Chapter 4
I froze.
“The Carters?”
“David Carter had a brother,” she said. “Richard. He never believed the official story. He spent twenty years looking for you. And three months ago… he found you.”
The blood drained from my face.
“Found me?”
“He works for a DNA company,” she said. “Ancestry stuff. He submitted his own sample years ago. Last quarter, your results popped up as a match. Uncle and nephew. Ninety-nine point nine percent.”
I felt the floor drop out.
“I sent in that test for fun,” I whispered. “Rachel got it for me for Christmas. I just wanted to see if I had any Irish in me.”
“Richard Carter found you,” Mom said. “He emailed me two weeks ago. He knows. He knows everything. And he’s coming.”
“Coming where?”
“Here,” she said. “To take you back. To take what he says belongs to his family. Including the money David and Linda left behind.”
Rachel stepped forward.
“What money?”
“David Carter was a software engineer,” Mom said. “He sold a company three months before the accident. Seven million dollars. It was supposed to go to his son. To you. But when Thomas… arranged for you to become ours… the money got lost. Or so everyone thought.”
My head was pounding.
“Where is it, Mom?”
She hesitated.
“Thomas invested it,” she said quietly. “In this house. In other properties. In your college fund. In… everything.”
Seven million dollars.
Thirty-four years of compound interest.
That money wasn’t seven million anymore.
It was exponentially more.
“So you stole me,” I said. “And you stole my inheritance.”
“We used it to raise you!” she defended. “Every penny went to your future!”
“It wasn’t yours to spend!” I roared.
The front door opened.
We all froze.
Footsteps in the hallway.
A man’s voice.
“Evelyn? Are you here? We need to talk.”
My mother went white as a sheet.
“It’s him,” she whispered. “Richard Carter.”
A man stepped into the living room.
Mid-sixties.
Gray hair at the temples.
Expensive suit.
He looked at me.
And for the first time in my life, I saw my own eyes looking back.
Same shape.
Same color.
Same slight crinkle at the corners when he focused.
“Michael,” he said. His voice was warm, but strained. “I’m Richard Carter. I’m your father’s brother.”
I couldn’t speak.
He looked at the papers scattered across the floor.
At the birth certificate.
At the forged documents.
Then he looked at my mother.
“I see you’ve been telling him,” he said.
May you like
“Get out,” my mother said. Her voice was shaking. “This is my house.”
“Actually,” Richard said, pulling a thick envelope from his briefcase, “it’s not. Not anymore.”
