Chapter 14: The Name on My Birth Record
1754 Words
For one second, nobody breathed.
Not me.
Not Cassian.
Not Elias.
Not even my mother, who sat trembling in the chair with tears running down her face like the past had finally found her and demanded payment.
The words hung in the hospital room, ugly and impossible.
And Cassian has been wanting his brother’s daughter.
My stomach turned.
No.
No, no, no.
The room blurred.
The document on the screen glowed with my name, my mother’s name, and beneath the word father, a name that should not have been there.
Adrian Voss.
I stepped back so fast my hip hit the metal side table.
A tray clattered to the floor.
Cassian moved toward me on instinct.
I flinched.
He stopped immediately.
The movement cut across his face like a wound.
“Alina,” he said, voice low. “Don’t.”
I laughed.
It came out broken.
“Don’t what? React?”
His jaw tightened.
“That document could be fake.”
“Could be?”
My voice rose.
“Could be fake? That’s what you’re giving me?”
Elias stepped closer to the screen, eyes scanning the birth record. “This file is digital. It could have been altered. We need the original registry copy.”
I turned on him. “And if it’s not altered?”
He said nothing.
Of course.
No one said anything.
The silence became the answer none of us wanted.
My mother sobbed softly behind me.
I turned to her.
“Tell me it’s fake.”
She covered her mouth.
“Mom.”
Her shoulders shook.
“Tell me it’s fake!”
She looked up at me with red eyes.
“I don’t know what they put on that screen.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Cassian’s voice came behind me, careful. “Alina—” I spun toward him.
“No. You don’t get to comfort me.”
Pain flashed across his face.
Good.
No.
Not good.
I did not know what was good anymore.
Twenty minutes ago, I had been terrified for my mother. Ten minutes ago, I thought Cassian might be the only dangerous thing standing between me and whatever had taken her. Now the screen was telling me the man who had touched my skin like a promise might be blood.
His brother’s daughter.
My throat closed.
I wanted to vomit.
Cassian looked just as destroyed.
Not disgusted with me.
Disgusted with himself. With the room. With whatever game had been built around us.
He turned sharply toward the screen.
“Whoever you are, you’ve made your point.”
The distorted voice laughed.
“No, Cassian. I’ve only opened the first door.”
The screen flickered.
Another image appeared.
An old photograph.
My mother, much younger, standing beside a man I had only seen once before in the childhood photo sent to my phone.
Adrian Voss.
Older now.
Beautiful.
Smiling.
His arm was around my mother’s waist.
I heard my mother gasp.
I looked at her slowly.
“You knew him.”
She closed her eyes.
“Alina, please.”
“You knew him.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
The word sliced through me.
Cassian went still.
Elias looked at him sharply, as if even he had not known this part.
The voice on the screen purred, “Tell her how you met, Isabelle.”
My mother shook her head hard. “No.”
The screen changed again.
A video.
Old footage.
A party.
Music.
Champagne.
A younger Isabelle stood in a black uniform, serving drinks in a room full of rich people.
My blood went cold.
She looked like me.
Not exactly.
But enough.
Poor.
Pretty.
Trying to stay invisible while men looked anyway.
A young Adrian stepped into frame and took a glass from her tray.
He smiled.
She smiled back.
The video froze.
The voice said, “Like mother, like daughter.”
I grabbed the nearest object, a small metal water jug, and threw it at the monitor.
It smashed against the screen.
Static burst.
The voice cut off.
For one beautiful second, the room was silent.
Then I turned to my mother.
“Tell me everything.”
She was shaking so badly I thought she might collapse.
I knelt in front of her despite the anger burning through me.
Not gently.
Not harshly.
Just desperate.
“Mom. Please.”
She reached for my face, then stopped, as if she was afraid I would pull away.
I didn’t.
Barely.
“I worked at the old Voss estate,” she whispered. “Before you were born. I was twenty-one. I needed money. My mother was sick, and your grandfather—” She choked on the words. “He offered good pay.”
Cassian’s mouth tightened at the mention of his father.
My mother kept going.
“Adrian was charming. Kind at first. He made me feel seen.”
Her eyes filled with shame.
“I was stupid.”
“No,” I said automatically.
Even through my anger, the word came out firm.
She looked at me.
“You were young.”
She broke then.
A small sob escaped her.
I swallowed hard, fighting my own tears.
“What happened?”
