Chapter 72: Shadows Of Who He Is

Chapter 72: Chapter 72: Shadows Of Who He Is

"Also..." Zoey began, but the word came out slowly, as though she had only just remembered something important.

Iris lifted her head, her gaze shifting toward her friend.

Zoey had migrated to the center of the bed, sitting cross-legged. One hand absently twisted the fabric of her shirt sleeve while the other rested heavy against her knee. The playful, mischievous glint that usually defined Zoey’s presence had vanished. In its place was a sharp, focused intensity—the same look she wore when she was dismantling a complex piece of code.

"After you left last week for Spokane," Zoey continued, her voice dropping an octave, "I decided I wasn’t going to just sit around and play the waiting game while there was a walking mystery standing right in front of us. I mean, really, Iris, the man is a puzzle box. So, I did what I do best. I tried to find out everything I could about him."

"Who? Alexander?" Iris interrupted, her voice sounding small in the quiet room.

Zoey turned her head slowly and gave her a deadpan look. "Yes, genius. Who else could possibly be important enough to have this many mysteries surrounding him? The man practically walks around with a neon sign over his head that screams, ’There is something seriously wrong with my life story.’"

A small, involuntary smile tugged at Iris’s lips. "Yeah, right. Sorry. Please, keep going." She made a small, inviting gesture with her hand.

Zoey shifted against the headboard, her posture becoming more animated. "So, I started digging about him in the web. Now, before you judge, I wasn’t doing anything illegal—at least not at first," she added, lifting a warning finger.

"I stuck to the surface: checking public records, business journals, those dry-as-dust financial reports, old university archives. Basically, I hunted for anything that could tell me who Alexander actually was beyond the ’billionaire with a face that-shouldn’t-be-legal’ aesthetic in forty-eight states."

Iris rolled her eyes, though the amusement remained. "Zoey, please."

"What? I’m just stating the facts!" Zoey laughed, a short, sharp sound.

A reluctant smile touched Iris’s lips before disappearing again.

"Anyway," Zoey continued, "That’s when I hit the jackpot, and found out that his full name is Alexander Grant. He isn’t just some rich guy; he is ...the...Alexander Grant of Grant Enterprises....how cool was that?"

Iris froze. The air in the room suddenly felt too thick to breathe. She stared at Zoey, her mouth slightly agape. "You knew? I cannot believe you found that out all this time and didn’t even think to mention it to me."

"I was going to," Zoey insisted.

"When, exactly?"

"When you got back to Seattle! I told you over the phone that I had a surprise for you, didn’t I? I wanted to surprise you."

"Surprise me?" Iris’s voice rose, her hands flying up in frustration. "Zoey, do you have any idea how I felt walking into that classroom today? The sheer, blinding shock of discovering that the man I had a one-night stand with was going to be my new professor and is now the person grading my papers?

She dragged both hands down her face. "I was mortified, Zoey. Absolutely, utterly mortified. I spent half the lecture wondering whether the entire room could somehow sense what had happened between us and could see the history of our night together written in neon letters across my forehead."

Zoey’s mouth twitched, her eyes dancing. "I highly doubt the other students have X-ray vision, Iris. And I doubt the students are psychic as well."

"That’s not the point! The point is....he just stood there, looking completely calm and composed, while I was practically vibrating with the urge to crawl underneath the desk and vanish into the floorboards."

"Okay, okay, I’m sorry," Zoey said, her voice softening. She reached over, squeezing Iris’s hand with a genuine warmth. "I really am. But I really did want to tell you but I hesitated to tell you because the more I found out, the less Alexander made sense. The math just wasn’t adding up."

Iris lowered her hands, her curiosity finally overriding her embarrassment. "What do you mean?"

Zoey’s grip loosened, her fingers drumming a nervous rhythm against Iris’s skin. "I don’t know how to explain it without sounding paranoid, or sounding like I’ve spent too much time on conspiracy forums."

"After everything that happened today, I think we’ve both earned the right to be a little paranoid."

