“Get to the point,” Slate says.
“Well, she had lost two babies in a row, they were stillborn. She had all her hopes pinned on this one last try. We went to the hospital as scheduled on her due date. This was a live birth. Unfortunately, our son didn’t survive the night.”
The room goes completely silent. Jules stammers, “I’m really sorry. That must have been devastating.”
“Yes. It was. She kept asking to see the baby, and I didn’t know how to break it to her. A nurse caught me in the hallway. She told me there was a young woman down the corridor who had just delivered twins. The family was poor and hadn’t been expecting two. She had a cesarean and wasn’t even aware that there were two. The father was in despair about how he could support two babies when they were barely surviving as it was. The nurse said she could arrange a transfer. I told her yes.”
“What! The nurse just gave you a baby?” Jules interrupts.
Daniel takes one step towards his father. “It’s true then, they didn’t want me.”
“What difference does it make? I wanted you. And your mother was beside herself with joy. You had a good life growing up. Everything a little boy could want.”
“And Mom was agreeable to this half-cocked plan?”
The old man shakes his head. “She never knew. The records were fixed so the young family got the one baby they could afford, your mother got that last son she wanted. The nurse got a handsome payment for her efforts. Everybody walked away with what they wanted.”
“You bought me,” Daniel gasps. “I can’t believe that money changed hands and I was separated from my twin brother, just like that.”
“I gave you a good life, filled with loving parents, wonderful brothers. You never went without, not once.”
“You lied to me for fifty-eight years.”
“We loved you for fifty-eight years.”
Daniel turns his back on him.
Jasper takes one step closer to Anthony.
“And what about the incident on the beltline?”
“What about it?”
“You abducted him on the beltline, you beat him, stuffed him in the trunk of your car, and have kept him tied up in this warehouse for the past three months. How does that square with loving your son?”
“I tried to talk to him first. I explained how much his casting our family aside would hurt his mother, but Daniel was so stubborn. Once he found out about having a brother, finding him was all he wanted.”
“You put him in a trunk and held him hostage. Do you have any concept of how wrong that shit is?”
“I did what a father does when a son is hurting his mother.”
“Get a hold of Morgan. Tell him we caught the man responsible for the abduction on the LA beltline six weeksago. Tell him we got a confession recorded with multiple eyewitnesses. Tell him to bring a federal friend.”
Striker’s voice in my ear is dry. “I captured the entire conversation on audio. It’s time-stamped and backed up.”
Anthony Terrance closes his eyes and begins muttering under his breath because he knows it’s over.
Jules follows Daniel out of the building. I follow, watching from a distance as they begin talking. Deuce is at my side in an instant, still bruised and battered. “What the hell happened to you?”
“The dude at the gate was a fuckin’ tank. It took me a minute to deal with him. Then I went to get Jules, like I promised.”
We stand there for a minute, watching Jules and Daniel chatting. Jules is using her hands to describe something, and Daniel is all smiles. I can tell he’s just really excited to see his biological family.
Finally, Deuce tells me, “You were right to let her come here. She needed this.”
I turn my head to look at him. “Brother.”
“Yeah,” he replies without taking his eyes off his sister.
