Page 99 of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend

I stuffed clothes into bags. Toiletries, socks, the basics. Wherever I went in the world, I’d have enough money to live forever. But nothing could change the facts even if Laura revealed the truth of who I was.

Twelve years ago, shortly before Christmas, a young man called Conor O’Shea had gone down to the city hall in Seattle and changed his name by deed pool to Lucien Barnes. He’d then walked a few blocks east from the center of the city to a Navy recruitment office, where he’d immediately signed up for SEAL selection. A few weeks later that boy, who’d been sleeping rough and pining for his lost love, was on a transport out of Seattle to Colorado. From that moment on, I hadn’t been Conor. Not in my eyes. I was Lucien.

And good for me, frankly. Because if this was how Conor felt, then it was the lowest of the low. I went to the safe and took out a few million dollars in cash, just in case I needed it where I was going.

I was lost in a place like this. If the townsfolk found out who I really was, could I bear the shame? Lucien was a fake, Lucien wasn’t real. But he had money, status, and power. A military career. And respect. People respected Lucien.

No one had respected Conor. And come to think of it, could you blame them? After all, I’d driven away Laura when she needed me the most. I tried to imagine what it would have been like if only I hadn’t said those cruel words. If only I’d known that my decision not to have kids would have meant Laura leaving me forever.

Because the truth was, I knew. I knew all along. Every time I saw Kyle, saw his reddish hair and green eyes, I knew something was up. I could hardly have known a young man who resembled me more. He was the spitting image of all I was.

And yet I’d been so blinded by Laura’s decision to leave me that I’d never considered Kyle could be my child.

After my bags were packed, I called Ronnie. It was late, and he sounded half-asleep as he answered.

“Where are you?”

“Portland.”

“I need you here in one hour. Understand?”

“Lucien, I—”

“One hour,” I told him. “We’re torching Lakeview tonight.” And I meant it. If it would stop people from finding out who I was, I was prepared to burn every inch of this beautiful house. Strip it bare and leave it, ugly and lifeless, like the heart of the man who’d built it as his prison.

I put the phone down and went into Laura’s office. I took one last look over my desk, the place where I’d spent most of my time over the last six months. Then, I decided to go look at Laura’s. I didn’t want to remember her, shaking and tearful on the grass outside my front door. I wanted to remember her being in here, happy, smiling and confident.

I rifled the drawers of the cabinets. The files were okay—my books were clean, my business honest. “It’s not a crime to change your name,” I muttered to myself as I rifled the drawers of Laura’s desk. But it was a crime to lie, to ignore the thing staring in your face.

I stopped. I opened the drawer. Inside there was a box file. I didn’t remember it being there. But on it, in a familiarly neat handwritten label, were the words “Lucien – For When You Have Time.”

Gingerly, I picked it up and opened it. It was all the letters from the school kids that I hadn’t opened yet. I picked up a stack of them and rifled through them.

“Guess you kids should have known the truth about me,” I growled as I picked up the letters and began to look through them a little more closely. There wasn’t time for this. And yet I couldn’t help remembering the library, the letters. I’d hated the attention, feared it even. But it had been one of the few times in my life that I’d felt proud of myself for doing the right thing.

I flicked through a couple of the letters. I put them down. I turned to go.

Then, I turned back.

I recognized the writing on one of those letters. Then, I saw it.

It was Kyle’s writing.

“Surely not,” I said to myself. But I had recognized it, from some homework that Kyle had bothered me about while I dropped Laura home one afternoon. It had been trigonometry—David hadn’t known how to do it—so I’d scribbled a formula on the paper for him.

I picked up the letter gingerly. My heart was beating.

“Kid, I don’t know what you did to deserve a father like me,” I said. And then I suddenly felt the same way my dad must have felt, and his dad before him—a long line of terrible fathers who’d never stood up to their responsibilities. I owed it to Kyle to read the letter.

So I did. I tore it open. If Laura had recognized the handwriting, she hadn’t managed to open it before I did.

This is what it said.

Dear Mister Barnes

They asked me to write this letter to you because of what you did for the library. But I want to write it different. Because I want to say thank you for helping my mom.

When we came here, I was happy and my mom was sad. Now it seems like it’s the other way round or something.