Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO STOLE MY LIFE
The fire destroyed half of Paige's salon.
The office burned worst.
Computer.
Files.
Security system.
Mariana stood across the street watching firefighters work.
Grant beside her.
“You shouldn't be here.”
She almost laughed.
“Everyone keeps deciding where I should be.”
He looked at her.
“Fair.”
Police considered arson.
A rear door had been forced.
Accelerant had been poured inside Paige's office.
No body.
No Paige.
Mariana didn't know whether she wanted her alive.
That thought frightened her.
Not because Mariana wanted murder.
Because prison had taught her that hatred could quietly become part of your daily routine until you stopped noticing it.
Grant's lawyers obtained records on the condo transfer.
Paige had abused Mariana's power of attorney.
The sale went through a company called Cypress Halo LLC.
Cypress Halo was owned through another entity.
That entity traced back to a trust.
The trustee?
Malcolm Pierce.
Grant stared at the report.
“So Paige stole your home with my uncle's company.”
Mariana sat very still.
“Why?”
“Maybe compensation.”
“For framing me?”
Neither wanted to say it.
The next discovery was worse.
Five years earlier, Paige had received four payments totaling $180,000.
The payments came from Silver Meridian Health.
Mariana looked at the screen.
“She testified against me for money.”
Grant's jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“I gave her power of attorney because she was the only person I trusted.”
“I know.”
“No, you don't.”
She stood.
“She held Mason the day he was born.”
Grant froze.
“What?”
“Prison allowed one approved visitor after delivery.”
Her voice cracked.
“She came.”
Mariana remembered lying in the medical unit.
Weak.
Terrified.
Paige held newborn Mason against her shoulder and cried.
She promised:
“I'll make sure Grant knows.”
Apparently Paige already knew exactly who Grant was.
She never told him.
Grant turned away.
Mariana saw guilt in the line of his shoulders.
“Don't.”
He looked back.
“Don't what?”
“Make this about what you should have known.”
“I should have known.”
“You didn't.”
“I believed the case.”
“So did everyone.”
“I was the one person who had a reason to question it.”
Mariana's anger returned.
“Yes.”
He accepted it.
That surprised her.
No excuse.
No claim that his mother manipulated him.
He simply said:
“I failed you.”
She looked away.
“You didn't owe me your loyalty.”
“Mason did.”
That hurt differently.
The case moved quickly once money appeared.
A judge approved review of archived evidence.
Mariana's original laptop had been preserved.
A modern forensic analysis showed something investigators had missed—or ignored.
The incriminating banking folder had been copied onto her computer remotely.
Timestamp: 3:14 a.m.
Mariana had been recorded by her apartment building entering at 7:06 the following morning.
She wasn't even home.
Her defense attorney had never received the server logs.
Grant's company did.
Someone had withheld them.
Who signed the discovery certification?
Malcolm Pierce's attorney.
A man named Dean Colter.
Grant recognized the name immediately.
“He's my mother's personal counsel.”
Mariana laughed.
“This keeps getting better.”
The district attorney's office agreed to an emergency innocence review.
Not exoneration yet.
But movement.
Grant also arranged temporary housing for Mariana and Mason in a small guest cottage on the estate.
Mariana resisted.
“You can stay in a hotel.”
“With what money?”
“I'll pay.”
“That's the same problem.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“It is to me.”
Grant understood.
After five years of having every choice taken away, she couldn't tolerate another person controlling where she lived.
So he changed the arrangement.
“You work.”
“What?”
“The estate needs staff coordination while half the grounds crew is dealing with storm damage.”
“You're offering me a job?”
“Yes.”
“I have a felony.”
“I own the company.”
She stared.
“That sentence is exactly why people hate billionaires.”
Mason, sitting nearby coloring a dinosaur, looked up.
“I like him.”
Mariana glared.
“Traitor.”
Mason grinned.
Grant smiled.
For a few hours, things almost felt normal.
Then the family arrived.
Not Victoria.
Grant's uncle-by-marriage, cousin, two board members, and an elderly aunt who stared at Mason for a full minute before bursting into tears.
“He looks exactly like Charles at that age.”
Grant stiffened.
Mariana understood why the DNA system had flagged the connection.
