Page 138 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

I’m glad Gail never found out about our little game. Marvin’s not a good person, but he’s her family. I should’ve canceled the tests. I’d meant to before Bellcore blew up. Because what does it matter now?

Listlessly, I pull open the tab on the envelope and pull out the results, knowing what they’ll say—Marvin is her nephew. He always was her nephew. He produced an heirloom. He looks like Gail.

But apparently I’ll do anything to put off having to release Tabitha from going on a birthday date, so I pull out the report.

Written in stark letters, above the list of numbers and strange little charts, is “excluded” and “0.00015.”

It takes a moment for my mind to make sense of what I’m looking at. I check it, and double-check it.

According to these results, Marvin is not a relative of Gail. Excluded as a relative.

My blood thunders.

I read the accompanying text, which only confirms my understanding.

Could it be a mistake? I get my PI on the phone. “I’m looking at these DNA results. But I’m not sure what to think about what I’m seeing.”

“I was just going to call you,” he says. “I got those this morning, too. I lit a fire under the other lab I used and that just came back negative. It’s probably working its way through your mailroom. You were right. The guy’s not who he says he is.”

“You don’t sound surprised,” I say.

“Well, you cut off the investigation, but I had a few leads in progress, so I kept them cooking. None of it felt right.”

“He produced an obscure family heirloom,” I say. “I can’t believe this DNA could possibly be accurate.”

“No question it’s accurate,” my PI says.

“How do you account for the heirloom?”

“Are you sitting down?” he asks.

“Just tell me. You have reason to believe Marvin’s a fraud other than this DNA?”

“We found out that Pete Wydover was involved with Gail’s sister,” he says.

“What?”

“Way back—it was after she left her family behind, but before she died. She stayed at the Wydover summer home in Martha’s Vineyard some thirty years back.”

“What?” I bark. “How did that not come out before?”

“Because you hire the best, my friend,” my PI says. “Wydover and Gail’s sister, Dana, had a short secret fling, it turns out. I’m guessing Dana stayed at his place and left a lot of her things there before traipsing off on her next adventure. That’s probably how he got the heirloom. We traced her all over the place. We interviewed some of her friends from that time. She went hard-core vagabond after that. She did a lot of things, but she never had a kid.”

“She knew Wydover,” I say, putting it all together in my mind.

My PI explains that Pete Wydover was a rich kid who threw lots of parties, which I already knew. He not only dated Dana briefly, but he also knew Bob Bell of Bellcore, which is how he knew about Bellcore’s shady, mobbed-up connections.

“How did nobody turn up these connections?” I say.

“Again,” he says. “The best PI.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep going,” I say.

My PI tells me that Marvin and Wydover were both in Atlanta at the same time two years back. He learned through a highly illegal credit card trace that Wydover was a customer at a bar where Marvin was bartending the night of a Falcons game. He actually got security footage of them leaving the place together hours after bar time.

I’m reeling. “I can’t believe it.”

“Pretty fucking amazing if I do say so myself,” he says. “I believe Wydover was sitting on those puzzle pieces for years—he trades in puzzle pieces just like you do, Rex. You guys are puzzle guys.”

---