That earned a brief smile from Zoey. "Fair point." She drew in a deep breath. "The more I looked into Alexander, the stranger it became. Everything about him looked perfect on the surface, he’s the gold standard of success.

Grant Enterprises, the real estate, the money, the properties, the strategic investments, the high-society connections. There were articles praising his business acumen going back years. Interviews. Photographs. Charity events. Corporate announcements. But that was the problem, Iris. It was all ...too...perfect. It felt curated. I just kept getting the feeling that there was something beneath everything we were seeing.

Everything we found were also too easy to find. It was almost as if the information people were supposed to see was sitting right there waiting for them."

Iris felt a chill settle in her stomach. "You think it’s a front? That he was hiding something underneath all of it."

"I’m not saying I knew what he was hiding."

Zoey’s eyes narrowed."I’m saying I knew there was something he didn’t want people looking for. So, I started digging again." Zoey paused. "And found that there were gaps."

"What kind of gaps?"

"The small things first," Zoey leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Like the total absence of a personal life...almost nobody seems to know anything personal about him. No childhood photos. No parents appearing beside him at major events. No mention of siblings anywhere, cousins, or an aunt in some distant town. There is absolutely nothing that explains where he actually came from."

Iris frowned. "Maybe he’s just private. Some people don’t like their family business in the press."

"I tried to tell myself that," Zoey nodded. "Until I went deeper."

The shift in Zoey’s tone made Iris stiffen. "What did you find?"

Zoey reached for her laptop, which had been resting in her bag that she dropped beside the bed earlier. She didn’t open it immediately; instead, she rested her palms flat against the lid, staring at Iris with a look of profound uncertainty.

"This is where it gets weird."

Iris waited, her heart hammering against her ribs.

"I found an old photograph," Zoey whispered. "A really, really old one."

Zoey finally opened the laptop and clicked on it. Then she flipped the screen open and turned it toward Iri.

"The quality was terrible. It looked like it had been scanned from some old archive, and whoever uploaded it hadn’t written much about it. But there was something about the man standing in the middle that caught my attention. At first, I thought I was imagining it."

Iris leaned in, her eyes scanning the image. "What am I looking at?"

Zoey gave her a strange, searching look. "You tell me." She tapped the trackpad, zooming in. "Iris, look at the man in the middle. He looks exactly like Alexander."

Iris’s brows knit together. "Exactly?"

"Exactly."

Zoey enlarged the image further. The photograph was a faded, sepia-toned relic, the edges frayed and yellowed by time. Three men stood before a sprawling, imposing estate, dressed in clothing belonging to a completely different era.

The man in the center possessed the same dark hair, the same carved jawline, and the same piercing blue eyes as Alexander. Even through the grain and the age of the photo, the resemblance was haunting.

Iris stared, and noticed that the resemblance was undeniable. But it was impossible. Her eyes moved slowly over the photograph in shock.

"He does look like him," Iris whispered, her voice trembling.

"I know."

"Actually quite alot..." Iris frowned. "Maybe... maybe it’s just an old photo of him?" Iris suggested, though she sounded unconvinced.

"With that quality?" Zoey countered. "It’s impossible Iris. Look at the degradation of the photo, Iris. It’s not a filter. And look at the clothes."

"Yeah the clothes," Iris nodded. "And the clothes...what are they wearing?"

"That’s what also caught my attention. Something that looked like it belonged to another century. Dark coats, high collars, old-fashioned trousers. The kind of clothes you see in those historical dramas where everyone looks like they’re about to attend a royal funeral in the nineteenth century."

Iris let out a shaky breath. "That’s... dramatic."

"It gets worse." Zoey pointed to a handwritten date etched beneath the image. "Look at that date written on the photo."

Iris leaned closer and saw the date 1891 written there and her breath hitched in her throat. "That’s over a hundred years ago."

"Exactly." Zoey sat back, a shiver visible in her shoulders. "And I swear, Iris, the moment I realized what I was seeing, I got goosebumps all over my arms."