Chapter 8 - THE SECRET GEORGE BENNETT KEPT
George Bennett had never forgotten Shiomara.
That surprised her almost as much as seeing the children again.
After adopting Daniel, Marcus, and Maya, George had apparently tried to find the woman who had protected them.
But Shiomara had left the diner.
Moved twice.
Changed phone numbers.
In the years before social media became what it was, people could disappear without meaning to.
“He searched for you for five years,” Maya said.
Shiomara sat quietly in Daniel’s hotel suite, the old napkin resting on the table.
“Why?”
“Because we wouldn’t stop talking about you.”
Marcus smiled faintly.
“Dad used to joke there were four parents in the house. Him, Mom, and some mysterious woman named Shiomara.”
Daniel handed her old corporate documents.
“Then he created Reyes Community Holdings.”
Shiomara stared.
“What did it own?”
“Originally? Nothing.”
“Then why create it?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Dad had a plan.”
George intended to place money into the company every year.
If they ever found Shiomara, he wanted to give her control of a small charitable fund.
But then his businesses suffered.
Evelyn became sick.
Life changed.
George died before finishing the plan.
“So the company just sat there?” Shiomara asked.
“Yes.”
“Then where did the quarter million come from?”
Marcus turned his laptop.
“That’s the problem.”
Someone had reactivated the dormant company three weeks earlier.
Someone had forged authorization documents.
And someone had transferred money through it.
“To make me look dirty,” Shiomara said.
Daniel nodded.
“Exactly.”
Maya leaned forward.
“Harold Vance knew about the company.”
“And Kane?”
“We think Harold is the connection.”
Shiomara leaned back.
“Why go through this much trouble for one city block?”
Daniel smiled grimly.
“That’s the question we finally answered.”
He spread out maps.
The block sat above a proposed underground transit extension the city had not announced publicly.
Once approved, property values could rise fivefold.
“Kane knows,” Marcus said.
“How?”
“Someone inside the planning office is leaking information.”
Shiomara whistled softly.
“So he isn’t buying old buildings.”
“He’s buying tomorrow.”
Daniel nodded.
“And our offer threatens hundreds of millions in future profit.”
Shiomara looked at the three siblings.
“You can walk away.”
Maya stared at her.
“What?”
“I mean it. I survived before you came.”
Daniel stood.
“We didn’t spend twenty-eight years remembering the woman who stood between us and dangerous men so we could run the first time somebody threatened her.”
Shiomara’s eyes burned.
Before she could answer, Marcus’s laptop chimed.
An email.
Subject line:
I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED UNDER THE BRIDGE.
Attached was a scanned police report dated twenty-eight years earlier.
Daniel opened it.
His face changed.
“What?”
He pointed.
The report listed a fourth child.
Shiomara stared.
“No.”
Maya’s voice trembled.
“There were only three of us.”
But the police record said otherwise.
Four children had been living beneath that bridge.
May you like
And according to the report…
one had never been found.
