Mine - A Stepbrother Romance (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

ARIZONA

Well, this day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Famous last words,
I thought as the grey clouds above began to pour with rain, and I sighed as I sped up my footsteps and headed towards my neighborhood. My car had broken down earlier on, so I’d had to walk all the way to work and back. My Dad had refused to give me a ride, because apparently there was some important baseball game on TV that he didn’t want to miss even ten minutes of.

He certainly wouldn’t be winning any ‘Father of the Year’ awards anytime soon. Sometimes I couldn’t believe I’d sprung forth from his loins. We were polar opposites, and I didn’t know why he’d even bothered to have a kid when he spent half his life making it clear he didn’t even want one. I’d actually brought it up with him in a heated argument once, and all he’d had to say was that my Mom really wanted kids, so he just went along with it.

Wow, thanks Dad. Way to admit you didn’t even want me.

As well as my car breaking down, I’d sustained a nasty burn on my arm at work when another waiter had accidentally spilled a bowl of hot pumpkin soup on me, and to top it all off, it was my birthday and no one had even acknowledged it. The staff at the Rosewood were quite close-knit, so there’d usually be some sort of cake or mini celebration on someone’s birthday, but for me? Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Tina and Ewan had been off with the flu for the last couple of days, so I couldn’t blame them for forgetting. But everyone else? Jeez, I wasn’t expecting much, but a simple ‘happy birthday’ would have been enough to brighten my day a bit.

Oh well. I’d just turned nineteen, so I was probably getting a little too old to actually complain about people missing my birthday. People had their own stuff to worry about once they were adults, so I suppose I was just being grumpy and making a big deal over nothing.

I’d read somewhere that even if you were upset, smiling would make you feel better. I plastered a big old smile on my face, and I had to admit it actually kinda worked. So what if it was raining all over me? I’d always loved rain. I even used to go and dance in it as a kid. The air was fresh and clean, and the earthy scent that came with the storm reminded me of times from my childhood when I used to run around outside and make mud pies while my Mom smiled and watched from the back porch.

As I walked along, my memory jumped back to the night of the fundraising gala, and I felt a twinge in my gut as I remembered Mason Crest. Even though I’d wanted to pretend I’d never met the prick, I hadn’t been able to get him off my mind in ages now. I’d even Google-image searched him, which was a terrible idea. At first I’d thought seeing all the photos on gossip sites of him drunkenly falling out of nightclubs with flocks of women surrounding him would make me realize what a sleazy prick he really was, but all it did was make me irrationally jealous.

What was the collective noun for a bunch of scantily-dressed club skanks, anyway? Flock wasn’t right, that was for sheep. Harem, perhaps? No, that seemed too classy. All the girls in the photos were dressed in the official outfits of the attention whore: scandalously-short skirts, tight midriff tops and enough eyeliner to make a raccoon jealous.

Jeez, I sounded like a real bitter bitch, didn’t I? I didn’t even know why I was so jealous. I didn’t even like Mason! He’d basically told Ewan that I came across as some sort of opportunistic prostitute who could be bought for a hedonistic evening right after a hectic shift. Talk about customer service...

Ugh. I needed to wipe him from my mind.

My big fake smile faded the second I turned into my street. Blue and red lights were flashing from somewhere near our house, and as I drew closer I realized there were three police vehicles parked up on the curb. What the…? My mind raced, trying to figure out what could have happened.

My father was no stranger to getting DUIs, but there was no way they’d send three cars to drop him off if he’d been caught drunk-driving. It had to be something else. Oh, crap. What if there’d been some horrible accident?

I sped up, and as I approached the front lawn I saw my father, thankfully unharmed and being led away in handcuffs. He turned his head and looked at me, and then abruptly turned away without so much as a word.

“What’s going on?” I asked as what appeared to be a plainclothes detective approached me.

“Are you Arizona Keller?” he asked, brown eyes flashing.

