Chapter 3
He sat in the treatment room, left hand placed properly on his knee, and stretched out his right hand for me.
As I took out the stitches, I noticed the calluses on his palm and a curved groove along the side of his index finger, left from holding a gun for many years.
A fried chicken restaurant owner had a bodyguard straight out of special forces?
That was just absurd.
"Looks like you're healing up nicely," I said, tossing the thread into the tray. "Just be more careful next time."
He gave a short nod and started to leave.
"Hang on a second," I called after him.
He turned around.
"Were you standing downstairs by our apartment building all night yesterday?"
His expression stayed the same, but I noticed a slight tension in his shoulders.
I made up an excuse. "The security guard told me. He said there was a new guy in the building, smoking downstairs in the middle of the night, and asked if I knew who he was."
A comment floated by. [Derek really did stand guard downstairs all night. He found a tracker on Iris's car and took it off, but he's not sure if the other party has any other tricks up their sleeve.]
A tracker?
My heart dropped.
Who was following me?
"Yeah, that was me," Derek replied. "I couldn't sleep, so I just went out for a stroll."
I nodded and didn't ask any more questions.
Back in my office, I closed the door and took out my phone to look up a name.
Walker Group.
The Wikipedia entry was last updated two months ago. [Walker Group Chairman Joseph Walker is hospitalized due to illness, and the company's daily operations are currently being managed by the vice chairman. Joseph has two sons: the eldest, Alton Walker, and the younger, Damian Walker.]
The eldest son, Alton Walker.
In the photo, he was wearing a dark gray suit, not a strand of hair out of place. His eyes were cold and sharp, and his lips were pressed into a straight, unsmiling line.
I stared at that photo for a long time.
None of his features matched the man I remembered, the one wearing an apron, hands dusted with flour, smiling with that distinctive fang showing.
Even his features seemed completely different, like someone had rearranged them.
The scrolling comment was spot on. Even that fang was just glued on.
I swiped away from the page and kept scrolling.
There was an old news article from three years ago.
[Walker Group rocked by internal turmoil as eldest son Alton Walker reportedly had a major falling out with his father, Joseph Walker, and left the company's core management. Insiders say the fallout was triggered by some old scandal.]
Some old scandal?
What kind of scandal?
I couldn't dig up any more details.
But just then, a comment popped up.
[Three years ago, Alton found out he wasn't Joseph's biological son. His mother had him with another man before marrying Joseph. When Joseph learned the truth, he blew up and kicked Alton out of the family.
[Alton spent three years lying low in Cloudville, waiting for the day Joseph would finally go down.]
Alton wasn't Joseph's real son.
Alton wasn't exiled to Cloudville. He was just lying low, waiting for the right moment.
And I was nothing more than a convenient cover while he waited.
A fried chicken restaurant owner and his nurse wife.
We were just another ordinary couple in a small town. Who would ever suspect someone like him to be a banished heir from a wealthy family?
I set my phone down on the desk and closed my eyes for a moment.
There was something stuck in my chest. I couldn't tell if it was pain or just pressure.
But I didn't cry.
After everything I'd seen in the ER, I knew tears never solved a thing.
After work, Amy dragged me out for barbecue.
"You've gotten so skinny," she said, pointing her fork at my face. "Your face is practically sharp now. That Alton guy is such a jerk."
"It's not because of him. I've just been working too much," I replied.
"Oh, please, who are you trying to fool? You think I can't see right through you?" Amy lowered her voice. "Are you still waiting for him to come back?"
A comment floated above Amy's head. [Amy Reed, Iris's coworker. Later, when Iris gets cyberbullied, Amy will be the only one who speaks up for her.]
I read those words, and a wave of warmth washed over me.
"I'm not waiting," I said. "Eat up."
"That's more like it." Amy slapped the table. "Who needs him anyway? Look at you, you're twenty-six, pretty, and have a full-time job. Seriously, you could snag someone way better than him."
I smiled and grabbed some mushrooms with my fork.
I wasn't planning to look for anyone new.
At least not right now.
First things first, I needed to find out who put that tracker on my car.
The answer came faster than I expected.
On the twenty-second day after Alton disappeared, someone came looking for me.
A woman, probably in her late twenties, stood at the triage desk in our hospital's ER, dressed in a creamy Chanel-style jacket and towering three-inch heels.
Her perfume clashed horribly with the smell of alcohol and disinfectant in the air.
"Excuse me, who is Iris Murphy?" she asked.
I was entering a patient's record, not even bothering to look up. "I'm Iris."
She came to a halt right in front of me.
I finally looked up.
She was gorgeous, the kind of beauty that clearly came from a lot of effort. Her eyebrows looked natural, but every single hair was perfectly shaped. Her lips were painted in a warm, rosy shade that made her look radiant.
The comments above her head exploded.
[Danielle Kerr, Alton's first love and Joseph's goddaughter. She's not here to stake her claim, but to see if Iris knows who Alton really is. If Iris is clueless, she'll leave feeling relieved. But if Iris knows the truth, she'll make a move.]