"Why did you take my watch?" the old man asked, his voice dropping to a confused, heartbroken whisper. "Why are you looking at me like you hate me?"
Charles didn't answer. He turned his back, staring blankly at the glass facade of the hotel. He reached into his coat, his fingers wrapping tightly around both heavy gold watches, preparing to make a phone call that would make the old man disappear permanently.
The service alley behind the hotel was dark, reeking of wet cardboard and commercial dumpsters. The rain funneled down between the brick high-rises, hitting the pavement with a deafening roar.
Charles stood under the slight overhang of a shipping door, a lit cigarette trembling slightly between his fingers. He had dismissed the security guard with a hundred-dollar bill, claiming his "private security" would handle the vagrant from here.
Ten feet away, the man who was legally William Sterling sat slumped on a wooden pallet against the brick wall. He was shivering violently, his arms wrapped around his thin torso. He didn't look like a threat to a corporate empire. He looked like a stiff breeze would kill him.
But Charles knew better. That frail body contained the DNA that could destroy everything Charles had built.
Charles pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over the speed dial for Marcus—his chief "fixer." Marcus was a man who handled corporate espionage, blackmail, and, for the right price, people who needed to be quietly relocated without a trace. A van would arrive. William would be thrown in the back. He would be dropped off at an unlicensed long-term care facility in the rural Midwest under a John Doe intake, heavily sedated for the rest of his short life.
It was clean. It was safe.
But as Charles looked at the phone, a horrible thought occurred to him.
Why was William in Chicago? The crash had happened in California. How had an amnesiac vagrant managed to cross the country and end up standing outside the exact hotel where his billionaire brother was attending a gala?
Charles pocketed the phone and walked slowly toward the old man.
William flinched as Charles approached, pulling his knees up to his chest. "Don't hit me again," he mumbled, his voice raspy.
"Look at me," Charles commanded.
William didn't move.
Charles reached down, grabbing the man’s wet, matted hair, and yanked his head back. William cried out, his pale blue eyes wide with terror.
Up close, the resemblance was undeniable. The scar through William’s left eyebrow was new—likely from the crash—but the slight crook of his nose was exactly the same. But it was the collarbone that Charles needed to see. When William was ten years old, he had shattered his clavicle falling off a horse. It had required three steel pins.
Charles ruthlessly yanked the collar of William’s torn shirt down. There, across the pale, dirt-streaked skin, was a distinct, raised surgical scar, old and faded.
Complete confirmation.
Charles shoved the man back against the brick wall. He pulled out the battered gold watch from his pocket and dangled it by its broken chain mechanism.