Gage answered my call with, “Are you planning on coming back to the office anytime soon? Or am I handling these meetings on my own?”

I ignored his sarcasm and said, “Neither. You’re canceling our meetings. I’m headed to the Sinclair Security offices. Meet me there.”

The sarcasm fell from Gage’s voice. He was all business when he said, “Why? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

“Cryptic much?” Gage complained.

“I have to call Cooper. I’ll explain when I see you.”

I thought about the comb in my pocket, carefully wrapped in tissue, and Violet’s brother, a carbon copy of my cousin Vance. A little older. But the same blue eyes. The exact same shade of blonde hair. The same build, the same chin, the same nose. He was the right age.

I wasn’t ready to hope we’d found what we’d been searching for. I’d considered verifying his identity before telling Gage, but I wouldn’t shut Gage out. We were in this together.

Wondering if I was jumping the gun, I called Cooper Sinclair at Sinclair Security. Cooper and his brothers had taken over the company from their father and grown it into the premier security company in the southeast, arguably in the entire country.

We’d grown up together. The Sinclairs were like family. Ever since we’d discovered Gage’s mother, my aunt Anna, had given up a child for adoption when she’d been in college, we’d been searching for him. We’d lost enough family already.

My parents were gone, Gage’s parents were gone, all four of them killed over a love affair gone wrong. Anna’s missing child was the root of it all. My aunt Anna and uncle James had met in college while she was dating James’s best friend, William. For reasons none of us had discovered, Anna broke up with William.

She took a semester off, and while she was away she fell in love with James through long letters and brief visits. She’d returned to Atlanta engaged to James. They’d married a short time later and from all reports, and my memory of childhood, had been deeply devoted to one another.

It wasn’t until Charlie stumbled upon the adoption records that we’d learned Anna hadn’t just broken up with William, she’d had his child and given it up for adoption. William, for his part, played the devoted family friend for years, brushing off Anna’s defection as ancient history. All the while he’d been seething with envy and rage.

William had been responsible for James and Anna’s murders. He’d stalked my cousin Annalise for years, transferring his obsession with Anna to the daughter who could have been her twin. When my parents discovered the truth, William had killed them rather than face the scandal.

So many lives torn apart over love and jealousy.

Whoever Anna’s missing child was, he was walking into a mess. We were desperate to find him, but he might not be happy to learn that while his biological mother was one of the best women I’d ever known, his father was a murderous psychopath.

None of us believed in the sins of the father. We didn’t blame Anna and William’s child for William’s insanity. We just wanted to find him. But Anna had given her newborn son to Maxwell Sinclair to hide. Even back then, she hadn’t wanted William to know where their child was.

William had seemed to take her engagement to James in stride, but some instinct had driven Anna to keep the child from his father. Maybe she’d suspected he’d hold the baby over her head or use him to drive James away. Instead, they’d all remained good friends; my parents, uncle James and aunt Anna, William Davis, and Maxwell Sinclair.

We’d never known the tensions simmering beneath the surface of those lifelong relationships. Had William known Maxwell had hidden his child? Had Maxwell suspected William of my parents’ deaths? We had no answers.

Anna and James had died because of William. William himself had murdered my parents. And Maxwell Sinclair had disappeared. The official story was a car accident. He’d driven off a bridge into a river, and his body had never been found.

I’d known Maxwell my entire life. He was intelligent and he could be ruthless. His death seemed a little too convenient.

Since we’d discovered William’s secret life we’d learned that nothing was as it seemed. Maxwell hadn’t been content with running Sinclair Security. He and William had been neck deep in a whole line of criminal enterprises, including arms dealing, money laundering, and a series of private adoptions that involved huge sums of money. Cooper, Knox, Evers, and Axel were still digging into their father’s death.

Some days it seemed like every secret we uncovered only exposed more lies.

In the face of so much deceit, it seemed naïve to hope I’d found my missing half-cousin. I was too cynical to plan for good luck, but I couldn’t deny Chase Westbrook’s uncanny resemblance to my cousins. He wasn’t just a mirror image of Vance, I could see Annalise in his high cheekbones in the shape of his eyes, Gage in his build, Tate in the sound of his voice.

Chase fit right in with the rest of Anna’s children. I could see nothing of William in him. Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe Chase had nothing to do with Anna Winters and William Davis. A DNA test would tell one way or the other.

Sitting at a red light, I pulled out my phone and called Cooper’s direct line. It rang through to a beep, then began to ring again.

A familiar voice answered, “You’ve got Evers.”

“Ev, Aiden. Cooper out?”

“He’s in DC on a job, won’t be back till next week. What’s up?”

“I’m headed to you, Gage too. Do you have time?”

“Depends. I have a meeting, but I can push it out. Something wrong?”

