‘It’s been established that your adoptive parents visited Argentina six months after you were born. They went on their own and returned with you.’
The world skidded to a standstill and his heart gave a great lurch. Argentina? What the hell?
‘My contact managed to trace their movements while they were there,’ Alex continued while Finn grappled for calm and forced himself to focus, ‘and placed them in La Posada.’
‘Which is what?’
‘A small, abandoned village near the border with Bolivia. It consists mainly of a derelict orphanage and a handful of ruined houses. While most of it was looted years ago, the office of the orphanage had barely been touched, quite probably because the filing cabinets had been bolted to the walls. In amongst the papers they contained he found a number of birth certificates. We believe one of them to be yours.’
His lungs tightened. A punch of adrenaline kicked him in the chest and his pulse raced. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘The recorded date of birth is a match.’
‘Does it have the names of the parents?’
‘Yes. Juan Rodriguez and Maria Gonzalez. I’ll email you a copy of everything we have. I apologise for it taking so long. The trail has been extremely well buried. We’re still working on why that would be the case.’ Alex paused, while Finn reeled, then said, ‘There’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘Are you still sitting down?’
‘Yes.’
‘There were two other birth certificates in the same file. Both boys. All of you born at around the same time on the same day.’
It took a second or two for the implication of what she was saying to sink in, but when it did the ground beneath his feet tilted violently. His vision blurred and he could hardly breathe. He felt as if he was about to pass out. ‘I have brothers?’
‘It would appear so. The evidence would suggest you’re triplets.’
‘Where are they? Are they alive?’
‘Impossible to know at this stage.’
‘Find them,’ he said, his voice thick and his throat clogging. ‘Whatever you have to do, however much you have to pay, find them.’
‘We will.’
Finn ended the call and as the phone slipped out of his hand and fell to the floor, the calm front he’d presented to Alex shattered. Every bit of him started shaking. His heart was beating too fast. His stomach was roiling. He was going to throw up.
Blindly, he got to his feet and made it to the terrace doors, which he threw open, and gulped in some much needed air while the information he’d just been given went round and round in his thoughts.
He’d been born in South America. He’d spent time in an orphanage. He had parents, brothers, was one of a set of triplets. Identical? Non-identical? What had happened to the other two? Where were they and why had they been separated?
The ping of an incoming message on his phone pierced the fog swirling around in his head and he stumbled back to where he’d been sitting. With trembling fingers he bent down to pick the device up and then collapsed into the chair before his legs gave way. Somehow he managed to unlock it. Somehow he found the right app, tapped the email and, his heart thundering so fast and hard it hurt, opened the attachment.
It contained three birth certificates plus translations. All identical, save the times of birth and the names. Mateo. Diego. Juan. His parents, his brothers, his family.
But which was his? Who was he and where were the others? Above all, why? Why the adoption? Why the separation? And who’d known? Had Jim and Alice been aware he was one of three? Surely not. Surely they couldn’t have been so cruel as to keep that from him. Yet no one had ever mentioned Argentina. He even had a hotel there. In Buenos Aires. Jim had been at the opening six years ago and he’d never said a thing.
Having scoured the details and committed them to memory, Finn dropped the phone again, then rubbed his hands across his face and leaned forwards, his elbows resting on his knees, his head buried in his hands. How the hell was he going to deal with this? He’d assumed that with information would come clarity, but he was wrong. That assumption had been based on the most simple of explanations, yet the news Alex had just delivered threw up an explanation that was anything but simple.
Instead of being answered and filed away for cool, calm analysis, the questions were multiplying, ricocheting around his head faster and more chaotically and he couldn’t sort any of them out. It was all too huge, too overwhelming.
As was the pain now beginning to slice through him as the shock-induced numbness faded. Thirty-one years he’d lost. Thirty-one years that he could potentially have known his siblings, his brothers. He could have had an entire other life. Would it have been better? Worse? It didn’t matter. He’d been denied the choice because of Jim and Alice’s silence, and the sense of betrayal that he assumed had abated now flayed him all over again, ripping open old wounds and stabbing at them afresh.
He’d thought he had it all under control, but he didn’t. He had nothing under control. The pain powering through him was like a living thing, writhing around in his belly and thundering along his veins, leaving every inch of him raw and exposed and bleeding.
‘Are you all right?’