Chapter 4

Ten minutes later, the department head of the archive department handed me a stamped request acceptance notice.

When I walked out of the clerk's office, the sunlight was glaring.

I had just put the papers into my bag when three tattooed men surrounded me.

Lex stepped out beside a white SUV and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head. "Zephyr, do you really have to go this far?"

I glanced at the street thugs. "Did you switch careers and start filming crime dramas?"

His expression darkened. "Don't get smart with me. If you cancel the record, I'll go to the entrance of your company and hang banners."

"And what will they say?" I asked.

He smiled. "That you forced your cousin to marry in your place so you could marry into a rich family. About how you stole the child shamelessly and how you were a kept man."

I nodded. "Quite a vocabulary."

He came closer and lowered his voice. "It's not easy for you to get where you are today, isn't it? A big company in Oceanton, a respectable position. Once this blows up online, what will you have left?"

My eyes moved over the limited-edition watch on his wrist. "How much did the Davies family give you in the divorce?"

His eyes flickered.

I continued, "Five million dollars?"

He took a step back.

Lex had signed a divorce agreement using my identity and taken five million dollars. This was more than simply a case of identity theft. I said, "This is pure fraud."

Lex's lips began to tremble.

I stepped forward. "Negating the marriage record is only the first step. The second step is recovering the money you took. The third step is to make you explain where the child came from."

One of the tattooed men behind him cursed and reached out to shove me. I grabbed his wrist with one hand and held up my phone with the other.

The screen showed 911. "Touch me at all, and this stops being a civil dispute. It becomes an assault."

The tattooed man froze.

Then, I walked past them.

Lex screamed from behind me, "Zephyr! You will regret this!"

-

That afternoon, I sorted the documents in my hotel room. In identity theft cases, the hardest part was not proving who I was. It was proving that the other person was not me.

I arranged my 2018 check-ins, flight records, hotel stays, and project contracts in a timeline, then turned them into a table.

At seven that night, someone pounded on my door.

I looked through the peephole and saw Jessie kneeling at the door, holding a bottle of pesticide. People had already gathered in the hallway.

She cried and shouted, "Zephyr! You ungrateful son! Are you trying to drive your mother to suicide?!"

I did not open the door.

She kept wailing. "I raised you all these years, and now you want to send your cousin to prison over a little money! Your father will never forgive you from the grave!"

The onlookers began whispering.

I stood inside the room, my heart calm.

The day my father died when I was little, Jessie had cried like this too. She held me and said that from then on, all she had was me. The next month, she brought Lex to live in our home, saying my uncle and aunt were too busy and had no one to care for him. Back then, I truly believed she was a good person who cared about family.

Outside the door, Jessie twisted open the pesticide bottle cap, and a sharp smell drifted in. "If you don't agree to withdraw the case today, I'll die at your door!"

I opened the door.

Jessie immediately said, "Zephyr, I know you're someone soft-hearted. Hurry and sign this. Tomorrow, tell the clerk's office this was all a misunderstanding..."

I took out my phone and called 911 in front of her. "Hello, someone here is holding what appears to be pesticide in a hotel hallway, causing a commotion. There is a risk of self-harm. The address is..."

Jessie's sobbing stopped.

I stared at her and said, "If you want to die, do it at the hospital. Don't dirty the hotel carpet."

The people in the corridor gasped.

Jessie stood and was about to curse me when the elevator dinged and opened. Four men in black came out, and they quickly separated the people on both sides of the hallway.

Then, a woman stepped out of the elevator.

She wore a tailored suit with a coat draped over one arm. Her presence was so cold that everyone instinctively fell silent.

I only needed one glance to guess who she was.

Lindsay.

The ex-wife in my household registration system.