Page 59 of Buried Secrets

“We need to talk, Kaitlin,” he said, his voice steadier than he felt.

Her smile faltered as she registered his posture, the folder in his hand, the absence of warmth. “Matt? What’s happened?”

“I received the DNA report from Samira today.” Matt held up the folder. “The one identifying possible relatives of our second victim.”

Shock flickered across Kaitlin’s face. She took a single step backward, her hand finding the table as support while she lowered herself into a chair.

“And?” she said, cautiously neutral.

“Your name is on it.” Matt held her gaze steadily.

Kaitlin paled, her eyes wide. A pang of regret struck him in the gut, and he resisted the urge to take her in his arms.

“How?” she managed to whisper.

“Never mind that.” Matt’s voice hardened with the anger he’d been controlling all afternoon. “Because all I see is someone who lied to me about why she came to this island. Who invented a fictional employer and research project. Who slept with me while withholding fundamental truths about her presence here.”

“I didn’t lie about the research,” Kaitlin countered. “I am researching the mansion’s history and operations.”

“For a mystery writer client? Or for yourself? To find your birth mother.”

Kaitlin met his gaze directly. “Does it matter? The research is the same either way.”

“It matters to me.” Matt stepped further into the kitchen, closing some of the distance between them without fully bridging it. “It matters that you didn’t trust me with the truth. Even now.”

“I barely knew you,” Kaitlin protested. “And when I arrived, you treated me like a suspect. Then when things changed between us, it became harder to explain why I hadn’t told you from the beginning.”

“So you continued lying,” Matt concluded flatly.

Kaitlin’s composure wavered with genuine distress. “I was planning to tell you… soon. After I was certain about what I’d found.” She gestured toward the folder. “I had to come, Matt. I have to know what’s in that folder.”

“Know what, exactly?” Matt asked. “What are you really looking for here, Kaitlin?”

“The truth!” The words burst from her with sudden intensity. “About who I am. Where I came from. Why my birth mother gave me away. Why my parents paid over a hundred thousand pounds for me.”

“Perhaps you can ask her yourself.”

Her breath caught. He instantly regretted his words but refrained from moving from his spot.

“The database lists the victim as Marissa Lane’s sister. You are the victim’s niece,” he told her. “Marissa Lane is your biological mother.”

Kaitlin seemed gutted, yet Matt couldn’t simply surrender his anger without addressing the deception that preceded it.

“You should have told me,” he said, his voice lower now but no less intense. “If not when we first met, then certainly before last night. Before this morning.”

“Would it have changed anything that happened between us?” Kaitlin challenged.

“That’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it?” Kaitlin looked at him with bright eyes and unshed tears. “You’re angry because you think I used you somehow, that I manipulated your feelings while concealing my true purpose. But nothing about what happened between us was a lie, Matt. Nothing.”

The sincerity in her voice weakened his resolve, the hurt in her eyes eroding his righteous anger. But something still held him back.

“How can I believe that?” he asked quietly, his hand on the doorknob. “How can I trust anything now?”

“Let me explain,” she said steadily.

Matt hesitated with the desire to understand. But the hurt remained, the sense of betrayal still raw. He knew he needed to step back, protect himself.