sorry I lied to you. I told you lies because children deserve simple monsters, and the truth was complicated.”
I swallowed.
“The fire was ordered by Richard Valentine. That part is true. But Richard was not trying to kill you.”
Matthew and I exchanged a look.
The tape crackled.
“He was trying to destroy what your mother stole.”
My breath stopped.
“Isabelle copied records from Richard’s organization. Names. Accounts. Judges. Police. Politicians. But that wasn’t all she found. She found evidence that Richard Valentine was not the head of the organization.”
Matthew whispered, “What?”
Helen continued.
“The Valentines answered to someone else.”
Static swallowed several seconds.
Then her voice returned.
“Evie, your mother hid the evidence in the basement vault. Richard burned the house because he couldn’t open it.”
I looked at Matthew.
He looked as shocked as I felt.
“The vault is biometric,” Helen said. “It was built for your mother. But she modified it. After the fire, only one living person could access it.”
Me.
The tape continued.
“You.”
I felt the room close in.
“If Richard finds you, he will use you to open the vault. If the government finds you, they will do the same. If Matthew finds you…”
Helen paused.
Matthew’s face tightened.
“…make him tell you why he received twenty million dollars the morning after the fire.”
My head turned.
Matthew went white.
The tape clicked off.
Silence.
I stood slowly.
“Twenty million dollars.”
Matthew did not move.
“You told me you were fourteen.”
“I was.”
“You told me you froze.”
“I did.”
“You told me you lost everything.”
“I did.”
“Then why did Richard Valentine transfer twenty million dollars to you the morning after I supposedly died?”
Matthew stared at the floor.
I stepped closer.
“What did you sell him?”
His voice was barely a whisper.
“You.”
The word almost didn’t register.
“What?”
Matthew looked up.
Tears filled his eyes.
“I told him where Mother planned to take you.”
My body went cold.
“You betrayed us.”
“I didn’t know he would burn the house.”
“You gave him the escape route.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He told me Mother had kidnapped you. He told me she was sick. He told me Mercer had manipulated her. He said if I told him the plan, he would stop her and keep everyone safe.”
“So he paid you?”
“Afterward. Not before.”
“Twenty million dollars.”
“I never touched it.”
“Does that make you innocent?”
“No.”
At least he didn’t pretend.
I backed away.
Every reunion fantasy I had never admitted to having died in that room.
Matthew wasn’t the brother who failed to save me.
He was the reason my father knew where to find us.
Maybe he hadn’t lit the match.
But he had handed over the map.
I grabbed the black box.
“I’m leaving.”
“Where?”
“Away from you.”
“You’ll be dead by morning.”
“Maybe.”
I reached the door.
Matthew spoke behind me.
“Richard is alive.”
I stopped.
My hand remained on the lock.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
“He died twelve years ago.”
“That funeral was as fake as yours.”
I turned.
Matthew’s eyes were empty now.
“Father has been running things from somewhere else ever since.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
A phone began ringing.
Not mine.
Matthew looked toward the table.
One of his encrypted phones.
He answered.
Said nothing.
His expression changed.
He held the phone toward me.
A woman was crying on the other end.
Then a voice I had heard only in dreams said:
“Evie?”
I couldn’t breathe.
My mother.
“Mom?”
A sob.
“Oh, baby.”
I pressed the phone to my ear.
“Where are you?”
“Listen to me. You have to get away from Matthew.”
Matthew closed his eyes.
My mother continued.
“He isn’t your brother.”
The room froze.
“What?”
“He’s Richard’s son.”
“I know.”
“No.”
May you like
Her next words destroyed the last thing I thought I understood.
“Richard Valentine is your grandfather.”
