Page 93 of A Convenient Secret

I boot up my computer and find Lily’s file I got from Summit Solutions. Pulling out her data, I start to search.

An hour later, I lean back in my chair, my eyes and mind straining to understand. As someone who’s been piecing people’s lineages together, I’m quite well-equipped in searching for relatives, especially with a history as recent as Lily’s.

But all of my usual publicly accessible sources come back empty. I follow my process, my curiosity piquing, trying to discover Lily’s family tree. A mother, a father, siblings, an old census record…

Except there’s nothing.

Not nothing in the way that makes sense—missing records aren’t uncommon. But this isn’t that. This is a dead end, so perfectly constructed it’s almost like someone built a wall where her past should be.

I rub my fingers over my jaw, narrowingmy eyes at the screen. I’m used to tracing lineages back centuries. Give me a name and a country, and I can usually uncover more details than a person even knows about their own history.

But Lily?

Lily Thorne is a ghost.

Her social security number checks out, which means on paper she exists. But everything else feels… off.

No rental history under her name. No paper trail. No traces of childhood school records, no medical history—none of the usual documentation that would back up a life lived.

I drum my fingers against the desk.

Did she change her name? Is she running from something? From someone? Who the fuck is this cousin who would leave her in a burning house? Not just leave her, but lock her in?

I brought her to my house; I trust her with my children. I fucking married her. I mean, I married a stranger, a woman I didn’t know, but I didn’t appreciate just how much I didn’t know about her.

“Here you are?” She saunters in, smiling sleepily.

She is wearing my white button-down, only one button done up, exposing her legs. It covers all the little secrets beneath the fabric, and I almost forget about her big secret.

“You should only wear my shirt.” I click out of all the tabs, so only my desktop shows on the screen, my kids grinning at me from a pic on my background.

“Are you working?” She rounds the desk and sits in my lap, wrapping her arms around me.

“No, I was looking for your cousin.” I watch her face closely.

She tenses and moves to stand, but I tighten my grip on her.

She sighs. “Declan, I don’t want you to search for him. Nothing good can come out of it. I don’t want to confront that part of my life. Can you accept that?”

My instincts scream at me to trust her. But the evidence behind her on my computer raises questions. Do I have the right to ask them?

I tuck a strand behind her ear. “I’ll try.”

She brushes her lips against mine gently. “He bullied me for a very long time. The night of the fire was the last straw for me to pack up and leave that toxic environment. I came to New York and used my money to get into therapy, so I didn’t succumb to the ghost of his assaults. And I met Celeste, Saar, and Cora and created a life here. And then I met you, so a part of me is grateful for the previous experience, because without it, we wouldn’t be here.”

Fuck. Can she be any more perfect? I still want to find and destroy the bully. I still have a lot of questions,but she confided in me, and I need to create a safe space for her to share more. I’m painfully aware I don’t deserve her trust.

“Thank you for sharing that with me.” I stroke her cheek.

She hugs me tight, holding me strongly like she fears I may disappear.

“I don’t want you to worry about it anymore. I’m fine. Or getting there.” Her warm breath fans my shoulder.

Stroking her back, I bury my face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the essence of her. “I’ll try. I’ll focus on family trees that I was actually asked to create.”

She shifts, and my dick gets ideas. “It’s a really nerdy hobby, but somehow it’s sexy on you, Declan Quinn.”

“Nerdy? My amateur sleuthing gets me ladies,” I taunt her.