Chapter 124 Casey learns the truth

Chapter 124 Casey learns the truth

Casey's POV

Michael had asked me to meet him privately, and I knew exactly what that meant. He had the DNA results.

He hadn't said it directly in his message, but he didn't need to. After everything we'd uncovered, after agreeing to the test and spending the last few days trying not to think about what the results might say, there was only one reason he would ask me to come to his office alone.

Still, knowing why I was there didn't make walking through his office door any easier.

I stood outside for several seconds with my hand hovering near the handle, trying to steady myself before I finally knocked.

"Come in."

I opened the door and Michael was standing beside his desk, and the moment I saw his face, my stomach tightened.

He looked serious and I closed the door behind me. "You have the results." It wasn't a question.

Michael nodded. "I do."

I swallowed and for some reason, that was harder to hear than I had expected. I walked toward the chair opposite his desk, but I didn't sit down immediately. My eyes went to the folder lying on the desk.

"Is that them?"

"Yes."

I finally lowered myself into the chair. Michael sat across from me, but for a moment neither of us spoke. I had spent days preparing myself for this moment. I'd told myself that whatever the results said, I would deal with it. If Alexander and Victoria weren't my parents, then at least I would finally know.

If they were I didn't know what came after that. I already knew they were alive and that wasn't the part that frightened me.

Michael had told me about them before the DNA test. He had told me that Alexander and Victoria believed their daughter had died twenty-two years ago, and that the evidence he'd uncovered suggested there was a possibility I was that daughter.

I'd even seen Victoria once at the hotel where I'd been singing. We'd exchanged only a few words, nothing more than a brief conversation between two strangers. Except she hadn't felt like a stranger, not completely. There had been something about her that had unsettled me, something I hadn't understood at the time.

I hadn't known then that the woman standing in front of me might be my mother but now I did and somehow that made the waiting worse.

Michael rested his hands on the desk. "The laboratory completed the analysis."

I nodded. "Okay."

He took a breath. "Casey, the results confirm that you are Alexander and Victoria Sterling's biological daughter."

I stared at him, for several seconds, I didn't move. I had known that was one of the possible answers and I had known it was what Michael was investigating. I'd known Alexander and Victoria were alive and I'd known they believed their daughter had died. I'd even spent days imagining what it might feel like if the DNA confirmed everything but none of that prepared me for actually hearing the words.

I looked at Michael. "So it's true."

"Yes."

My eyes dropped to the folder. "They're really my parents."

"They are."

I swallowed I couldn't seem to get enough air into my lungs. "I knew there was a chance."

"I know."

"I knew you were investigating them." I continue.

"I know."

"And I knew they were alive." I added.

Michael nodded.

"But knowing something might be true isn't the same as hearing someone tell you it is."

"No," he said quietly. "It isn't."

I looked away. Victoria the woman from the hotel and the woman I'd spoken to without knowing that she had carried me inside her body. Alexander a man I'd never met. A father who had spent twenty-two years believing his daughter was dead.

My parents.

The words felt strange, not because I didn't believe them, because I did, and that was terrifying. I rubbed my hands together, trying to steady myself. “Do Alexander and Victoria know?”

Michael nodded. “Yes. They know.”

I looked at him sharply. “They already know?”

“Alexander was the first person I called when we got the results,” he explained. “He knows, and Victoria knows too.”

I swallowed, my mind suddenly filled with everything that meant. They knew. They already knew that I was their daughter. “Then why didn't you tell me sooner?”

Michael's expression softened. “Because I wanted you to have this moment without everyone else around you.”

I stared at him.

“They already know the truth,” he continued gently. “But I wanted you to hear it from me, when you were ready to hear it, instead of having Alexander or Victoria tell you before you had a chance to process what it meant.”

I nodded slowly. That made sense. They knew. Everyone who needed to know already knew. Michael had simply made sure that, for once, I wasn't the last person to know something about my own life.

I appreciated that more than I could explain but there was another thought that wouldn't leave me alone. "If they're my parents..." My voice faltered. "Then they really did lose me."

Michael's expression softened. "Yes."

"And they really believed I died." I couldn’t help but to ask.

"Yes."

I looked down at my hands. "For twenty-two years."

"Yes."

I closed my eyes. That was the part that hurt. Not the fact that I had found my biological parents and not even the fact that everything I had been told about them being dead had been a lie. It was the thought of two people grieving a child who had never actually died.

