He returned late that night with Dr. Barragan in tow. They locked themselves in the study for nearly two hours.
The moment they left, I went straight to Grant and reported everything.
Grant looked at me, then down at the baby sleeping in his arms.
“Mariana,” Grant said softly, “I had a son.”
I thought I had misheard him. “What?”
“I was seventeen,” Grant confessed, his voice thick with old grief. “The mother was my age. Her family moved her away the moment they found out. They told me the baby ended up in the state foster system. I searched for him for years… until I just stopped trying. I buried myself in work. Then in money.”
He looked at Leo’s tiny face.
“If Julian ran a DNA match using your baby’s sample against my profile—trying to prove you were an intruder…”
Grant didn’t finish the sentence. I did it for him.