By the time the police reached my house, whoever had entered was gone.
I waited across the street inside Maya’s car while two patrol officers checked the property. Rainwater collected along the curb. The porch light burned above my front door, illuminating an ordinary scene that no longer felt connected to my life.
One officer finally approached and motioned for us to come over.
“House is clear.”
“Where’s my wife?”
“No one inside.”
I unlocked the door.
Nothing in the living room appeared disturbed.
The kitchen looked exactly as I had left it.
Then I reached the office.
Every drawer was open.
Papers covered the floor.
The safe door hung wide.
The envelope was gone.
I stared into the empty compartment.
Dad’s letter.
The DNA packet.
The photograph.
All gone.
“The flash drive?” Maya asked quietly.
I touched my pocket.
I had brought it with me.
“Safe.”
She nodded.
The officer photographed the room.
“Anything else missing?”
“My wife.”
He looked at me.
“She was here earlier.”
I explained as much as I could without turning the hallway into a thirty-year family history seminar.
The officer asked whether Jessica might have taken the documents herself.
“Yes,” I said.
Maya said, “Maybe.”
I looked at her.
She ignored me.
The security company confirmed that the alarm had been disarmed using our standard household code, not a remote application.
That bothered me.
Jessica knew the code.
But if she had intended to steal the envelope, why warn me not to come home?
Unless the warning was part of the performance.
I hated that every possibility now had two meanings.
The police found a partial muddy footprint near the office window. It was larger than Jessica’s shoe size.
That proved little. A visitor, repairman, or even I could have left it previously.
But the soil was wet.
Fresh.
Someone else had likely been there.
I called Jessica again.
Voicemail.
At 10:43 that morning, a text finally arrived.
I’m safe. Don’t trust anyone who says Victor acted alone.
No location.
No explanation.
I showed Maya.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’ve been involved in this for eleven years.”
“With Arthur. Not Victor.”
“What did Dad hire you to do?”
“Initially? Update his will.”
“And then?”
“Protect documents.”
“What documents?”
“Some you’ve already seen.”
“Some?”
She looked uncomfortable.
I was finished with people deciding which truths I could handle.
“Maya.”
“Arthur maintained several separate collections.”
“Why?”
“So losing one wouldn’t destroy everything.”
“Where?”
“I know of two.”
“Does Jessica?”
“I don’t know.”
I called the hospital.
Dad was awake.
We drove there immediately.
His room was brighter than the day before. Morning light pushed weakly through the blinds. Dad looked irritated when he saw Maya beside me.
“You brought trouble.”
“She says the same about you.”
He almost smiled.
Then he saw my face.
“What happened?”
“Someone broke into my house.”
The humor vanished.
I told him about Jessica’s call and the stolen envelope.
Dad swore quietly.
“Was the drive taken?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“What’s on the DNA packet?”
His eyes shifted to Maya.
“Dad.”
He sighed.
“The test wasn’t about you.”
“Who was it about?”
“Jessica.”
I stared at him.
“How did you get her DNA?”
“Wineglass.”
Of course.
Two months earlier, Dad had come to dinner. Jessica drank wine. Dad insisted on helping clean up afterward.
“You stole her glass?”
“Borrowed.”
“That's stealing.”
“I returned it.”
Even Maya looked tired of him.
“What were you testing?”
“Whether Jessica was Victor’s biological daughter.”
“And?”
“She is.”
“That’s hardly surprising.”
“It is if you know Victor.”
I waited.
Dad adjusted himself carefully against the pillows.
“Victor couldn’t have children.”
Maya turned sharply.
“What?”
“That’s what Elena told me.”
I remembered the photograph.
Victor beside Jessica.
“Then who is her father?”
“That’s what I wanted to know.”
“The test only confirmed Victor as her father.”
“No.”
Dad shook his head.
“It confirmed she was related to Victor.”
“Those are different things.”
“Exactly.”
A cold realization moved through me.
“What relationship?”
“According to the lab, the sample was consistent with a close familial relationship, but not father and daughter.”