While I had been growing up believing they were gone and while I'd been wondering what they looked like and while I'd been wondering whether they would have loved me and while I'd spent years asking myself why Rita and Loki had adopted me if they hated me so much.

My eyes burned. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this."

"You don't have to decide today."

"I know." I looked at him. "But I keep thinking about that night at the hotel." Michael didn't say anything. "I met Victoria without knowing who she was."

My voice softened. "She was kind to me." A sad smile touched my lips. "I remember thinking there was something familiar about her, even though I had no idea why." Michael watched me carefully. "I didn't know she was my mother."

"No."

"I didn't know she had spent twenty-two years believing her daughter was dead." I swallowed. "And she was standing right in front of me."

The realization made my chest ache.

Michael nodded slowly. "You couldn't have known."

"I know." I wiped beneath one eye. "But she looked at me." My voice broke slightly. "And I wonder what she would think if she knew."

Michael's answer was quiet. "I think she would want to know you."

My throat tightened. "How can you know that?"

"Because I've spoken to her."

I looked down. "Right."

Michael leaned back slightly. "Casey, I've watched Alexander and Victoria throughout this investigation. Whatever happens next, I don't believe either of them will blame you for the twenty-two years you were missing."

I laughed softly, but tears slipped down my cheeks. "They can't blame me."

"I know." He replied.

"I was a baby." I stated.

"I know."

"I didn't choose any of this."

"No."

I wiped my face. "But part of me is still scared."

"Of what?" He asked.

I looked at him. "What if they look at me and don't see their daughter?"

Michael remained silent for a moment and then he said, "Casey, they have spent twenty-two years grieving a daughter they believed they had lost. If the woman they've been searching for all these weeks is sitting in front of them alive, I don't think they're going to be looking for reasons to reject you."

My lips trembled. "I don't know how to be their daughter."

"You don't have to know yet." He softly reply.

"I don't even know them."

"Then start there."

I frowned slightly. "What do you mean?"

"Get to know them." He gave me a small smile. "Let them get to know you."

I looked down at the folder. The answer was there. The truth I'd spent my entire life unknowingly searching for. Alexander Sterling was my father and Victoria Sterling was my mother and neither of them had abandoned me. They had believed I was dead.

Someone had taken me from them and someone had allowed them to grieve while I grew up believing they had died. My hands began trembling and I pressed them together. "I always wondered why."

Michael waited.

"Why Rita and Loki adopted me if they hated me so much. Why they would take a child they didn't want." I swallowed. "I thought maybe there was something wrong with me."

Michael's expression tightened. "There was never anything wrong with you."

"I know that now." I looked toward the window. "But I didn't know it then." The tears finally fell freely. "I spent twenty-two years thinking my parents had died and that the people raising me simply didn't love me."

Michael's voice softened. "They didn't give you the truth."

"No." I shook my head. "They gave me a story."

He nodded. "And now you know it wasn't the truth."

I stared at him. Everything I had believed about my childhood seemed to be rearranging itself in my mind, not disappearing and not becoming meaningless just changing shape.

I had been adopted, that part had always been true. Rita and Loki had been the people who raised me and that was true too. But the reason behind it? The story of my biological parents? That had been a lie.

I looked at Michael. “Do they want to meet me?”

His expression softened. “They do.”

My heart tightened. “They already know I'm their daughter,” I said quietly.

Michael nodded. “They do.”

I looked down at my hands, suddenly unsure of what I was supposed to feel. “And they still want to meet me?”

“More than anything.”

I swallowed hard. “What if I don't know what to say?”

Michael gave me a gentle smile. “Then you don't have to say anything.”

I looked back at him.

“Just meet them,” he said softly. “The rest can come later.”

I nodded slowly, trying to imagine what it would be like to stand in front of the two people who had spent twenty-two years believing they had lost their daughter and now they knew I was her.

I took a shaky breath. I wasn't ready and I wasn't sure I ever could be but somewhere inside me, beneath the fear and confusion, there was something else, hope. I looked down at the folder one last time.

For twenty-two years, I had believed my parents were dead but now I knew they were alive and more than that they had been mourning me. The tears slipped down my cheeks again. "I don't know how to do this."

Michael gave me a gentle smile. "Neither do they."

I looked at him. "Then I suppose we'll have to figure it out together."

"Yes."

I nodded slowly. For the first time, saying the words didn't frighten me quite as much.

Together.

It was a strange word for three people who had never truly known one another but maybe that was about to change.