Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Files
Three weeks passed.
To the outside world, the sudden appearance of Kyle Mercer inside the Vale Estate was a scandal that kept Nashville’s financial elite whispering behind closed doors.
To Kyle, it was a terrifyingly strange new reality.
He was given a massive bedroom on the second floor with a king-sized bed, a private balcony overlooking the gardens, and a desk stacked with brand-new textbooks, notebooks, and a high-end laptop. Garrison had hired a private tutor, a retired Vanderbilt professor named Dr. Elizabeth Vance, to help Kyle catch up on the two years of school he had missed while living on the streets.
Dr. Vance quickly realized that Kyle didn't need catching up.
The boy had an photographic memory. He read three-hundred-page textbooks in a single evening. He solved advanced algebra problems with effortless, quiet focus, and his medical knowledge from reading stolen textbooks under overpasses was beyond anything a high school student possessed.
Every evening at 7:00 p.m., Garrison made a point to leave his office downtown—something he had never done in his entire career—to have dinner with Kyle and hold Arlo in the sunroom.
Kyle was quiet, polite, and cautious. He never asked for anything. He washed his own dishes, made his own bed, and kept his old, frayed backpack tucked safely under his desk, as if expecting to be thrown out at any moment.
On a rainy Thursday afternoon, while Kyle was in his private tutoring session in the library, Arthur Sterling walked into Garrison’s private office at the Vale Group headquarters downtown.
The legal counsel set a thick, red-labeled dossier on Garrison’s desk.
“What is this, Arthur?” Garrison asked, not looking up from his computer screen.
“The background report you ordered me not to run,” Arthur said quietly, sitting down in the leather chair across from the desk. “Julianne hired a private detective agency in Atlanta two weeks ago to dig into Kyle Mercer’s family history.”
Garrison’s eyes snapped up, flashing with dark anger. “I told her to stay out of his life.”
“You need to look at the file, Garrison,” Arthur urged, his voice unusually serious. “Julianne was hoping to find evidence of criminal activity, vagrancy, or bad lineage to block the adoption hearing next month. But what the investigators found... it isn't what she expected.”
Garrison hesitated, then reached out and opened the red folder.
Inside was a collection of birth certificates, medical records, and old newspaper clippings from eleven years ago.
At the top of the first page was a photograph of a woman.
She had bright, intelligent brown eyes, dark wavy hair, and a striking, familiar structure to her jawline.
Her name was Hannah Mercer.
Garrison’s hand froze on the paper. His breath hitched in his throat.
“Hannah...” Garrison whispered, his face turning entirely pale.
“You knew her,” Arthur stated, watching Garrison’s reaction closely.
“Knew her?” Garrison’s voice dropped into an agonizing whisper. He stared at the photograph as if seeing a ghost from another life. “She was the lead research toxicologist at Vale Bio-Tech twelve years ago. She was the one who designed our early cellular regeneration patents.”
Garrison closed his eyes, memories washing over him like cold water.
Twelve years ago, before he was the ruthless CEO of the entire conglomerate, Garrison had been a young, ambitious executive managing the bio-tech division. Hannah Mercer had been a brilliant, quiet scientist who worked late nights in the lab. They had shared late-night coffees, long conversations about medical ethics, and a brief, intense romance that had ended abruptly when Hannah suddenly resigned from the company and disappeared from Nashville without leaving a forwarding address.
Garrison had searched for her for six months before his father pressured him into an arranged corporate marriage with a real estate heiress—a marriage that had ended in a quiet divorce years before Arlo was born via a surrogate.
Garrison looked down at the date of birth on Kyle’s birth certificate: October 12, 2015.
Garrison’s heart slammed against his ribs like a sledgehammer.
“October...” Garrison calculated the timeline in his head.
Hannah had left the company in January 2015. Nine months later, Kyle was born.
“Does Julianne know this?” Garrison asked, his hands trembling violently as he held the file.
“Julianne received the file two hours ago,” Arthur said, leaning forward. “She hasn't realized the connection to your past relationship yet—she was only looking at the medical cause of Hannah Mercer’s death two years ago. But Garrison... if Kyle is Hannah’s son...”
“He’s my son,” Garrison breathed, tears suddenly stinging his eyes.
The pieces of the impossible puzzle smashed together in his mind with terrifying clarity.
The boy’s photographic memory. His natural, instinctive understanding of human anatomy. The stubborn, unyielding fire in his eyes. The subtle curve of his jaw.
Kyle hadn't just randomly stumbled upon the ambulance three weeks ago.
He wasn't a stranger who had saved Arlo by chance.
He was Garrison’s blood. He was the child Hannah had carried away in secret to protect him from the ruthless, cold world of the Vale family politics.
Garrison stood up so fast his leather chair rolled back and hit the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Where is Julianne right now?” Garrison demanded, his voice shaking with a terrifying mixture of shock and fury.
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“She took the file to her private investigator’s office downtown,” Arthur said, standing up. “Garrison, wait! If you declare Kyle as your biological son, the legal implications for the company’s estate trust are catastrophic! Julianne will file an emergency injunction to block your executive authority, claiming you concealed an heir to manipulate stock valuations!”
“Let her try,” Garrison growled, grabbing his coat. “Call my private medical team. Tell them to bring a DNA confirmation kit to the estate immediately.”