Maya spoke first.
“Uncle?”
Dad nodded.
The room became silent.
Jessica was Victor Morales’s niece.
Not his daughter.
“Then whose daughter is she?”
Dad looked at me.
“That’s the question that got me digging again.”
I understood before he said it.
“No.”
“Ethan.”
“No.”
“Jessica’s birth records are sealed.”
“Dad.”
“Her listed mother was Claudia Morales, Victor’s wife.”
I remembered Maya telling me Claudia died when Jessica was fourteen.
“But?”
“But Claudia had undergone a hysterectomy three years before Jessica was supposedly born.”
I sat down.
“Impossible.”
“Unless Jessica wasn’t Claudia’s child.”
Maya had gone very still.
“Arthur,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I didn’t have proof.”
“You had enough to suspect.”
“Suspicions get people hurt.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity.
“We’re well past that.”
Dad reached toward the water on his bedside table. I helped him with the cup.
“Victor raised Jessica,” he said after drinking. “Maybe he called himself her father. Maybe legally he was. But biologically, he wasn’t.”
My mind refused to complete the thought.
“Who was?”
Dad looked toward the window.
“I found a hospital record from the year Jessica was born.”
“And?”
“Your mother was admitted under another name.”
I stood.
“No.”
“Same hospital. Same week.”
“No.”
“Ethan—”
“You’re saying Jessica is my sister?”
“I’m saying I didn’t know.”
The room tilted.
Maya intervened.
“Arthur, if that were true, the DNA comparison should show—”
“He didn’t compare Jessica to Ethan,” Dad said.
Maya stopped.
I felt sick.
“What did you compare her to?”
“An old sample from Victor.”
“How did you have Victor’s DNA?”
“Elena kept things.”
Dad’s answer was deliberately vague.
“Then test me.”
“I planned to.”
I stared at him.
“Planned?”
“I needed another thousand dollars.”
For one absurd second, all three of us nearly laughed.
Then Dad winced and pressed a hand against his incision.
A nurse entered, checked his monitors, and told us he needed rest.
Before we left, Dad caught my wrist.
“There’s something in my workshop.”
“What?”
“Under the vise.”
“Another document?”
“A box.”
“What's inside?”
“Things Elena left.”
“Why didn't whoever searched your house find it?”
“Because whoever searched my house doesn’t know me as well as they think.”
Maya and I drove to Dad’s bungalow.
This time we went straight to the detached workshop.
It smelled exactly as it had throughout my childhood: sawdust, machine oil, old lumber, and coffee that had been reheated too many times.
Dad’s steel vise was bolted to a scarred workbench.
I ran my fingers underneath.
Nothing.
Then Maya pointed toward one mounting bolt.
It was newer than the others.
We removed it.
A narrow cavity had been drilled into the bench.
Inside was a brass key.
The key opened a cabinet disguised as part of the wall.
There were no dramatic stacks of cash.
No weapons.
Just a small metal box.
Inside lay several cassette tapes, a packet of letters, and an old hospital bracelet.
I picked it up.
The plastic had yellowed.
A name was printed across it.
MARIA SANTOS.
The date matched Jessica’s birth date.
Maya unfolded the paper beneath it.
It was a hospital discharge record.
The patient listed as Maria Santos had delivered a healthy baby girl.
I stared at the signature at the bottom.
Elena Morales.
My mother.
My knees weakened.
Then Maya took another document from the box.
“Ethan.”
Her voice had changed.
“What?”
“This is a letter from Elena to Arthur.”
I took it.
The date was two days after Jessica’s birth.
The first sentence destroyed the conclusion we had just begun to form.
Arthur, the baby isn’t yours.
I read it twice.
Then the next sentence.
She is Victor’s daughter, but not in the way he will someday claim.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: My Mother’s Hidden Letter Revealed Who Jessica Really Was and Why Victor Spent Decades Searching for Her
My Father Had Never Asked Me for Money Until He Appeared at My Door With a Deadline
Part 6 of 35
