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That’s the way she felt as she entered the bank The three tellers turned to look at her, s to be replaced by looks of surprise And two of the loan officers’ expressions ain, maybe it was because of the handso her Not often did one enter a bank with an entourage of wolfish-looking guys
In that instant, Alicia felt incredibly lucky The other men uard the entrance Jake stuck by her side, while To them
She hoped that from the concerned looks on the staff’s faces, they didn’t think she and the men intended to rob the bank She and Jake approached the woe of the vault The woman led the way, then unlocked and pulled the safe-deposit box out for theister, she left them alone
Alicia lifted the lid of the steel box with trepidation, while Jake looked on as if she were opening a treasure box or a booby-trapped reelittered, catching Alicia’s eye She pulled it out from under the papers and stared at the carat diaiven this to her , why had he left her?
Jake watched but didn’t say anything
She moved aside more papers and found a little black book Inside were tons of dates and figures and initials, but none of it made any sense
"Looks like some kind of code," Jake said
"But ouldlike this?"
"Maybe it wasn’t hers"
Alicia looked up at Jake "Tony’s?"
"Might have been his"
Alicia glanced back at the ring, wondering about her father, wondering if what her mother had told her had really been true She opened an official-looking envelope Inside was her mother’s birth certificate She slipped it back in the envelope and opened another Alicia’s birth certificate She wasn’t going to look at it closely, figuring it was a copy of the one she had at home, until her hand brushed over the e why her inal embossed copies, and scanned the information Birth date, time of birth, Alicia’s name, her mother’s… all correct But when she looked at the father’s name--Antonio Frasero, she realized it wasn’t a naht-headed all at once
"Is so her distress
"This isn’t er over the embossed seal "Either that, or the one I had at ed"
"Let’s take it with us, and we’ll check it out What’s different about it?"
"My father’s name"
Jake looked troubled "What do you know about your father?"
"Nothing Just that he left us when I o No reason Just left That’s what my mother always told me When I asked her, she didn’t want to talk about him She would just wave away my question, but she’d beco it had been, I could tell she still loved hie, he never returned?"
She stared at Jake, then closed her gaping hShe’d half-expected to find divorce papers, a custody agreehts, parental financial support, sole support, son of…
She paused when she unfolded the last docue certificate to one Antonio Frasero
The same name on Alicia’s birth certificate in the safe-deposit box Antonio… Tony? The man who’d been her mother’s lover? And subsequently had been murdered near Continental Falls by Danny Massaro? Had Tony been her father? But he had to have had an alias then Tony Thomas Not Antonio Frasero And he’d been murdered Like her mother
"Alicia!" Jake called as her face turned as white as the tile floor, and she crumpled in his arms If he hadn’t seen the stricken look on her face, he probably wouldn’t have caught her in tie, along with To with her?" the bank clerk asked horrified
"Overco what else to say
"Oh, of course" The clerk’s cheeks grew pink with embarrassment