Chapter 3 - Someone Had Been Living as Me
Adrian opened the cooler.
Nobody was inside.
At first.
Then he moved a rack of roses.
A service panel stood open behind it.
I had owned the shop for seven years.
I had never known the panel existed.
Behind it was a narrow maintenance corridor connecting three storefronts.
On the floor lay my missing birth certificate.
Beside it sat a disposable phone.
The screen was still glowing.
A banking app was open.
The account holder's name was mine.
AMELIA EVELYN BROOKS.
The balance was $2,418,703.
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because I had eighty-seven dollars.
"That's not mine."
Adrian photographed the screen.
"Obviously."
The account history went back six years.
Transfers.
Property payments.
Credit cards.
Business purchases.
Somebody had built an entire financial existence using my identity.
A successful one.
And now that life was colliding with mine.
Officer Ramirez arrived.
She called financial crimes.
By dawn, we knew three things.
Someone had used my Social Security number.
Someone possessed copies of documents I'd never knowingly shared.
And the fake Amelia had recently applied for a seven-million-dollar commercial loan.
My denied flower-shop loan hadn't been collateral damage.
It had been necessary.
Two Amelia Brookses applying for credit at once created scrutiny.
Someone needed the poorer one discredited.
Vanessa's edited video suddenly made perfect sense.
Ramirez looked at me across the shop.
"This was planned."
"I know."
"We don't know by whom."
"I have a candidate."
Vanessa denied everything.
Her attorney denied more.
Bellamy & Rowe suspended her pending investigation, but by afternoon she had vanished from her apartment.
Adrian found the connection first.
One of the shell companies paying "Amelia Brooks" was Clark Heritage Consulting.
Registered agent:
Margaret Clark.
The woman who supposedly disappeared twenty-seven years earlier.
The deeper we searched, the stranger it became.
Fake Amelia owned a condo.
Fake Amelia had a driver's license.
Fake Amelia had paid taxes.
Fake Amelia had even donated to charities.
There were photographs online.
Always from behind.
Always sunglasses.
Never a clean face.
Until Kayla found one.
"Amelia?"
She turned her laptop around.
A charity gala photograph showed a woman in profile.
Auburn hair.
My height.
My build.
She wasn't identical to me.
But from twenty feet away?
Close enough.
The caption beneath the photograph read:
PHILANTHROPIST AMELIA BROOKS.
Adrian stared at it.
"Someone didn't just steal your identity."
"No."
I felt sick.
"Someone practiced being me."
That evening, Isabella finally told me my father's name.
Daniel Moretti.
Adrian's uncle.
The room went silent.
I looked at Adrian.
He looked equally stunned.
"My father's brother?"
Isabella nodded.
"Daniel loved Evelyn. Your grandfather forbade the relationship. Daniel wanted out of the family."
"What happened?"
"He disappeared."
"When?"
"Two weeks before you were born."
I stood so quickly my chair fell backward.
"My mother told me he abandoned us."
"She needed you to believe that."
"Why?"
"Because Daniel discovered Margaret's operation."
Isabella's voice broke.
"And after he disappeared, Evelyn believed Margaret had killed him."
Adrian walked toward the window.
That made him my cousin.
The intimidating stranger who had arrived because I'd protected his mother was family.
The absurdity almost made me laugh again.
Instead, I cried.
Quietly.
Angrily.
For my mother.
For the father I'd spent thirty-four years pretending I didn't care about.
For every lie that had apparently been built around me before I could speak.
Adrian gave me privacy.
Isabella didn't.
She hugged me.
I let her.
At midnight, Ramirez called.
The fake Amelia's condominium had been located.
Police had obtained a warrant.
The unit was empty.
But one room contained photographs.
Hundreds of them.
Me leaving home.
Me at work.
Me visiting my mother's grave.
Me gaining weight.
Losing weight.
Cutting my hair.
Changing cars.
Living.
Someone had documented twelve years of my life.
Ramirez sent one photograph.
It was newer than the others.
Taken through Brooks & Bloom's front window.
Vanessa stood inside my shop.
She wasn't alone.
Kayla was standing beside her.
And Kayla was handing her my spare key.
Before I could call her, my shop bell rang downstairs.
Kayla's voice floated up from the dark storefront.
"Amelia? I need to tell you why I did it."
Then another voice spoke behind her.
May you like
Vanessa's.
"Tell her everything."
