Page 26 of The Billionaire's Angel

Opening my eyes, I sent Aiden a level look as I took a seat opposite him and said “I'm not going to bother Sophie. But I'd better not find out you are behind myback.”

“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” Aiden asked in a dismissivetone.

“No. I couldn't sleep last night, and I went to the kitchen. Sophie was up, and we were talking. We heard a noise, sounded like someone knocking something over. Were youawake?”

Aiden sat up straighter, dropping the pretense of disinterest. “No. I went to sleep around eleven and didn't wake up until five thirty. What time wasthis?”

“It was three twenty-seven when we heard the noise. I made sure Sophie was secure and then went to take a lookaround.”

“Did you find anything?” Aidenasked.

“Nothing conclusive. A stack of books was out of place in the library. So was a lamp, but nothing was broken. There was no sign of forced entry. But we did hear something fall over. If there was no one else in the house, we should have seen what it was. Instead, everything lookednormal.”

“You're saying that someone was in the house and they put back whatever it was they knocked over?” Aidenasked.

“That would be my guess. But the alarm was on. It was armed when we heard the sound, and it never turned off. If you were in bed, Sophie and I were in the kitchen, and Amelia was asleep… It's possible it could have been Abel. Does the alarm for the house include his garageapartment?”

“It does. Theoretically, he could've been in the house. I'll check with him this morning. If it wasn't Abel, I'll ask Cooper to come out and go over the systemagain.”

“When was the last time Sinclair Security reviewed the system?” Iasked.

Sinclair Security was the best private security company in the country, and it was run by the current generation of Sinclairs, who happened to be our closest friends. Convenient when it came to things like having one of the best alarm systems known to man installed at Winters House. Since the death of our parents, no one at Winters House took security lightly. At my question, Aiden looked uncomfortable, and my nose for trouble went on highalert.

“What?” I demanded. Aiden shifted in his seat and shuffled the papers on his desk, not meeting myeyes.

“We've had a little trouble this year. We were under the impression it had been resolvedbut—”

“What kind oftrouble?”

Aiden's explanation turned my blood to ice in my veins. It seemed that one of our parents’ old friends had gone completely insane and had been leaving crime scene photographs of our parents’ murders for the family to find. First Jacob, with a picture of my parents’ murder. Then Vance, with the doctored version of the same photograph. Finally, she went to Charlie, where they caught her trying to leave anotherphotograph.

The culprit, Marissa Archer, had been a crony of our parents’ and our uncle William. She'd also, apparently, gone stark raving mad, ranting on Charlie's front porch about how only she knew the truth and it wasn't over, he was still out there. We all assumed she was talking about the murders, but shortly after she'd been shut away in a mental health facility, she'd stopped talkingcompletely.

Aiden said they were keeping a close eye on her, but since she'd fallen silent, there'd been nothing. It's not like she was a reliable witness,anyway.

“Were any of you planning to tell me about this?” Iasked.

“There didn't seem to be much point in bothering you with it,” Aiden said, evenly. “You weren't here, and you weren't planning on coming home. It wasn't yourproblem.

“Of course it's my problem,” I burst out. “This is my fuckingfamily.”

Aiden raised one cool eyebrow at me as if to ask—Isit?

“How sure are we that Marissa Archer was working alone?” I asked, ignoring Aiden'staunt.

He shrugged one shoulder. “We're not sure of anything. Nothing has happened since she's been locked up, but that isn'tproof.”

“Is there any chance this is related to the papers Charlie found? Have you had any luck finding out what happened to thebaby?”

I couldn't call the missing child my brother. Not yet. Not until we knew what had happened to him. I’d had a lot of shocks when I'd come home, but finding out that my mother had borne a child before she married my father and given him up for adoption was thebiggest.

Charlie had found the records, carefully hidden for years until a leak in the roof caused old boxes to be repacked and shuffled around, bringing the buried paperwork into the light. I hadn’t gotten my head around the idea that there was another one of us out theresomewhere.

We knew so little about what had happened. I guessed my father knew because the papers had been among others he would've seen. But we had no idea who had fathered the child or why she'd given him up. We didn't know anything, including where he was or what had happened tohim.

Aiden shook his head. “The Sinclairs have been looking into it, but it's starting to look suspicious. Every time they follow a lead, it falls apart or doubles back on itself. Almost likesomeone—”

“Like someone left a falsetrail?”