Chapter 83: Erling Rafferty, Contract?

Chapter 83: Chapter 83: Erling Rafferty, Contract?

Garrett opened the file.

The first page gave him a name immediately.

ERLING RAFFERTY

Everything in him went still. That was his father’s name. He didn’t need to read it twice to confirm it, There was no mistake. Erling Rafferty. His father.

Below it sat a formal contract record, the language cold and procedural in the way legal documents always seemed to be.

CONTRACT TERMINATION NOTICE

Contract Holder: Mr. Erling Rafferty

Status: Terminated

Reason for Termination: Material breach of contractual obligations and failure to comply with the terms and conditions governing the agreement.

Following a review of the relevant contractual requirements, the above breaches had been determined to constitute sufficient grounds for immediate termination of the agreement.

Garrett read it twice, his pulse picking up beneath an expression he kept carefully neutral. The wording was almost painfully impersonal. No argument or explanation. No details about what had actually happened. Just a contract, a breach, and a termination.

His father had run a large business. It had failed badly enough that the family had struggled afterward. Garrett knew that much, knew things had gone wrong, knew money had gotten tight. But he’d never once heard Alexander Vane’s name connected to any of it. Never heard the Vane family mentioned. Never heard his father talk about a contract like this.

What kind of agreement required a document like this? Material breach could mean almost anything, a missed obligation, a violated condition, something serious enough that Alexander’s people had decided to end the arrangement entirely rather than work through it.

Garrett scanned the page again, searching for a company name, a project title, a date, anything that might give the document more shape.

There wasn’t enough. More pages sat behind it, unread. Beside him, Emiliana kept talking about something on a nearby shelf, her voice fading into the background.

The discovery settled uncomfortably in his chest. His father had never told him. Their relationship had never exactly been the kind where the man sat him down and explained his past in any detail, but this felt different.

This wasn’t some forgotten job from twenty years ago, the same man whose daughter Garrett now stood beside, the same family that had apparently known more about his father than Garrett ever had.

’Why? What had the contract been for. What had actually happened between them. And how had Garrett grown up without hearing a single word of it?’

"Rafferty?"

Emiliana’s voice cut through his thoughts. Garrett looked up. She was pointing at the file. "Isn’t that your surname?"

He kept his expression even. "Yeah."

She glanced at the page again. "Do you know this person? Erling Rafferty?"

For a fraction of a second, Garrett considered telling her the truth, that Erling was his father, that he had no idea why the man’s name was sitting inside Alexander’s private files, that he was just as confused as she was. The honest answer would have been simple. The consequences wouldn’t.

His eyes moved briefly toward the door, then back to her.

If Emiliana told her father that Garrett had discovered his father’s name in a private file, there was no telling what would happen. At worst, Alexander could make sure Garrett never got another chance to look into whatever connection existed between their families. He needed answers before giving anyone a reason to stop him from finding them.

So he lied.

"Not really," he said, keeping his voice steady. "My father’s name is Johnson. Johnson Rafferty."

Emiliana’s brow furrowed slightly. "Oh." She looked at the file once more, then back at him. "That’s... a pretty strange coincidence."

"Yeah..."

Garrett closed the folder before she could look any closer and returned it to the shelf with deliberate casualness. "Probably just a coincidence."

He didn’t believe that for a second. But Emiliana accepted it with a small shrug and turned her attention elsewhere. The lie had worked. For now, That was enough.

She gestured toward the far wall. "Come here. There’s something you’ll actually like."

Garrett gave the shelf one last glance before following her to a glass display case built into the wall. Inside sat several watches in individual compartments, old fountain pens, cufflinks, a few pieces of university memorabilia, things that looked like they’d accumulated over decades rather than been bought together for display. Nothing screamed for attention.

"My father’s always been particular about this stuff," Emiliana said.

"Even his casual possessions probably cost more than most people’s cars."

She laughed. "This one especially." She tapped the glass over a plain, unremarkable-looking watch. "He’s had it since before I was born. Refuses to replace it even though he could buy fifty better ones without blinking."

Garrett leaned closer. The watch wasn’t impressive, just old, clearly belonging to another period of the man’s life. "Sentimental, then."

"More than he’d ever admit out loud."

"You sound pretty sure."

"I’ve known him my entire life."

"Fairs."

She moved along the display, pointing out a fountain pen that had been a graduation gift, one he still used sometimes.

"That’s actually worse," Garrett said.

"Worse?"

"Keeping an old watch is sentimental. Using an old pen when you can afford a thousand new ones is just stubborn."

She laughed. "That sounds like him."

They moved through the rest of the collection, Emiliana rattling off a couple more stories. Garrett asked easy questions, enough to keep her talking, and for a few minutes it actually worked. Alexander wasn’t only the name behind the Vane fortune, the expectations, the connections, whatever history he shared with Garrett’s father.

Emiliana seemed completely at ease talking about him this way, no tension in her voice, just familiarity. Garrett let himself follow the conversation for a few minutes before his mind pulled back to the file.

Erling Rafferty. His father. Whatever connection existed between the two families hadn’t started with Garrett. It had started years ago, possibly before he’d even been born.

"Should we head back over there?" Emiliana asked eventually, nodding toward the other side of the suite.

"Sure."

He followed her, and as she turned away, his eyes drifted back to the shelf of files. He waited until her attention had fully shifted, then stepped back, quiet and unhurried. His hand found the folder again. He pulled it free, though he didn’t open it this time. He already knew what was inside.

He held it for a moment. There was one person he needed to ask first. His father. Garrett had already planned to call him about the £175,000 sitting untouched in his account, money he had no real idea what to do with beyond knowing he didn’t want to waste it. His father had run a business once, and things had gone badly, but that didn’t mean the man knew nothing about money. Garrett had been putting off that conversation partly because their relationship had never been easy. Now he had a reason he couldn’t keep putting off. A much better one.

He slipped the file into his jacket, careful to keep the movement small, and followed Emiliana across the room a moment later, his expression settled back into its usual calm.

"You coming?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder.

"Yeah."

She smiled and continued on. Garrett followed, his face giving away nothing while his thoughts sat somewhere else entirely.

There was only one way to find out.

He glanced ahead at Emiliana, then briefly down at the jacket covering the file.

He was calling Dad.