Chapter 3 - THE LETTERS MY MOTHER BURNED
Griffin’s security team arrived before midnight.
I knew he had security.
Anyone worth thirteen billion dollars had security.
What I had not expected was how quickly a normal hospital hallway transformed after he made two phone calls.
Two men took positions near the elevators.
A woman named Tessa reviewed every visitor entering the floor.
Hazel and Iris thought it was exciting.
I thought it was terrifying.
“Are we in danger?” Iris asked.
“No.”
Griffin and I answered simultaneously.
Hazel looked between us.
“That sounded suspicious.”
Griffin’s mouth twitched.
My daughters had known him for four hours and had already discovered how to make him smile.
That hurt in ways I had not prepared for.
Not because I regretted them meeting him.
Because I could see every missing year.
Hazel had shown him the scar on her knee from falling off her bike.
Iris had told him she hated tomatoes but loved tomato soup, which Griffin declared scientifically irrational.
They argued about whether artificial intelligence could write a genuinely funny knock-knock joke.
He listened to them as though they were briefing him on national security.
He remembered everything.
When the girls finally fell asleep on the foldout sofa in my room, Griffin stood beside them for a long time.
“Hazel sleeps like you,” he whispered.
“How?”
“One hand under her cheek.”
I had forgotten he knew that.
He pointed toward Iris.
“She sleeps like me.”
Flat on her back.
Arms crossed over her stomach.
I looked away.
“DNA test.”
Griffin’s voice was gentle.
I nodded.
“You need one.”
“I don’t.”
“You should.”
“Sloan.”
He turned toward me.
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because Iris has my mother’s dimple and Hazel gets angry by folding her arms exactly the way I did at eight.”
“That’s not evidence.”
“It is to me.”
“Legally.”
That changed his expression.
“Yes.”
“Legally, we should.”
The word legally landed between us.
Griffin walked back toward the window.
“I’m not taking them from you.”
I hadn’t accused him.
Which meant he knew exactly what I feared.
“You could.”
“No.”
“You have money I can’t imagine.”
“And?”
“Lawyers. Influence.”
“And?”
“You missed eight years.”
“Because you hid them.”
His voice sharpened.
Then he looked toward the sleeping girls and lowered it again.
“I’m angry with you. I don’t know how long I’m going to be angry. But I am not going to punish them by turning their mother into an enemy.”
I let out a breath.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me for basic decency.”
At 1:18 a.m., Griffin received the first security report.
The threatening text had been routed through an encrypted messaging service.
The number itself meant nothing.
But someone had known exactly when Griffin entered the hospital.
Someone had seen us.
Tessa located a man in the parking structure who had photographed Griffin’s vehicle.
He claimed to be freelance press.
He wasn’t.
No camera memory card.
No press credentials.
No employment history.
By the time security contacted police, he had disappeared.
“We need to call my mother,” I said.
Griffin’s eyes hardened.
“You think she sent the message?”
“I don’t know.”
“She lied to both of us.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll talk to her.”
“No.”
“Sloan.”
“She’ll shut down if you call angry.”
“I am angry.”
“I noticed.”
He stared at me.
“We do it together.”
My mother answered on the fifth ring.
“Sloan?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Sweetheart, why are you calling so late?”
I looked at Griffin.
He stood beside the bed, arms crossed.
“Something happened.”
“What?”
“I’m in the hospital.”
Her voice changed immediately.
“Oh my God. Are the girls okay?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
“I will be.”
“Do I need to fly up?”
“No.”
Then Griffin leaned closer.
“Hello, Margaret.”
Silence.
I heard my mother inhale.
“No.”
Griffin’s expression hardened.
“Yes.”
“How—”
“The girls called me.”
Nothing.
Then my mother whispered, “Sloan, what did you do?”
That sentence made Griffin straighten.
“What did she do?” he asked. “She collapsed. Your granddaughters called the emergency contact she should never have needed to hide.”
My mother began crying.
“Griffin, please.”
“No. You do not get to ‘please’ me after eight years.”
“Mom,” I interrupted. “He said he wrote me.”
Silence again.
“Seventeen letters.”
My mother didn’t answer.
