“Must be hard having to work so much and go to school.”
“I’m used to it,” is all I say. I refuse to discuss my crappy life with someone I just met.
Trevor gives me a considering look and I hold his stare. I didn’t have an opportunity to really look at him when he suddenly showed up at school this morning, unloading his surprise on me and walking away. Like telling someone they are your long, lost sibling is as easy as saying that grass is green.
But I’m examining him now, and I see the similarities between us. Our features are so much alike that I have almost no doubt what he told me is more than likely true. Won’t stop me from demanding a DNA test, but I see it. The way we share so many attributes, like the hair and eye coloring. The shape of the face. The nose structure. The slant of the cheekbones. The same dimple that peeks out on the left cheek. There are some differences. My lips are fuller. My ears smaller. But those differences are insignificant when forced to take in the whole picture.
“You said you could convince me. Why are you so sure that we’re related? Why come find me now? What’s in it for you?”
Trevor slides a leather-bound book toward me from across the table. It looks like one of those bank-draft ledgers you see on old television shows. I blink at it a few times because I didn’t see him holding it in the first place.
I touch the soft leather casing, but I don’t open it. “Who does this belong to?”
“Our father.”
I snap my attention back to his face, searching for the truth in his eyes.
“I don’t remember my father. He left when I was two,” I tell him.
“That’s not the father I’m talking about,” he tries to explain. “Phillip Montgomery is our father.”
“Hold on a sec. Just to recap. You’re saying the man I was told was my father, the one that bailed on me, Mom, and Angelica, is not my biological father?”
Trevor uses his fingerprint to unlock his phone and hands it to me.
“I don’t know if the man you’re talking about is Phillip, but that’s him in the picture,” he says, tapping the photo on the screen of a businessman standing next to an extremely attractive woman in a red sequin gown. “That’s Phillip Montgomery next to his wife, Patricia.”
“Your mom?” I query, trying to see the similarities between me and Trevor with the woman in the photograph and finding none.
He gruffs out a harsh laugh. “Fuck, no. Be thankful that woman is neither of our mothers. Patricia was a monster. But that’s a story for another day.”
My mother was a monster, too.
“Where are they now?”
“They’re dead.”
The news shouldn’t jar me like it does, but after Cam’s death, I’m a bit sensitive on the subject. I place Trevor’s phone carefully back down on the table and open the leather journal, flipping through accounting information that I don’t understand.
“Phillip and Patricia died in a plane crash last Christmas. I learned about two years earlier that Fallon Montgomery was my half-brother.”
So, I assumed correctly. Fallon may be my brother as well.
“We also have a sister, Tatiána, who lives with her husband in Madrid, Spain. Tati is only a year older than you are. We all share the same father. Let’s just cut to the chase and say our father got around. A lot. Fallon and I are still sorting through all the mess he and Patricia left regarding the company. And then a few weeks ago, we came across some secret ledgers hidden away in a false safe in one of the guest room closets at the house. There were five of them. Each one contains records of payouts to the different women who were the mothers of his illegitimate children. We’re still trying to figure things out, but the book you’re holding relates to you. All the money Phillip gave to your mother the day you were born, and the nondisclosure agreement she signed.”
Hearing him lump me in as one of the illegitimate children of a multi-billionaire manwhore makes my stomach churn.
“These records have to be a lie, or else you’ve got the wrong girl. If this guy, Phillip, gave my mother all this money, then explain to me why have I lived in a shithole my whole life? Why was there no food on the table? Why was every day a struggle?”
I swipe angrily at the tears that escape, hating every single one of them. My mother doesn’t deserve my tears and there’s no love left in me for that woman to shed tears for anyway. Yet, they fall.
“I can’t answer that. I can only show you the evidence Fallon and I found. We’re trying to locate the others. You were easy since you live in the same town as we do. Look in the back of the ledger,” Trevor instructs me.
I flip to the back and gasp when I see several photographs of me, from the time I was a baby until last year.What the actual hell?
“We can schedule a DNA test. The company lawyers are demanding that we do. Fallon and I want to correct Phillip’s mistakes. Any biological child of Phillip Montgomery will receive a percentage of his estate. The money would go a long way in helping you, Aurora.”
Now, he’s making me angry.