“Yes. Where are they taking my father? What did he do?”

The man sighed. “I’m Detective Julian Armstrong. Miss Keller, I’m afraid I have some rather unsettling news for you. You might want to come inside and sit down.”

He gestured towards my front door, and I crossed my arms. “Just tell me now. What did he do? Please don’t tell me he killed someone or something.”

“No, he hasn’t killed anyone. But believe me, you’ll want to be sitting down when you hear this. Please.”

He motioned towards the house again, and I sighed heavily. “Okay.”

He followed me into our lounge room, and I took a seat on the faded old beige sofa. He sat down across from me and pulled out a file which he briefly leafed through before looking up at me.

“Arizona Keller, born April the 6
th
, 1996?”

“Yes. Why do you need to know my birthday? I thought this was about my Dad.”

There was a long pause. “Because it isn’t your real birthday. Miss Keller, there’s no easy way to tell you this, but your real birthday was April the 1
st
in 1996.
Your real name is Hannah Vierra. Or it was, anyway.”

“Huh?”

This had to be some kind of dream. I must have been watching too many C-grade thrillers on Netflix or something. Detective Armstrong leaned forward and spoke in a soothing voice, like I was a child who needed to be placated.

“Miss Keller…you were kidnapped as a newborn. The man you think of as your father abducted you from a hospital in Rhode Island and then abruptly moved to Wisconsin with your mother, where they then registered you as their own child.”

“That’s not possible,” I said, my head spinning. “You must be mistaken.”

“I’m afraid we aren’t. When we came to speak to your father, he admitted everything. I suppose the guilt finally caught up with him.”

No. Just…no. None of this was making any sense.

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “My Dad’s never even wanted me all that much! Why would he steal a baby if he didn’t even want kids?”

“The details aren’t all fleshed out yet, but it appears he did it for your mother. She was having a lot of trouble conceiving and sustaining a pregnancy, and they couldn’t seem to make it through the adoption process, so he decided to take matters into his own hands, in a manner of speaking. Apparently she was very depressed at the thought of never being able to have a child, and he said he loved her so much he would have done anything to get her what she wanted. Even if it wasn’t necessarily something he wanted.”

I gritted my teeth, still unable to believe what I was hearing. “No. My mother would never have done such a thing. She was a good person. She wasn’t a baby-napper.”

“I’m not sure your mother was even aware, Miss Keller. From our brief interview of your father earlier, it seems he brought you home and told her he’d found you in a box on the edge of the road. She wanted to contact the authorities, but he managed to convince her that it was their chance to finally have the baby she’d always dreamed of. In order to not raise suspicion from friends, seeing as she hadn’t been pregnant, they immediately upped and moved to a different state and claimed you’d just been born at home.”

“But her medical records would have said she wasn’t pregnant,” I said, my whole body suddenly numb. This all had to be some giant misunderstanding. Surely.

He shook his head. “Things weren’t as strict back then as they are now. They simply told the doctors they hadn’t even been aware she was pregnant until she was in labor, seeing as they’d been told for so long that they couldn’t conceive. It does happen sometimes, you know. She’d also had multiple miscarriages before, so if they ever gave her a checkup, it would be clear that she had been pregnant before. Also, leaving the state where you were born helped them avoid suspicions that might arise over that. The police in Rhode Island were looking for you for a long time.”

“But my Mom must have suspected something before they left. It must have been all over the news that a baby had gone missing from a hospital, and suddenly my Dad brings her a baby he claims to have just found somewhere at the exact same time?”

He nodded. “She may have suspected, but from what we’ve been told by your father -well, Tom Keller - she so desperately wanted a child that she just blocked all of that out. A sort of cognitive dissonance, I suppose.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. “I don’t… I don’t know how…why…”

I couldn’t even get out a coherent sentence, and Detective Armstrong awkwardly patted me on the shoulder, having clearly never had to experience telling someone their parents weren’t their real parents before. I leaned forward and began to sob, and he let me cry for a few minutes before handing me some tissues. God, I must have looked like I just stepped off the set of a horror film. My clothes were wet and sticking to my skin from the rain, my hair was also mostly drenched, and any parts that weren’t were frizzing up like mad. Now to top that all off, my eyes were red and snot was pouring from my nose.