I knew.
“Did you intercept them?”
“Sloan—”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
Griffin walked away from the phone.
I closed my eyes.
“Why?”
“Because you were finally safe.”
“From whom?”
My mother hesitated.
“Richard Drake.”
Griffin turned.
“My uncle hasn’t spoken to you in twenty years.”
“He spoke to me eight years ago.”
“What?”
My mother’s voice became thin.
“He knew Sloan was pregnant.”
My blood froze.
I sat upright despite the pain.
“What did you say?”
“You told me you didn’t know until after I left.”
“I didn’t.”
“He did.”
Griffin stepped toward the phone.
“How?”
“He had someone following Sloan.”
“Why?”
“Because your father left something behind.”
Griffin frowned.
“What?”
“Shares.”
His face changed.
“My father’s estate went to Richard and me.”
“No.”
My mother took a shaky breath.
“There was a hidden trust.”
“What trust?”
“Your father created it months before his death. If you ever had biological children, forty percent of the voting shares in the family’s original patent company transferred to them.”
I stared at Griffin.
He stared back.
“That company was dissolved,” he said.
“No. Absorbed.”
“Into what?”
“Drake Neural Systems.”
Griffin went still.
Drake Neural Systems was the legal foundation beneath half his current empire.
“How much would forty percent be worth?” I asked.
Griffin did not answer.
My mother did.
“Today?”
A pause.
“Several billion.”
I looked at my sleeping daughters.
Hazel had one arm around Iris.
Eight years old.
Unaware they had apparently been born owning enough money to attract people who should never know children existed.
“Richard wanted the trust invalidated,” my mother continued.
“How?” Griffin asked.
“He needed proof that you had no children.”
“You helped him believe that.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To keep them alive.”
Griffin’s face turned cold.
“You expect me to believe my uncle planned to hurt babies over shares?”
“I expect you to remember your father.”
Griffin’s expression flickered.
His father died in what had officially been a boating accident when Griffin was twenty-three.
I remembered the funeral.
Richard had controlled the family company afterward.
“What are you saying?” Griffin asked.
My mother whispered, “Your father didn’t die accidentally.”
The hospital room seemed to shrink.
Griffin did not move.
My mother continued.
“He discovered Richard had been stealing patent royalties. He planned to remove him from the company.”
“Stop.”
“Griffin—”
“My father drowned.”
“After his boat fuel line was cut.”
I watched the color leave Griffin’s face.
“How do you know?”
“Because your mother knew too.”
Griffin’s mother had died three years after her husband.
Cancer.
She had never told Griffin anything.
“Why didn’t she go to police?”
“She had suspicions, not proof.”
“And you?”
“I had documents Richard’s accountant gave me.”
“Where are they?”
Another pause.
“I burned them.”
Griffin stared at the phone.
“You what?”
“I was scared.”
“For yourself?”
“For Sloan.”
I shook my head.
“You destroyed the only evidence?”
“No.”
My mother’s voice cracked.
“I destroyed copies.”
Griffin stepped closer.
“Where are the originals?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“Who had them?”
“The accountant.”
“Name.”
“Thomas Vale.”
Griffin froze.
I knew why.
Thomas Vale had been Griffin’s chief financial officer for the first four years of Drake Technologies.
He died in a car accident seven years ago.
Another accident.
Another dead person.
Another piece of history nobody had questioned.
Then my mother said something even worse.
“Thomas mailed me one final package before he died.”
“Where is it?”
“I never opened it.”
“Why?”
“Because Richard called me the day it arrived.”
My skin prickled.
“What did he say?”
“He told me if the package existed, Sloan’s unborn child would grow up without a mother.”
Griffin closed his eyes.
“What happened to the package?”
“I hid it.”
“Where?”
My mother breathed shakily.
“In your old house, Sloan.”
My childhood home in Portland.
The house my mother had sold five years ago.
“To whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Griffin grabbed his phone.
“I’ll find out.”
But my mother interrupted.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“The package had your name written on it.”
Griffin looked at me.
My mother whispered:
“Not Sloan’s.”
“Whose?”
“Hazel and Iris.”
May you like
Neither girl had been born yet.
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