“I may have found Anna’s missing son,” I said, feeling the tug of hesitation as the words left my mouth. Was it wishful thinking? Was I jumping the gun? Maybe, for both. But, I had to know.

“I’ll move my meeting,” Evers said, immediately.

“Thanks. See you in a few.”

A tray of coffee and pastries waited on Evers’s desk when I got there. He had the phone to his ear, but he waved me to a seat and held up one finger. Carefully, I pulled the tissue wrapped comb from my pocket and laid it on the desk before pouring myself a cup of coffee. My thoughts were a whirl. If I was right, if Chase Westbrook was Anna’s missing son, we’d have to be careful.

As things stood now, he hated us. Stealing a man’s company and dismantling it wasn’t the best way to bring him into the family. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t done it on purpose. In the end, Chase had nothing to show for his hard work, and we owned what was left of the company he’d built.

Gage showed up before Evers ended his call and took the seat beside me, helping himself to a cup of coffee. He reached for the tissue wrapped comb on Evers’s desk. My hand shot out to stop him.

“What’s going on?” he asked in a low voice.

“I went to Violet’s.”

“Did you fire her?” Gage interrupted.

I slanted him a look. “Yes, I fired her. I also found out what she was doing at Winters, Inc. in the first place. Her brother is the founder of CD4 Analytics. Harrison scammed him out of his company.”

“Which explains why we couldn’t find him,” Gage said, putting the pieces together. “And she was what? Trying to figure out a way to get the company back?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Is the brother open to an offer? We could use his help,” Gage said.

I saw him turning the problem over in his head. Before he could get distracted, I said, “He could be triplets with Vance and Annalise.”

Gage gave me a hard stare. I shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking and this has nothing to do with Violet. I’m telling you, Chase Westbrook looks so much like Vance, it’s scary. He has Anna’s eyes, Anna’s hair, Anna’s face.”

“It can’t be that easy,” Gage said. “Not after looking and finding nothing.”

“Sometimes, you get lucky. Anyway, if he is who we’re looking for, this isn’t easy. He thinks we stole his company. And Violet’s parents sound like a nightmare. He may not want anything to do with us.”

“The name Chase is familiar, but there wasn’t a Westbrook associated with CD4,” Gage said.

“The parents disowned him when Violet was in high school. He may be using a different last name.”

Across from us, Evers set the phone down. “I caught most of that. You think your Violet’s older brother is Anna’s missing kid?”

“He looks enough like Anna, like Vance and Annalise, that I think it’s worth checking out.” Nudging the tissue wrapped comb towards Evers I said, “I stole his comb. How long does it take to do a DNA test?”

Carefully, Evers picked up the comb and unwrapped the tissue. Pulling a pair of glasses with magnifying lenses from the top drawer of his desk, he examined the hairs caught in the comb. “Well, you got the roots of the hair. That makes a difference. People think hair is good for DNA, but it’s actually shit unless you get the root.”

“How fast can you tell us?” Gage asked.

“We have a local lab on retainer. A rush will cost you.”

“I don’t care about the cost,” I said.

Evers raised an eyebrow. “You really think this guy is Anna’s son, don’t you?”

“If you’d been there, you’d understand why I’m so sure. It wasn’t just his eyes and his hair and his bone structure. It was the way he held himself. The way he moved.”

“Find out how fast they can do it,” Gage said. “I want to know what we’re dealing with before Aiden elopes with his sister.”

Evers studied me with sharp eyes. After a lifetime of friendship, I couldn’t hide much. “How sure are you that she’s not playing a game? She hooks you, serves you her brother up on a platter, they get nice and cozy in the Winters family and before you know it—”

“You’re not the only one who thinks something is off with this girl. The brother only makes her more sketchy,” Gage agreed.

Evers shuffled through files on his desk before pulling one out and opening it. “I’ve been looking into Violet Westbrook. Accounting major at University of Tennessee, graduated with honors. Applied to a few master’s programs before taking a job at a family friend’s accounting firm. Worked there for a little over two years before she was fired under questionable circumstances. Parents, Suzanne and Henry Westbrook. Henry is a financial advisor, Suzanne a homemaker.

“As far as we can tell they haven’t had any contact with their daughter since she was fired from the accounting firm. I haven’t tracked down her birth certificate yet. Info on the brother is thin. He went by Chase Westbrook until he dropped out of college to found his first company based off a data mining algorithm he developed while he was in school.

“He’s gone by Chase Brooks for the last few years, but he didn’t formally change his name. Sold the first company for a mint, spent a few years developing the algorithms he’d use as the foundation for CD4 Analytics. And while it looks like the two of you scammed him out of his company, I’m assuming my research missed something, or are you taking the term ‘corporate raider’ to heart these days?”

