Spoiled by Four Billionaires novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Files

Alister took me to the third floor the next morning and unlocked a door at the end of the hall.

"Dean said we stopped looking," he said. "I want you to see what that means."

The room had been a nursery once.

Now it held steel shelves from floor to ceiling, packed with banker's boxes labeled by year.

I walked down the rows.

"Nineteen years," Alister said. "Nineteen boxes. We hired seven investigators and two firms. We checked every orphanage in Massachusetts, every hospital intake, every missing girl with brown hair and a birthmark."

I touched the crescent behind my left ear.

"There was a sketch," he said. "Every March, an artist aged your face. This year she drew a woman of twenty-four with a braid."

He pulled out a folder and handed it over.

The sketch was in pencil.

It looked like me, except for the mouth, which was smiling more than mine ever did.

"We never stopped," Alister said quietly. "I stopped sleeping, and my mother stopped going out, and Dad..."

He cleared his throat.

"Dad told me the night before he died to keep the file open."

I put my arms around his waist.

He stood stiff for a moment, then wrapped one big arm around me and set his chin on my head.

"You're short," he said, hoarse.

"You're just a giant."

"I'm sorry it took this long."

"You found me," I said. "You found me on a sidewalk outside a bad party. That's the only part I care about."

He laughed, a short shocked sound.

I think it was the first time he'd laughed in the house in years.

I took the box marked with the year I was lost and carried it down to the library.

The library was on the second floor, dark wood and green lamps, with a long walnut desk in front of the window.

I set the box on a chair, sat on the desk, and started to read.

I got through two pages before a shadow fell across them.

"You're up late," Cullen said.

It was past midnight, and he stood in the doorway in a shirt open at the throat.

"Alister showed me the files."

"I know."

"You knew they never stopped."

"I did."

"Dean was wrong," I said.

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