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“What happened? If you’re Ryan’s mother, why did you give him up?”
“Because I would do anything for Brad, and he asked me to.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this before now?”
“I promised Brad I wouldn’t. And I’d do anything for him. How did you find out?”
“You told me. When you thought I was my father.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“I just need to know if it’s true. Is Ryan your son?”
“Yes. He’s my son. My beautiful son.”
“We’ll need to get a DNA test,” Talon said.
“We need to tell Ryan first.”
“I should tell him,” Wendy said. “I’m his mother.”
“You don’t go near him,” I said through clenched teeth. “We’ll take care of it.” I turned to the orderlies. “Please make sure she doesn’t contact our brother.”
“Don’t worry. She doesn’t have access to a phone.”
I sighed with relief.
“Haven’t you ever wondered where he got his creativity? From me, of course.”
“From you? You were a journalist, not an artist,” I said.
“Ah, but I could have been. I used to love to paint. They let me paint here. Would you like to see some of my work? The doctors say it’s remarkable. Genius, even.”
Ryan wasn’t a painter, but he was a master winemaker. Creative in his own right. A creative genius.
Genius.
Larry had said Wendy was a genius.
Oh, God…
“You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?” I said to her. “About Ryan?”
“Of course. I can’t lie anymore.”
Talon spoke up. “You said I was held for ransom. By some enemy of my father. Who was that enemy?”
“Oh, it could have been any of a number of people.”
“Tom Simpson and Theodore Mathias?”
“They had reason to hate your father,” Wendy said. “But neither of them was the enemy who held Talon for ransom.”
“Then who did?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I did.”
I gulped. Next to me, Talon paled and clutched at the table. I gripped his shoulder in what I hoped was a soothing gesture.