“I left before the fire. Before Celeste. Before everything got worse. Adrian became…” She looked at Cassian, then away. “Cruel. Possessive. He liked games. He liked making women depend on him, then punishing them for it.”
My stomach twisted.
“Was he my father?”
My mother’s lips trembled.
“I don’t know.”
The room went still again.
Cassian’s head lifted.
Elias straightened.
I stared at her. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
She closed her eyes. “Because Adrian wanted me to believe he was. But he wasn’t the only possibility.”
The air left my lungs.
“What?”
My mother’s face crumpled.
“There was someone else. Someone kind. Someone who wanted to help me leave. I loved him, Alina. Not Adrian. Never Adrian.”
Cassian’s voice came quiet behind me.
“Who?”
My mother looked at him for a long second.
Then whispered, “Malcolm Reed.”
Elias inhaled sharply.
Cassian’s face changed.
He knew that name.
Of course he did.
I stood slowly.
“Who is Malcolm Reed?”
Cassian answered, voice rough.
“My father’s accountant.”
“That sounds very boring for this much trauma,” I said numbly.
Elias spoke this time. “Not just an accountant. Reed handled private accounts, transfers, estate holdings. He knew where money moved.”
“And?” I asked.
Cassian’s eyes stayed on my mother.
“And he died three months before the fire.”
My mother covered her face.
My head spun.
“So Adrian may not be my father.”
“No,” she whispered. “I never knew for sure. I ran before anyone could force a test. I changed our life. I changed your documents through someone who owed Malcolm a favor. The man who raised you signed your birth record later. He loved you. He was your father in every way that mattered.”
I wanted to be angry.
I was angry.
But grief moved underneath it.
Because the man who raised me had died when I was sixteen. I had mourned him as my father.
And now a screen in a private medical center was trying to steal even that from me.
Cassian stepped back from me as if distance was the only honorable thing left between us.
I noticed.
I hated that I noticed.
The space hurt.
That made me angrier.
“So that document could be real,” I said, voice hollow. “Or fake. Or partly true. Or another lie.”
Elias nodded grimly. “Yes.”
I laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.
“Wonderful.”
Cassian looked at me.
His face was pale and hard.
“Until we know, nothing happens between us.”
The words landed low and painful.
Nothing happens between us.
There it was.
The thing neither of us had named, finally spoken only to be buried.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, my chest twisted.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said.
His eyes darkened.
The lie sat between us.
Obvious.
Merciless.
Before he could answer, the hospital lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then the broken monitor on the floor sparked back to life.
Impossible.
The screen cracked down the middle, but the voice returned through the speakers, distorted and pleased.
“Touching. So many almost-truths.”
Cassian lifted his gun toward the speaker.
“Enough.”
The voice ignored him.
“Would you like proof, Alina?”
My blood went cold.
A printer in the corner suddenly whirred to life.
We all turned.
One sheet slid out.
Then another.
Elias grabbed them first.
His face changed as he read.
“What?” Cassian demanded.
Elias looked at me.
Then at my mother.
Then at Cassian.
“This is a DNA lab request.”
I moved closer, heart pounding.
“Whose?”
Elias swallowed.
“Alina’s.”
My body went numb.
“And?”
His voice lowered.
“It was ordered three weeks ago.”
I stared at him.
“By who?”
He looked at the paper again.
Then at Cassian.
“Using Adrian Voss’s authorization code.”
The room froze.
My mother whispered, “Adrian is dead.”
Cassian’s face went deadly still.
“Then someone wants us to believe he isn’t.”
The speaker crackled.
The voice laughed softly.
“Believe whatever helps you sleep.”
Then a new sound filled the room.
A phone ringing.
Not mine.
Not Cassian’s.
My mother’s.
She looked down slowly.
Her phone sat on the bedside table.
It had been gone when we found her.
Now it was there.
Ringing.
Unknown number.
No one moved.
Cassian reached for it.
My mother grabbed his wrist.
“No.”
Her fear was instant.
Personal.
He looked at her.
She whispered, “That’s his ringtone.”
My skin went cold.
“Whose?”
Tears slid down her face.
“Adrian’s.”
The phone kept ringing.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then the call answered by itself.
For a moment, there was only breathing.
Low.
Male.
Alive.
Then a voice came through.
Not distorted this time.
Smooth.
Warm.
Smiling.
“Hello, Isabelle.”
My mother made a broken sound.
Cassian went white.
The voice laughed softly.
“Hello, brother.”
The line went dead.
And outside the hospital room, every light in the corridor shut off.
- Writer
