Page 107 of Wanted

Damn, it all works against us. However… “We have the element of surprise in our favor.”

“Let’s inspect the surroundings and draw up a plan. We need to do this properly.”

Well, on that we can agree.

“You have an hour, Davis, after that, I’m going in, with or without a plan.”

We parked the truck on a side road about a mile from the old winery and carefully walked the rest, guided by a GPS.

Davis put some of his toys in a duffel bag, so we’re ready.

“Wait here,” he says, stretching his arm to stop my steps, we are on a small hill overlooking the house of the winery, which offers us a great vantage point to observe.

A man with a shaved head is smoking a cigarette outside. He’s full of tattoos, not the artistic kind, but more like the tattoos someone in a gang would wear. Using the binoculars Davis gave me, I observe his features. This isn’t my brother or whoever is claiming to be related to me, but he seems familiar. I’ve seen him before.

Then it hits me, the day of the assault. The pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

We can’t see inside, so we don’t know how many more there are waiting for me to show up.

Time passes and no one else comes out. When the sixty-minute deadline I gave Davis is up, I get up, I walk back to the truck and enter the property alone.

I continue with the plan, stopping in front of the ramshackle house. I turn off the engine and get out of the vehicle, immediately the door opens and it’s like seeing my reflection in a mirror.

“It took you long enough to find me, little brother,” the man says as he approaches me. I’m so surprised, I’m paralyzed for a few seconds. “I’ve waited for this moment for years—”

Now I understand Stella’s confusion, why it was so easy for him to pose as me. Like two drops of water.

Fuck.

“Where’s Stella?” I ask him, cutting his words off.

“She’s fine, don’t worry. She’s my wife after all,” he tells me with an arrogant smile. Fucking bastard.

“You mean my wife.”

He laughs again. “But I was the one who married her, wasn’t I?”

“Using my name, after you stole my identity,” I accuse him fearlessly. “I should thank you, I really liked the woman you chose for me.”

My words bother him a lot, his face turns red. He has feelings for Stella.

“You stole my life, in exchange, I’m going to take everything from you, including her.”

I clench my teeth. “O-o-over my dead body,” I tell him.

“That’s going to be easy, you poor stuttering jerk,” he scoffs again. “But first we are going to have a conversation, like brothers, I’ve been waiting thirty years for this.”

“I have no idea what you mean.” And it’s the truth. Until a few weeks ago I had no idea of his existence.

“The orphanage,” he begins. “We were there together. One day a rich family arrived looking for a child, the workers took me. When the Krals saw me, they fell in love and decided to adopt me.”

This matches with the information that my mother gave me. “What happened? Why did they end up taking me?”

“The people at the orphanage only care about the money. The Krals were willing to make a juicy donation, so they did what they had to do to make sure they took someone.”

“And why not introduce us both?” We were twins, I’ve heard of many parents who agree to adopt siblings, not to separate them.

“Like I said, they wanted to secure an adoption, a shy, sickly, and stuttering boy was going to ruin everything.”

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