Chapter 10 - THE MAN LIVING UNDER CHARLES HALE’S NAME
No one spoke.
Charles’s voice had changed everything.
Leah was not his daughter.
But her father had been living under Charles Hale’s name for eleven years.
Ethan stared at the corrupted recording.
“What does that mean?”
The answer was hidden in the mansion’s oldest security archive.
A private identity authorization.
Created after Charles’s public death six years earlier.
Name:
Charles Hale.
Biometric override:
Different.
Leah stopped breathing.
Someone had used Charles’s legal identity after he died.
That was the first crack.
Ethan opened access records.
Foundation accounts.
Private hospital files.
Offshore trusts.
Estate properties.
Someone had been signing as Charles.
Appearing as Charles.
Controlling money as Charles.
For eleven years.
Five years before Charles officially died.
The overlap made no sense.
Unless two men had been using one name.
That was the second crack.
Victoria looked toward the black double doors.
Wrong move.
Ethan saw it.
“You know who it is.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
Leah looked at her.
“Not who.”
A pause.
“But where.”
Victoria stopped breathing.
That was enough.
She finally admitted Marcus had taken her once to a private estate outside Boston.
A man lived there.
Silver hair.
Same build as Charles.
Never photographed.
Never introduced.
Marcus called him:
Mr. Hale.
Ethan went pale.
“Was it my father?”
Victoria shook her head.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I had met Charles.”
Silence.
The man was someone else.
Leah looked at the old photograph of Thomas Cross.
Victoria’s missing father.
Then at the letter Anna wrote after her fake death.
Thomas had helped Anna escape.
Both vanished.
What if one of them had been hidden inside the Hale identity system?
Ethan searched biometric records.
The hidden user’s original initials:
T.B.
Leah froze.
Her birth certificate listed no father.
But an old school emergency record named one man.
Thomas Bennett.
T.B.
Her mother’s supposed husband.
The man Leah had been told died before she could remember him.
That was the third crack.
Leah stared at Ethan.
“My father was Thomas Bennett.”
Victoria went still.
Her own father was Thomas Cross.
Two men.
Same first name.
Both disappeared.
Or perhaps—
One man.
Two identities.
The room changed before anyone understood why.
Ethan looked at Victoria.
“What was your father’s full name?”
Her voice shook.
“Thomas Bennett Cross.”
Leah stopped breathing.
Same middle name as her family surname.
Ethan stared at the records.
Victoria’s father vanished.
Anna escaped with Thomas Cross.
Leah’s father was supposedly Thomas Bennett.
Charles said Leah’s real father had been living under his name.
All paths led to one man.
Victoria covered her mouth.
“No.”
Leah looked at her.
They had spent years believing they were strangers.
Maid and billionaire’s fiancée.
Victim and humiliator.
But the evidence suggested something much worse.
They might share a father.
That was the fourth crack.
Then the mansion intercom chimed.
One visitor at the gate.
No appointment.
No invitation.
The exterior camera appeared.
An older man stood outside.
Silver hair.
Dark coat.
Holding one red ledger.
Victoria stopped breathing.
Leah stared at him.
She had seen his face before.
In her mother’s hidden photograph.
Thomas Cross.
Victoria whispered,
“Dad?”
The man looked directly into the camera.
Then said:
“Tell Leah her mother is alive.”
The foyer froze.
Leah forgot how to breathe.
But Thomas was not finished.
He lifted the red ledger.
“Tell Ethan Marcus knows the wrong copy was found.”
A pause.
“And tell all three of them to get out of that house.”
Ethan stepped closer to the screen.
“Why?”
Thomas looked toward something behind the camera.
May you like
Then answered:
“Because Marcus is already inside.”
