Chapter 17 - The House Built on a Lie
Adrian found his mother in the courtyard of Rowan House, standing twenty feet from Gideon beneath a cracked stone arch. Ortiz arrived seconds later with two officers and kept them apart.
"Go home, Alisa," Gideon said. "This can still be fixed."
"You keep saying that." Her voice trembled, but she didn't move. "You said it when my father died. You said it when I asked about the trust. You said it when I brought Willa home."
Five years earlier, Alisa had adopted Willa after a woman she'd known through Rowan House died suddenly, leaving a baby without a parent able to care for her. Gideon had posed for the adoption photographs and praised himself at charity dinners. Now he was trying to sell the apartments where Willa's birth mother had once lived.
"She was never a photograph to me," Alisa said. "She was a child who needed somewhere safe. Those other families matter, too."
"You don't understand business," Gideon snapped.
"I understand that you took my father's money, hid his last letter, and let me grieve beside a man who knew more than he told."
Gideon looked toward the police. "You're enjoying this, Adrian? Watching your mother humiliate me?"
"I wanted a father I could respect," Adrian said. "You made that impossible."
Ortiz served Gideon with a warrant tied to the kidnapping investigation. His attorney objected, but Gideon was no longer in control of the courtyard. He left with the officers, saying nothing to his wife.
Alisa watched the car disappear. Then her knees gave way. Adrian caught her and helped her sit on the stone steps.
"I feel like I lost my whole marriage today," she whispered.
"You lost what he told you it was," Adrian replied. "Not the good things you did inside it."
At the bottom of the steps, Iris hurried toward them with a new document.
"Gideon's lawyers have filed an original consent form," she said. "They're claiming you signed away the trust thirty-seven years ago."
May you like
Alisa stared at the page. The signature looked like hers.
"Because it is mine," she said.
