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A gasp escaped her as her stomach performed a forward roll.
It really was a good thing he’d made her sit down. If she’d still been on her feet, she probably would have crumpled to the floor—and it wasn’t true.
It couldn’t be true!
But before she could cry out that he had to be wrong, Jonas added, “Percy said to tell you that the switch took place on a ranch called Wild River not far from Astoria, Oregon.”
Wild River Ranch.
Okay, yeah. Twenty-seven years ago today, Madison had been born at Wild River Ranch. A few months after her birth, her dad had found another job in a different state and they’d moved on, like they always did.
But after her father died, when she and her mom moved to LA, they’d made a detour to northwestern Oregon—not to the actual ranch, but to the area. So that Madison would know where she came from, her mom had said with the saddest, strangest look in her eye.
In one of the few pictures Madison had of her father, Lloyd Delaney stood in front of the foreman’s cottage at Wild River, smiling proudly, cradling a pink-blanketed bundle: Madison herself, just a few days after her birth.
No. It couldn’t be true. Lloyd and Paula Delaney might have had their problems. But they had loved their only daughter unconditionally. Her dad was always saying how she had that “Delaney” look about her. Madison had no doubt that she was everything to him and to her mom, truly theirs, in every way.
“Yes,” she gave out grudgingly. “I was born at Wild River Ranch in northern Oregon. But that doesn’t mean—”
“Just let me say what I came to say.” Jonas spoke very gently, silencing her arguments simply by being so patient, so kind.
“All right.” She listened, her breath tangled, hot in her chest, her pulse racing, as the Bravo Billionaire shared what he knew.
At first, his words were a blur to her. She tried to focus, to understand.
Jonas said that a man named Martin Durand had made the switch. He did it because the other baby, the one raised by the Bravos, had been the result of Durand’s secret affair with Paula Delaney. Durand, now deceased, was a married man. He’d been afraid that Paula would come after him and demand a paternity test.
“It was a totally out-there move on Durand’s part,” said Jonas. “The truth might very well have come out earlier if Paula had gone ahead and tried to prove Durand’s paternity. The test would have shown that you were not related by blood to Durand or her husband, Lloyd—or even to Paula herself. She would have remembered that Marie Bravo gave birth to a child at the ranch on the same day that she did, would have put it together that somehow there must have been a switch.”
“But I don’t understand. If it all would have led back to Durand, anyway, why did he do it?”
“Apparently, he was freaked. He didn’t stop to think it through. And then, after he’d switched you with Paula’s baby, he had no opportunity to switch you back. You grew up with the Delaneys, believing that they were your biological parents, and if Paula ever told Lloyd that she doubted you were his—”
“Stop.” Madison put up a hand. “I get it. That’s enough, really.”
“I understand. It’s a lot to take in.” Jonas stood from the chair. Moving on autopilot, Madison got up, too.
He held out a thumb drive.
She stared at it, shaking her head.
“It’s all on there,” he said, “everything I just explained to you and more, including pictures of your large family in Oregon and Martin Durand’s final letter confessing what he did. I think you’ll agree that the resemblance between you and three of the Bravo sisters is especially striking—and of course, when you’re ready, there will be DNA tests providing conclusive proof. Also, you’ll find contact information for Percy Valentine and your Bravo brothers and sisters. My numbers are there, too. And my door is always open to you, Madison.” He took her hand.
She let him do that, let him set the memory stick in her palm and fold her fingers around it.
Was she dreaming? Her moorings to her life, her identity, her self—everything. It all felt torn loose and dangling.
The oddest thought occurred to her. “So then, are you saying that we’re related, too, you and me?”
