Run, Girl (If You Can)

Chapter 218: A Fake Identity

Keeley took a deep breath before texting Aaron on her lunch break. She was so nervous and indecisive that she could hardly stomach her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Finally, she forced herself to push the send button.

'Commuting is terrible so I'll take you up on your offer. Can you help me move the rest of my stuff over after work?'

He didn't reply for fifteen minutes, which wasn't like him. Normally he responded instantly.

'Yes. What time do you get off? I'll pick you up'

She told him and then he didn't respond anymore. Maybe he was busy.

No matter, she had done what she had to do. Now she had to force herself not to think about it too much so she couldn't freak out. Her research required focus and she only had ten minutes left of her lunch break.

===

The hand holding his phone trembled. Aaron couldn't believe it. She said yes. She was going to stay with him, albeit temporarily. It was the best news he had heard in a long time.

He didn't know how to respond once she told him she got off at five. He had to play it cool so she wouldn't get freaked out and change her mind. This was the one thing he absolutely couldn't mess up in this life!

Glancing at the clock, he saw it was only 1:07. He couldn't get away with leaving until 4:30 at the earliest. How was he supposed to concentrate until then?!

His phone dinged and he pounced on it eagerly. Was it Keeley again?

No. It was Aiden, telling him to check his email because he had assembled a file on Graydon Meyer. It certainly took him long enough.

Though to be fair, there had been a lot of other assignments on his plate that were more pressing. Alistair had been meeting with Brann Knighton in his office frequently and since the office itself wasn't bugged, Aiden had to monitor a whole bunch of other nearby footage to see if he could pick up anything.

Why didn't they bug the office? Because Alistair would have noticed it for sure. He was a paranoid man.

Aaron opened his email inbox and the temperature in the room progressively dropped the more he read. This man…could he be the one he had been looking for?

Graydon Meyer was twenty-nine years old, the owner of a popular app development company called Appzoid, and he suddenly sprang into existence eleven years ago as a freshman at MIT. His name sounded familiar because he was a prominent playboy and was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in New York, right up there with Aaron.

Aiden was a skilled hacker. If there were no records of this man before 2002 it was because he was using a fake identity.

If Graydon Meyer was the man who fathered Lacy's child, he had to hold some grudge against the Hales. Aaron had a feeling that his original identity was the puzzle piece he needed to make sense of it all. Nobody completely innocent would go through the hassle of changing their name.

'Find me this man's original identity. I don't care how long it takes' he ordered.

'Aye aye, captain!' Aiden replied instantly.

Aaron sighed and leaned his head against the back of his leather office chair. If Graydon Meyer was who he thought he was, he was just as instrumental in destroying Keeley as Lacy had been.

Max may have been the one to drive the car but Lacy had ordered it, possibly at her lover's command…He didn't know much about what happened back then since the mysterious baby daddy never showed himself. What he did know was that the man had a personal grudge against Aaron and wanted to steal his wealth and position away by using Lacy.

Aaron wasn't an idiot; he knew the child wasn't his when Lacy tearfully showed up at his office begging him to take responsibility. He had never touched the woman.

She then spun a weepy tale about how someone had tricked her into believing that the man she slept with was Aaron so she needed his help. He didn't know whether or not she was telling the truth but from that he was able to guess that someone was trying to use this child to get a foothold inside the Hale family.

Everyone in the circle knew that Keeley wasn't capable of having children because seven years had passed and, to their knowledge, she hadn't been pregnant once. If someone came forward claiming to have a Hale child, it was assumed that it would be accepted immediately.

Aaron figured the true father of the child wanted to use the baby as a weapon to destroy the Hales from the inside out. The real question was why. Why would he go so far? And why did he give up immediately once Keeley was dead?

That baby ended up being adopted by a nice family when Lacy went to prison. It was only six months old at the time. Why hadn't the father come forward to claim it?

Giving up after Keeley died was the most perplexing part of this man's plan. Aaron didn't think he was the type to step away simply because Plan A failed. He thought the man was after his assets…was he only after his happiness all along?

That wouldn't make sense. Everybody thought he wasn't in love with Keeley at that point in time. They were on the verge of divorce; all of high society had been talking about it.

There had to be an explanation for all of this but it wasn't likely he would ever hear it. All of the parties involved had no memories of what they did in his previous life. Even if Graydon Meyer was the man he was looking for and Aaron confronted him now he wouldn't be able to ask why things played out the way they did.

So annoying. Aaron's hands clenched into fists under the table.

'If you are who I think you are…you're dead,' he thought viciously.

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