Mason resembled his grandfather too.
The elderly aunt approached carefully.
“May I?”
Mariana hesitated.
Mason offered her a crayon.
She laughed.
That afternoon, Grant's family learned publicly that he had a son.
News leaked before sunset.
WEXLER BILLIONAIRE'S SECRET PRISON-BORN SON.
CONVICTED THIEF CLAIMS WEXLER HEIR.
Mariana stared at the television.
Grant shut it off.
“Don't.”
“They already decided what I am.”
“We'll correct it.”
“You think a correction travels as fast as humiliation?”
He had no answer.
Then a reporter appeared outside the gate holding a court document.
A second story broke.
Someone had leaked sealed juvenile-family information showing Mason had spent a year in foster care.
Mariana went pale.
“That record is protected.”
Grant called his legal team.
The leak had come from an anonymous email.
Attached was something else.
A prison medical form.
Mason's original birth registration.
On the line labeled father, Mariana had written:
GRANT WEXLER.
Grant stared.
“You named me.”
“Yes.”
“Officially?”
“I tried.”
The form contained a notation.
PATERNITY CLAIM REJECTED — ALLEGED FATHER DENIES RELATIONSHIP.
Mariana's face emptied.
“What?”
Grant read it again.
“I never denied anything.”
She grabbed the paper.
There was a signature beneath the notation.
A representative for Grant.
Dean Colter.
Victoria's lawyer.
Grant whispered:
“They legally denied paternity in my name.”
Mariana looked at him.
“For five years.”
He nodded.
The five-year lie was no longer family gossip.
It had been put into government records.
Someone deliberately ensured Grant would never be notified that Mason existed.
Grant walked out.
Mariana followed.
“Where are you going?”
“To my mother.”
“Grant.”
He turned.
She had never seen him look that angry.
“She forged my denial of my own son.”
“Then don't go alone.”
He stared.
“You want to come?”
“No.”
She took her coat.
“But apparently I'm done letting Wexlers discuss my life when I'm not in the room.”
Victoria was waiting at the west house.
She did not deny the paternity form.
“I authorized Dean to handle it.”
Grant's voice was low.
“You signed my rights away.”
“I prevented her from using a child to manipulate you.”
Mariana stepped forward.
“I was in prison.”
Victoria looked at her.
“Exactly.”
Grant slammed the document down.
“You knew he was mine?”
Victoria's silence stretched.
“Yes.”
Mariana stopped.
Not suspected.
Knew.
“How?”
Victoria looked at Grant.
“Because I ordered a DNA test when Mason was born.”
The room froze.
Mariana felt sick.
“You what?”
“Paige obtained a swab.”
Mariana remembered Paige holding her newborn.
She nearly vomited.
Grant whispered:
“You tested my son before I knew he existed.”
“Yes.”
“And the result?”
Victoria's eyes filled.
“He was yours.”
Grant staggered backward.
Mariana could barely speak.
“Why?”
Victoria answered with terrible calm.
“Because five years ago, if Grant learned you were carrying his child, he would have investigated your case.”
Mariana understood.
“And if he investigated my case—”
“He would have discovered Malcolm.”
Silence.
Victoria looked at her son.
“I chose the company.”
Grant's face changed.
“You chose the company over my child.”
“I chose hundreds of thousands of employees.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“You chose our name.”
Victoria cried for the first time.
“You don't understand what your father was about to do.”
“What?”
“He planned to expose Malcolm publicly.”
“That sounds like the right thing.”
“It would have collapsed Wexler Medical.”
“Why?”
Victoria whispered:
“Because Malcolm wasn't stealing the money for himself.”
Everyone went silent.
“He was paying someone.”
Grant stared.
“Who?”
Victoria looked at Mariana.
“The man your father believed had been dead for seventeen years.”
Grant's face drained.
“My grandfather?”
Victoria shook her head.
“No.”
She whispered the name.
“Your older brother.”
Grant stopped breathing.
Mariana stared.
Grant had no living older brother.
Everyone knew that.
His brother Alexander had died at age nineteen in a boating accident.
Twenty years earlier.
Victoria continued.
“Alexander never died.”
May you like
And the entire room seemed to tilt.
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