Chapter 8 - AMANDA’S REAL SON
Ethan stared at the screen.
“Her son?”
Amanda repeated the words.
Bring me my son.
I looked at Ethan.
The impossible thought struck both of us at once.
“No,” he whispered.
I turned to Captain Nolan.
“What does she mean?”
Nolan’s expression told me he knew.
“Tell me.”
He glanced toward the armed officers surrounding him.
“Amanda gave birth seventeen years ago.”
“To Dylan?”
“No.”
My blood turned cold.
Nolan looked directly at Ethan.
“To him.”
Ethan stepped backward.
“You’re lying.”
I could barely speak.
“Claire was Ethan’s mother.”
“Claire raised him.”
Nolan’s answer was quiet.
“But she did not give birth to him.”
I felt as though the floor had shifted beneath me.
Nolan explained that Amanda had been a young employee at the Haven Foundation.
She became pregnant by one of its directors.
When she discovered the foundation’s crimes, she threatened to expose them.
They took her newborn child and told her he had died.
Claire secretly rescued the baby.
She and I had struggled to have children.
Claire brought Ethan home and told me he was ours.
“She lied to me?”
“She believed she was saving him.”
Ethan’s face had gone completely blank.
“Who is my father?”
Nolan looked toward the security screen.
Amanda was still waiting.
“The man who created the widow scheme.”
“Who?”
Nolan hesitated.
Then Brooke pressed the knife closer to the bank manager’s throat.
“Answer me!” I shouted.
“Raymond Pike.”
The intruder in my house.
The man declared dead six years earlier.
Ethan’s biological father.
Ethan stumbled into a chair.
I crouched beside him.
“Listen to me.”
“You are my son.”
“Nothing changes that.”
He looked at me with tears in his eyes.
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
“But even if I had known, I would still have chosen you.”
On the screen, Brooke dragged the bank manager toward the vault corridor.
Amanda’s voice came through the intercom.
“Ethan.”
He slowly looked up.
“I know you can hear me.”
“I am your mother.”
“You are not his mother,” I said.
Amanda laughed.
“I gave birth to him.”
“You tortured him.”
“I prepared him.”
“For what?”
“To inherit everything.”
Ethan wiped his face.
“I don’t want anything from you.”
Amanda’s smile faded.
“You will.”
“Because the Haven account does not contain a few million dollars.”
“It contains four hundred and eighty million.”
Everyone in the bank fell silent.
Amanda continued.
“And once Ethan signs the transfer…”
“I will finally take back what Claire stole from me.”
Then the bank manager screamed.
Brooke had opened the first vault door.
But behind her, someone moved out of the shadows.
Dylan struck Brooke across the wrist with a fire extinguisher.
The knife fell.
May you like
Margaret Hale appeared beside him.
And in her hand was a second brass key.
