Chapter 68: The Brother
Ethan Brooks opened the door with a pencil behind one ear and plaster dust on his sleeve.
That was the first thing Chloe noticed, not the eyes.
She had prepared herself for the eyes and failed anyway.
They were her father’s eyes, darker from distance, younger from ignorance, and completely unprepared for the woman standing on his porch with a leather folder held like evidence in a trial he had never known existed.
Ethan looked from Chloe to Leo, then to the black car idling at the kerb.
“Can I help you?”
His accent carried Sydney sun, but his caution belonged to anyone raised without old money to soften the edges of strangers.
Chloe almost said his name, and she almost said brother.
Instead, she said, “I am Chloe Alden. I believe we need to talk about Edward Alden.”
The colour moved out of his face by one shade.
“Never heard of him.”
That was a lie, not a guilty lie, but a defensive one.
The kind a man told when life had taught him that unexpected names usually arrived with bills, grief, or both.
Chloe nodded towards the half-built scale model visible beyond him, a clean structure of timber, glass, and impossible patience.
“You’re an architect.”
“Mostly housing design. Nothing glamorous.”
“My father liked buildings that solved problems before people noticed the problem existed.”
Ethan stared at her, then stepped aside.
The house was modest, bright, and full of drawings pinned to walls: community flats, flood-resistant terraces, public spaces designed with more kindness than budget, and no trace of the luxury Chloe had expected to resent.
Chloe saw her father’s mind there before she saw any proof.
That hurt.
At the kitchen table, she placed the envelope down but did not open it for him.
“You were born under another name.”
Ethan’s laugh was short and empty.
“That’s a fairly bold line to walk into someone’s house with.”
“I know.”
“Are you a journalist? Lawyer? Debt collector?”
“Family.”
The word landed badly, and he stood so quickly the chair scraped the floor.
Leo shifted near the doorway, but Chloe lifted one hand.
No. This was not a boardroom.
This was a life about to split open.
She slid the DNA reference packet across the table.
“I do not want anything from you. I am not here to take your home, your name, or your past. I am here because my father left a road, and it led to you before anyone else could close it.”
Ethan opened the packet with fingers that became less steady with every page.
Birth record. Guardianship trail. Photograph.
Then the DNA comparison.
The room became unbearably bright.
Ethan sat down as if his legs had stopped accepting instructions.
“This says…”
“It says we share a father.”
He covered his mouth with one hand.
For a moment, Chloe saw a grown man, a lost boy, and a stranger she already wanted to protect, all occupying the same chair beneath the kitchen’s ordinary morning light.
She placed a small drive beside the papers.
“There are videos. Letters. His voice. You do not have to watch today.”
Ethan looked up, eyes wet and furious.
“You expect me to believe my whole life was an administrative note in some rich man’s war?”
“No,” Chloe said. “I expect you to be angry before you are ready to believe anything.”
Then she stood, because leaving felt cruel and staying would have been crueler.
At the door, she turned back once. “When you want answers, I will be here.”
On the flight home that night, somewhere over black water, Chloe’s phone lit with a message from an unknown number.
I am watching it. He sounds like me.