“We all got scammed by Harrison, the guy who sold us CD4 Analytics. Violet was at Winters, Inc. trying to figure out a way to get her brother’s company back,” I said.

Gage shook his head and studied his coffee before raising his eyes to share a sympathetic glance with Evers. They thought Violet was playing me. Thought I was so wrapped up in her body that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.

They were wrong. I knew Violet. She’d done something stupid because she thought she was helping her brother. No one understood dedication to family more than I did.

“What makes you so sure you can trust Violet Westbrook?” Evers asked. “My research so far doesn’t raise any warning flags, aside from the situation at her first job, but that doesn’t mean she’s innocent. This could be a scam.”

“I know I can trust her because I know Violet,” I said, ignoring the disbelieving glance Gage threw my way. “And I know what happened with the family friend and the accounting firm. It’s Violet’s story, I’m not telling either of you. She wasn’t at fault. That’s all you need to know.”

“Aiden—” Gage started. I cut him off.

“I get how this looks from where you’re sitting, but you need to back off. Violet doesn’t have a key to the house. She doesn’t have my bank account numbers or my credit card. Violet is not the issue right now. The DNA test is the issue. Let’s get that done, and then we can figure out everything else.”

Evers held up a finger, then picked up his phone. A quick conversation later he had us a guarantee for a quick turn on the DNA. I didn’t even wince at the cost. I needed to know if my gut was right.

“I’m going to send a guy with the sample. He’ll stay until the results are in and personally bring them back. I don’t want any leaks. Everything coded by number, not by name.”

“How long?” I asked.

“They can’t guarantee twenty-four hours, but they’re bumping other rush orders to work you in. My guess is by lunch tomorrow you’ll know one way or the other. Does your girl have any idea about this?”

“No. Not what I suspect, not that we’re looking for Anna’s son.”

“Good, keep it that way,” Evers said. “I’ll do some more digging and—”

“Forget about Violet,” I said. “Look into her brother. I want to know everything we can about Chase Westbrook. He and Violet are tight. Her parents kicked her out and cut all contact after she refused to marry a man who tried to assault her. Chase drove across two states in the middle of the night to get her. Gave her a home, found her a job—I thought he was going to deck me when he walked in and found us together.”

“If he’s so protective, what the hell was he doing letting her try to infiltrate Winters, Inc.?” Gage asked.

“Apparently, he was working a consulting job out of town and had no idea what she was up to. Violet said he was furious when he found out.”

“Well, that’s something,” Gage muttered under his breath. Like me, Gage was no stranger to being an overprotective older brother. He might be suspicious of Violet and Chase, but he could respect Chase looking out for his little sister.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep your distance from the sister until we know what we’re dealing with,” Evers said.

Gage barked out a laugh and shook his head. “Good luck with that. I’ve been trying to get this moron to stay away from her for weeks. One whiff of her perfume and all he can think about is—”

“Don’t say another fucking word,” I said. “I’m taking Violet out for dinner tonight. I am not keeping my distance. You’re both wrong about her. I don’t care. Violet doesn’t have to prove anything to you. The only person she needs to worry about is me.”

“Shit, man, does this girl have a golden pussy? I’ve never seen you so stupid over a woman. You’re in deep with her after one weekend in Vegas. I heard all about that from Axel. For what it’s worth, he likes her.”

I leaned forward and pinned Evers with my eyes. “We’ve been friends since you were in diapers, and because of that, I’m going to cut you some slack. But if you ever talk about Violet like that again, I will beat you down until you can’t walk for a week. Are we clear?”

Evers went still for a long moment as he studied my face. He nodded once and said, “We’re clear. And just so you know, if she’s fucking with you, if they turn this around on you, none of us will rest until we end them both.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed. “But that’s not going to happen.”

Gage interrupted. “Axel liked her?”

“Axel and Dylan both liked her,” Evers said shooting me a cautious look. “Axel said she looked a little shy. A little overwhelmed. But all about Aiden.”

“She reminds me of Elizabeth,” Gage said. “When I get close all I see is ice.”

“Maybe that’s because every time you’ve talked to her you’ve been a complete asshole,” I put in.

“Not a complete asshole,” Gage murmured.

“Close enough,” I said.

Evers shoved his chair back from his desk and stood. “As much fun as it is to watch the two of you bicker, I have a rescheduled meeting to get to. Don’t sign the family silver away to your girlfriend or her brother until we get the tests back. The second we have them, I’ll call. For now, all you can do is wait.”

Twenty-four hours had never seemed so long. By this time tomorrow, we’d know if we’d found Anna’s missing child.

We thought we wanted answers.

We thought we needed the truth.

We should have learned by now, when you went digging for the truth, in the end sometimes all you wanted was the comfort of familiar lies.