Page 165 of Ruthless Claim

“I found nothing. If there’s a kid, he’s a ghost too.”

“She showed me the birth certificate,” I blurt out, remembering how she had pushed it toward me.

FINN MURPHY, it had said. MOTHER: CLAIRE MURPHY.

The father part had been blank.

Sonny shrugs. “It wasn’t a filed birth certificate then. Which makes no sense. I don’t know how it works in Ireland or whatever, but I would think the hospital would file those, you know? Sounds like someone just created one.”

This is wrong. All of it is wrong.

“Thanks, Sonny,” I say faintly, my stomach roiling and it’s not from the smell in here. “Keep this between us.”

Sonny dips his head respectfully. “You got it, boss.”

I at least treat Sonny to lunch, but after Sonny leaves I sit in the diner booth a little longer, staring at the folder. Nothing before three years ago. A child with no records.

Valentina’s voice again: Someone with serious resources tried to destroy our marriage.

Emma’s voice: She’s running a con.

I pull out my phone with shaking fingers, looking through my calendar, trying to pinpoint exactly when I’d been in Belfast nine years ago.

Thank god, the dates were there—June 28th through August 9th. Six weeks, just like I remembered.

Claire said we’d been together from mid-June through mid-August. But I hadn’t even arrived until late June.

Something clicks into place. Not proof, not yet. But doubt. Real, genuine doubt that makes my earlier certainty seem naive.

My mind flashes to the paternity test, how quickly the results had come back.

Claire’s too-convenient financial struggles.

Finn’s odd questions.

The way Claire transformed her expression when she thought no one was watching.

Emma’s observation that Finn looked nothing like a Brennan.

You’re being willfully blind, Valentina had said. You want to believe her because you feel guilty.

She was right. I’d been so consumed with the guilt of potentially abandoning a child that I’d missed all the signs that something was very, very wrong.

I need more information. I need to hire a proper investigator. Someone who can dig deeper than Sonny, someone who can follow the money and the connections and find out who was really behind this.

But first? First I need to call my wife.

Valentina doesn’t answer. But she does two days later, on the fourth ring, her voice cool and distant. “What do you want, Cillian?”

“I’ll do the second paternity test,” I say without preamble. “You’re right. Something doesn’t add up.”

Silence on the other end. “What changed your mind?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Valentina said firmly. “I need to know you’re doing this because you see the truth, not because you’re trying to appease me.”

Fair enough. She deserves honesty.