Chapter 7 - Three Orphans Chosen Before I Met Them
I did not sleep.
I remembered Adrian at eight, refusing to remove his winter coat because he believed foster parents sent children away at night.
Celeste at eleven, hiding bread beneath her mattress.
Marcus at six, waking from nightmares and asking whether doors locked from the inside.
I had believed fate brought them to me.
Thomas apparently had other plans.
Naomi retrieved archived adoption records.
Each child came from a different state.
Different biological parents.
Different circumstances.
Yet one private foundation quietly paid legal fees in all three cases.
Cross Futures.
Created by Thomas.
I had never heard of it.
Then Naomi discovered why.
Cross Futures had been dissolved two months after Marcus’s adoption.
The foundation’s director:
Rebecca Holt.
Darren’s mother.
Daniel sat beside me.
“Were the children planted?”
The word hurt.
“No child is planted.”
He nodded.
Corrected himself.
“Were the placements engineered?”
Possibly.
But why?
Then we found the connection.
Adrian’s biological father had worked for Holt Infrastructure.
Celeste’s biological mother had worked in CrossShield accounting.
Marcus’s father had been a federal investigator reviewing pension fraud.
All three adults died or disappeared within five years of Hector’s supposed disappearance.
My children were not random orphans.
They were children of people connected to the same financial scandal.
Thomas had known.
Had he adopted them through me to protect them?
Or to control them?
I no longer knew what kind of man I had married.
Then Naomi opened Celeste’s original file.
A sealed page had been digitally restored.
Biological mother:
Marianne Vale.
My maiden name was Vale.
I stared.
No relation listed.
But Marianne was my half-sister.
A sister my father had denied existed.
I had learned about her only after his death.
She disappeared before I ever met her.
Celeste was not merely my adopted daughter.
She was my niece.
My blood.
Twenty-eight years of secrets collapsed into one line.
Daniel whispered:
“Did Thomas know?”
“Yes.”
He had to.
Then Naomi uncovered Adrian’s connection.
His father, Louis Bennett, had been Thomas’s accountant.
Marcus’s father?
Federal Agent Peter Shaw.
The same agent who opened an investigation into CrossShield twenty-nine years earlier.
Three children.
Three adults who could expose something.
Thomas took their children in.
Through me.
I felt sick.
Had he saved them?
Or kept potential witnesses close?
Then Naomi found a letter scanned into Marcus’s file.
From Peter Shaw.
Addressed to me.
Never delivered.
Evelyn,
If Thomas tells you I disappeared voluntarily, do not believe him. The children are not safe around Holt. If anything happens, look at CrossShield’s founding ledger.
My hands trembled.
The founding ledger sat in a vault beneath CrossShield headquarters.
Or so I believed.
Then Naomi checked the vault inventory.
The ledger had been removed six months ago.
Authorized by me.
Except I had been recovering from my stroke.
Someone had forged my biometric approval.
The person who collected it from the vault appeared on camera.
May you like
Hector Alvarez.
Daniel’s supposedly dead father had the ledger everyone was now willing to destroy my family to obtain.
