A Woman Worth Billions Dated the Wrong Brother novel Chapter 377

Amber POV

The morning Jason left for the DNA appointment, another story broke.

This one changed everything again.

The missing Vincent women were speaking.

Not one.

Several.

Some were women Mr. Stait and Emory had rescued during previous operations. Others had been recovered after the international investigations expanded. Women the Vincent family had spent years describing as missing, unstable, estranged, dead, or simply irrelevant were suddenly appearing in front of investigators.

And their stories matched.

I watched one of the recorded statements from the living room.

The woman on the screen looked exhausted. There were shadows beneath her eyes, and she kept twisting her fingers together while an investigator sat beside her.

"My father didn't lose me," she said.

My stomach tightened.

"He sold me."

I stopped breathing.

She swallowed.

"Alexander Vincent's father sold us."

The investigator asked her to explain.

Her eyes filled with tears.

"He decided where we went. Which families received us. Some were marriages. Some weren't called marriages at all."

I felt sick.

"He said daughters were resources."

My hand instinctively covered my stomach.

"He told us that the Vincent family survived because everyone had a purpose. Sons inherited. Daughters created alliances."

Another woman gave almost the same testimony.

Then another.

Alexander's father had arranged the transfers.

Some women were sent to families because those families owed the Vincents money.

Others were exchanged for business interests, political support, land, protection, or access.

Some had children.

Some of those children had been taken from them.

And some women had simply disappeared.

One of the rescued Vincent women looked directly into the camera during her statement.

"People keep asking whether Alexander knew."

The investigator didn't interrupt her.

She wiped her face.

"He grew up in that house."

A chill moved through me.

"He knew women disappeared."

She paused.

"Maybe he didn't know where every woman went. Maybe his father didn't tell him every agreement. But don't let him tell you he thought we were all happily living somewhere else."

I leaned back against the sofa.

That was the problem with criminal families collapsing.

Eventually, everyone stopped protecting the family name.

The Vincents had spent generations building power through silence, fear, bloodlines, and control.

Now the women they'd discarded were alive.

And they were talking.

My phone vibrated beside me.

A message from Jason.

Sample collected. Everything went normally. Coming home.

I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

One mystery was now officially waiting on a laboratory.

But the Vincent investigation wasn't waiting for anyone.

Arrests were accelerating.

Victims were being found.

Families were reclaiming what had been stolen from them.

And the women Alexander's father had treated like commodities were finally telling the world exactly what the Vincent name had cost them.

For decades, powerful men had written their family's history.

Now the women they had sold were rewriting it.

The call from Mr. Stait came while Jason was still on his way back from the DNA testing appointment.

I almost didn't answer.

After everything that had happened over the last few days, I had finally convinced myself to follow the doctor's instructions properly. I was in bed, my laptop closed, my phone beside me, and absolutely nothing work-related within reach.

Then Mr. Stait called.

So much for that.

When I answered, he wasn't alone.

Emory was standing behind him, and they appeared to be inside one of the secure safehouses River City's military had been using for rescued victims.

But neither of them was the reason for the call.

Oliver was sitting between them.

Alexander Vincent's son.

The boy looked considerably better than he had when we'd found him on the island, but there was still something unsettling about how serious an eleven-year-old could look.

"Hello, Oliver."

"Hi."

Mr. Stait leaned closer to the camera. "He asked to speak with you."

I frowned. "Is everything okay?"

Oliver nodded.

Then he placed something on the table.

A tiny storage chip.

"I gave them this."

Mr. Stait picked it up carefully.

My attention sharpened.

"What is it?"

"The reason we're calling," Emory answered.

Oliver looked at me.

"It's about my father."

Something in the way he said father made my stomach tighten.

Alexander had spent weeks demanding access to Oliver, claiming River City was illegally keeping his son from him. He'd presented himself publicly as a father who'd only recently discovered he had a child and was being denied the opportunity to meet him.

Oliver apparently had a different story.

