A Woman Worth Billions Dated the Wrong Brother novel Chapter 405

Make It Public

Amber POV

The St. Johns representatives returned the next morning with enough paperwork to make Jason regret having living proof of his ancestry.

I was still confined to the second bed in his hospital room, which gave me an excellent view as two folders became four, then six, before a tablet containing the complete preliminary inventory was placed in front of him.

Jason stared at it. “Is this all property?”

“Property, corporate holdings, trusts and associated assets,” the attorney explained. “The formal transfer will take time, but this gives you an overview of what has been preserved under the St. Johns trust.”

Jason scrolled through the list. There were properties in several countries, commercial buildings, residences, agricultural land and investment holdings that had continued accumulating value while the trust waited for a verified successor. Some properties had belonged to the St. Johns family for generations.

He stopped scrolling. “There’s an estate in Sum.”

“Yes.”

“How long has the family owned it?”

“Several generations.” 1

That caught my attention. The St. Johns had once been among the Ember family’s closest allies. Their family had vanished, yet pieces of their history had remained behind, preserved in trusts and deeds while everyone waited for someone carrying their blood to return.

The attorney eventually raised another matter.

“As the sole direct successor, you are also entitled to legally adopt the St. Johns surname.”

“No.”

The answer came immediately.

The attorney paused.

Jason looked up. “My name is Jason Sun.”

“Of course. I only wanted you to understand that the option-”

“I understand.”

His voice wasn’t harsh. It was simply certain.

Sun had been his mother’s maiden name. It belonged to the grandparents who had searched for him when he disappeared as a child, found him after he’d forgotten his own identity and brought him home.

Finding his biological father didn’t erase his mother.

Becoming a St. Johns successor didn’t make him less of a Sun.

The attorney nodded. “Then the succession documents will remain under Jason Sun.”

“Thank you.”

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Jason returned to the property list, and I smiled.

Some decisions didn’t require lawyers.

A knock came at the door twenty minutes later.

Mr. Stait entered carrying a folder. 1

The sight of him immediately shifted my attention away from the St. Johns estate.

“Island?”

He nodded.

Jason put his tablet aside.

Mr. Stait walked toward my bed. “The forensic teams finished the initial recovery from the newly opened underground sections.”

“Initial?” 1

“There are still areas being examined.”

Something tightened in my chest.

I held out my hand for the folder.

He didn’t give it to me.

That frightened me more than anything he could have said.

“How many?”

Mr. Stait looked at me.

“Two hundred and seventeen.”

For a second, I thought I’d misunderstood him.

“Bodies?”

“Sets of human remains.”

I stared at him.

“Two hundred and seventeen?”

“That’s the current count.”

Current.

Not final.

I looked at the folder again.

I’d expected a list.

Maybe twenty people. 1

Even that would have been horrifying.

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2/8

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Two hundred and seventeen wasn’t a list.

was a population.

Mr. Stait finally handed me the folder.

I opened it.

There weren’t names on the first page.

There were numbers.

Unknown Male.

Unknown Female.

Unknown Juvenile.

Estimated ages appeared beside some. Approximate recovery locations appeared beside others. The condition of the remains varied enough to suggest the dead hadn’t arrived on the island together.

I turned the page.

More numbers.

Another page. 1

More.

I stopped halfway through.

“How long?”

Mr. Stait knew what I meant.

“We don’t know yet. Some remains appear to have been there for decades. Others are significantly more recent.”

My fingers tightened around the paper.

I remembered arriving on that island for the competition.

The flags.

The beaches.

The forests.

The ridiculous strategies we’d created because we’d believed we were participating in a military competition.

Then people started dying.

We learned the island owner had been blackmailed. We learned wealthy families had paid to use parts of the island as a hunting ground. People had been kidnapped, released into the wilderness and hunted.

I’d known that.

But until that moment, some part of my mind had still treated the words human hunting ground as a description of what had happened there.

Two hundred and seventeen bodies made me understand what it really meant.

3/8

It had been routine.

People had arrived on that island knowing they were about to hunt another human being.

Someone had transported the victims.

Someone had guarded them.

Someone had released them.

Someone had cleaned up afterward.

And then another group had come.

I looked down again.

A woman estimated to have been in her twenties.

A man perhaps in his fifties.

Another woman.

Another man.

Then-

Unknown Juvenile. Estimated age: 7-10.

My eyes stopped.

I couldn’t turn the page.

Jason noticed,

“What?”

I didn’t answer.

He understood anyway.

“Children?”

I nodded.

Mr. Stait’s voice was quiet. “Yes.”

“How many?”

“The age assessments aren’t complete.”

I looked at him.

“How many?”

He hesitated.

“Dozens.”

My hand went instinctively to my stomach.

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Alice was five.

Alex was six.

Rose was still so young.

Iris had already survived things no child should have understood.

I looked at the estimated age again.

Seven to ten.

Someone had brought a child to that island.

Not to sell.

Not to hide.

Not even to use as leverage.

To hunt.

I closed the folder because suddenly I couldn’t look at another number.

For a moment, none of us spoke.

Then I remembered the underground chamber we’d found during the competition.

The women. 1

Oliver.

The evidence.

All that time, there had been more beneath our feet.

While we planned routes across the island, someone was buried below us.

While we argued over flags, someone was buried below us.

While helicopters came and went and soldiers moved through the forest, more than two hundred people had been waiting underground for somebody to find them.

The island belonged to me now.

The thought made me sick.

“Can they identify them?” Jason asked.

“We’re trying,” Mr. Stait said. “DNA, dental records, missing person databases. We’re also comparing the numbered remains against the mine records and Oliver’s evidence. With victims potentially originating from multiple countries, identification will take time.”

“Then tell people.”

Mr. Stait looked at me.

I met his eyes.

“Make it public.”

5/8

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“Amber, we have an active multinational investigation.”

(m not asking you to release evidence.”

“Public disclosure this early creates complications.”

“So does keeping two hundred and seventeen missing people secret.”

“They aren’t all confirmed missing persons yet.”

“They were people.”

My voice cracked on the last word.

I hated that it did, but I didn’t take it back.

“They were people before we gave them numbers.”

Mr. Stait said nothing.

I opened the folder again and looked at the first page.

“Somebody knows these faces. Somebody remembers these voices. Families may have spent decades believing their children ran away, their parents abandoned them or their siblings simply disappeared. If we say nothing, those families don’t even know they should contact investigators.”

“We would need to protect forensic details.”

“Then protect them. Don’t release photographs of the remains. Don’t release information that could compromise identification. Don’t publish names before families are contacted.”