But all that couldn’t even begin to compare to the horror show that my life was right now as the news sunk in.

“I realize how difficult this is for you to hear,” he said. “And I’m very sorry for that. You must have a lot of questions.”

Damn right I did. I blew my nose and wiped under my eyes, and then looked back at him.

“How does someone just kidnap a baby from a hospital? Surely the police would have caught them?”

“Like I said, things were different nineteen years ago. Less security guards at hospitals…security cameras not as good as they are now. They did manage to get a blurry image of Tom Keller leaving the hospital that night, but they never managed to identify it as him until now.”

“So what changed?”

“Technology. Your real parents never stopped looking for you, long after the police said it was a lost cause. There’s a lot of new facial biometric software these days which is excellent at identifying people from uploaded images. I’m sure you’ve seen it on Facebook?”

“Yes,” I said with a nod. I vaguely recalled Facebook implementing some facial recognition thing to help tag friends in photos.

“Well, your biological father actually owns some of the tech companies that have been developing vastly improved versions of facial recognition software. These things are incredible, let me tell you. They can identify a person even in the grainiest, lowest-quality images you can imagine. They’ve proven very helpful in investigations.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, he had some of his employees run the photo of the man from the CCTV footage taken at the hospital that night through their new software, and once it was uploaded to the cloud, it didn’t take long until it matched with an old family photo you’d posted up on Facebook a while ago, upon which he immediately alerted the authorities.”

“So my Dad…Tom… he got caught because of me,” I said slowly.

“Don’t blame yourself,” he said.

“I’m not,” I said, gritting my teeth again. “So…you’re sure it’s me? I’m the baby that was stolen?”

“Well, we can’t be one hundred percent certain until we do DNA testing. Would you mind if I took a buccal smear to send to the labs?”

“A buccal smear?”

“It’s a cheek swab,” he said. “Quick and painless.”

“I suppose so,” I sighed. I could hardly say no, could I?

He snapped on some gloves and then pulled out a specimen jar and a Q-tip, and he ran it over the inside of my cheeks before sealing it shut in the jar. A young officer entered the room a moment later, and Detective Armstrong called him over.

“Get this sent over to the lab,” he said. “Results should be fast-tracked. Remember, this is Roy Vierra we’re dealing with, so make damn sure it doesn’t get lost or anything.”

“Roy Vierra?” I asked. The name sounded vaguely familiar. Where had I heard it before? Oh hell, what was the point in trying to remember right now? My mind was a mess.

Armstrong turned back to me. “Roy Vierra is your biological father. As I said before, I realize this is all very difficult to comprehend and come to terms with, but if and when you do, he’d very much like to meet you. He’s been waiting for this moment for nineteen years.”

“And my biological mother?” I asked, still feeling like I’d been stabbed multiple times in the gut as I said the word.
Mother.

The woman I’d loved and cherished all those years had never really been my mother. Sure, she may not have known the exact circumstances that my Dad obtained me under, but she’d still always known I wasn’t
hers.
Not biologically. And I’d never had a clue. She’d never said a thing. Then again, how could she?

Now that I was thinking about it, it made a lot of sense. Both my parents had always been totally different to me, physically speaking. They were tall and fair-haired with blue eyes, whereas I was relatively short with hazel eyes and dark hair that curled up and frizzed like crazy unless I ran a straightener through it every day. Not only that, my parents were both very pale-skinned, and while I wasn’t the darkest-skinned person in the world, I still had what appeared to be a deep year-round tan, even in the very dead of winter when everyone else looked pallid and ghostly. A sun-kissed glow, my Mom had always called it.