Mr. Stait inserted the chip into an isolated computer.

"We've already made copies and secured the original," he explained. "What we're about to show you is one of the copies."

Files appeared across the screen.

A lot of files.

Corporate records.

Names.

Maps.

Photographs.

Financial documents.

Lists.

I leaned closer.

"What am I looking at?"

Emory's expression hardened.

"Alexander Vincent's operation."

For a moment, I said nothing.

Then Mr. Stait opened the first folder.

Companies.

Dozens of them.

Some I recognized. Others I'd never heard of. On the surface, they had nothing in common. Transportation companies, private security firms, consulting agencies, charities, medical organizations, recruitment firms, real-estate companies.

Fronts.

The chip didn't simply identify them.

It explained what they were used for.

Transportation.

Money laundering.

Identity changes.

Housing.

Surveillance.

Locating potential targets.

Moving victims across borders.

I felt my stomach turn.

"Alexander knew."

Mr. Stait looked at me.

"More than knew."

Emory opened another file.

"He improved it."

That was worse.

Much worse.

The information showed modifications Alexander had introduced to the existing network: new corporate structures, safer financial routes, additional intermediaries, and ways to separate the Vincent name from the operations themselves.

Alexander hadn't inherited a criminal system and reluctantly tolerated it.

He'd modernized it.

Then Emory opened a map.

Countries were marked across the continent.

Some had notes attached.

"What are those?" I asked.

"Places where the network currently has influence."

Government contacts.

Businesses.

Families.

Properties.

Officials.

Then another map appeared.

Different markings.

Future targets.

I stopped breathing for a moment.

There were names.

Families.

Women.

Children.

Heirs.

Some were frighteningly young.

"What is that list?"

"We will."

He searched my face.

"Promise?"

I hesitated only because I didn't like making promises about things I couldn't completely control.

But this one I made anyway.

"I promise we'll look for everyone."

Oliver nodded.

Then he stared at me for a few seconds.

"My mom knew you."

I frowned.

"What?"

"She knew you."

"Oliver, I don't think I've ever met your mother."

"You did."

A strange sensation crawled over my skin.

"How?"

He looked toward Mr. Stait as though checking whether he was allowed to continue.

Mr. Stait nodded.

Oliver turned back to me.

"My mom used to tell me a story about a little girl."

I stopped moving.

"She was eight when they took her."

His mother.

"She said there was another girl where they kept her. A really little girl. Maybe four."

My fingers slowly tightened around the blanket.

Oliver continued.

"Mom said the little girl kept saying she wanted to go home."

Something inside me went cold.

"She wanted Mom to leave with her."

I couldn't breathe properly.

"But Mom was scared."

Images tried to form in my head.

Nothing came.

Only emptiness.

"She said the little girl wasn't scared like everybody else. She kept looking for ways out."

Oliver smiled faintly.

"Mom said she thought the girl was crazy."

My eyes burned.

"Then one day, the little girl escaped."

Silence.

"Mom didn't go with her."

Oliver looked down.

"She always regretted it."

I stared at him.

"Why do you think that was me?"

"Because she knew your name."

My heart stopped.

"Amber."

I closed my eyes.

Nothing.

I tried to remember being four.

A room.

A girl.

Running.

Anything.

There was nothing there.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I don't remember her."

Oliver didn't seem hurt.

"Mom said you were really little."

Mr. Stait was watching me carefully.

I pressed a hand against my forehead.

I'd known there were gaps in my earliest memories. I'd known I'd been recovered before lasting damage could be done.

But knowing something intellectually was very different from hearing that another child had remembered me for years.

"She said you changed her life."

I opened my eyes.

"How?"

"Because after you escaped, she knew it was possible."

My throat tightened.

"She didn't escape then. She was still too scared. But she said she never forgot the girl who did."

I couldn't speak.

At four years old, I had apparently done something I couldn't even remember.

I'd run.

And an eight-year-old girl who'd been too frightened to follow had remembered me.