A Woman Worth Billions Dated the Wrong Brother novel Chapter 427

Blood Does Not Make Family

Jason POV

It was difficult to accept how easily a lifetime of supposed connections could disappear once you were forced to see them for what they really were.

You could spend years calling someone family. You could build memories around that word, make excuses because of it, forgive things you would never forgive from a stranger and convince yourself that some invisible connection existed simply because blood said it should. Then one day, you discovered that while you had been thinking of them as family, they had never thought of you the same way.

I believed that was part of the reason my anger toward Mr. White ran so deep.

I still had to consciously remind myself to call him that.

Mr. White.

Not Father.

For most of my life, I’d believed he was my biological father. He hadn’t raised me-not really-but that hadn’t erased the connection in my mind. Even after everything that happened between us, some part of me had continued seeing him through that old definition. He was the man whose blood I thought ran through my veins. The man I thought had created me, however much he might have regretted doing so.

Except he hadn’t.

Connor St. Johns was my father.

Mr. White had known that long before I did.

That was the part I still struggled to swallow.

He had known I wasn’t his son when I was a child. The ledgers proved it. He had certified that there was no paternal blood relationship between us and still allowed everyone around me to believe otherwise. He had allowed my grandparents to believe they were dealing with their daughter’s child’s father. He had helped move me like property and had been willing to sacrifice me for whatever purpose benefited him.

I had been a child.

That thought came back every time anger threatened to consume everything else.

I had been a child.

Whatever plans the adults around me had made, whatever alliances existed between families, whatever they wanted from the Suns, the St. Johns or anyone else, I had been a little boy who didn’t understand why the adults who were supposed to protect him kept hurting him.

It was difficult to understand how an adult could hate a child that much.

Harder still to understand how someone could look at a child who believed him to be his father and decide that child was disposable.

Maybe that was why I kept having to correct myself.

Mr. White.

Not my father.

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he call from Mr. Stait came before I could return to Amber’s room.

He had spoken with Jasmine and Noah after Jasmine sent him the recordings from the hotel. Whatever they had found was serious enough that he didn’t explain it over the phone. He simply told me to meet him in the makeshift office hospital administration had given us.

By the time I arrived, Mr. Asher was already there.

Someone had converted a small consultation room into something resembling a command center. Laptops covered one table, files had been stacked against the wall, and several phones were charging beside equipment I didn’t recognize. Mr. Stait stood at the far end of the table.

He didn’t ask how the babies were.

That told me immediately how serious this was.

Mr. Asher noticed it too.

“What did Jasmine find?”

Mr. Stait looked at both of us before answering.

“A lot.”

I moved my wheelchair closer to the table.

“Start talking.”

He turned one of the laptops around.

“There was more on the surveillance than the conversation about Mr. White’s possible location. Jasmine and Noah captured several conversations from that room. We’ve been cross-referencing names, calls, financial records and communications with information already recovered from the Vincent network.”

Mr. Asher’s face hardened at the name.

“Does this involve my sister?”

Mr. Stait didn’t answer immediately.

That was answer enough.

Mr. Asher slowly pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Tell me.”

Mr. Stait remained standing.

“The evidence currently points to your sister as the person who authorized the attack on Amber.”

Mr. Asher didn’t move.

I felt something cold settle inside me.

“Authorized?” I repeated.

“The intercepted conversations refer to an order coming from her. They discuss the nurse, Amber’s food and the

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contingency involving Jason.”

fingers tightened around the wheelchair.

The syringe.

Penicillin.

Something I was severely allergic to, mixed with another substance we still hadn’t completely accounted for.

Amber’s food had contained a sedative, botulinum toxin and aconite.

This hadn’t been one impulsive attack.

Someone had planned layers.

Mr. Asher stared at Mr. Stait.

“My sister ordered Amber poisoned?”

“That’s what the evidence currently indicates.”

Mr. Asher looked as though someone had struck him.

Mr. Stait continued carefully. “We are still verifying every piece before treating it as established fact. But this isn’t based on one ambiguous sentence. The recordings are supported by communications and information we’ve already recovered.”

“And Adrian?” Mr. Asher asked.

Mr. Stait’s expression became even harder.

“We believe her people took him.”

Mr. Asher stood so abruptly that the chair scraped backward.

“Where is he?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Is he alive?”

“We don’t know.”

Mr. Asher’s hands flattened against the table.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then his voice came out low.

“Why?”

“Because Adrian refused to cooperate.”

The room went still.

Mr. Stait pulled another file toward him.

“His father had been pressuring him to leave Asher Corporation and join the company they were building. Adrian refused. Based on what we’ve recovered, that refusal became a problem. His supposed work trip appears to have

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been used to remove him without immediately raising suspicion.”

Cara had believed her husband was away working.

She had kept calling him.

She had assumed his silence was because he was busy.

Meanwhile, Adrian might never have gone on a work trip at all.

“And the men at Clara’s building?” I asked.

“Still under investigation. We have reason to believe they’re connected, but I’m not going to tell you they were sent for Clara or the baby until we can prove it.”

I appreciated the distinction.

Mr. Asher didn’t seem capable of appreciating anything at that moment.

“My sister,” he whispered.

I looked at him.

There was something in his expression I recognized.

It wasn’t only anger.

It was betrayal.

The kind that came when the person hurting you had occupied a place in your life for so long that removing them meant tearing out part of your own history.

I knew that feeling.

Mr. White had taught it to me.

But Mr. Stait wasn’t finished.

“There is something else.”

Mr. Asher slowly looked up.

Mr. Stait hesitated for the first time since I’d entered the room.

That frightened me more than anything he’d said so far.

“What?” I asked.

“We’ve been reconstructing your sister’s connection to the Vincent network.”

Mr. Asher’s face changed.

“She worked with them?”

“She appears to have been working with Mr. White directly.”

My stomach twisted.

Mr. Stait continued. “Not recently. The evidence suggests the relationship goes back much further.”

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“How far?” Mr. Asher demanded.

Potentially decades.”

Nobody spoke.

Mr. Stait opened another file.

“Some of the older Vincent records we’ve recovered contain references we couldn’t place before. Family transfers. Protected identities. Bloodlines. There are repeated references to a male child connected to both the Vincent line and a branch of the Asher family.”

Mr. Asher stared at him.

I already knew I wasn’t going to like where this was going.

“What male child?” I asked.

Mr. Stait’s eyes moved to me.

“We believe there is a possibility that the records are referring to Mr. White.”

Mr. Asher went completely still.

I frowned.

“How?”

Mr. Stait looked back at Mr. Asher.

“Because we’re investigating whether your sister is Mr. White’s biological mother.”