Chapter 5
He laid the envelope on the mantel.
“I filed suit three weeks ago,” he said. “Fraud, conversion, unjust enrichment. The works. Given what we now know? Evelyn, you’re looking at prison time. Both of you, actually—if your husband was still alive.”
He turned to me.
“Michael, none of this is your fault. You were an infant. You had no choice in any of this.”
Rachel was staring at the envelope.
“What does that mean for us?” she asked. “For the house? For everything we own?”
“Everything purchased with Carter money reverts to the Carter estate,” Richard said. “Which, as David’s only surviving heir, now belongs to Michael.”
I blinked.
“Belongs to me?”
“Every last penny,” he said. “The house, the other properties, the investment accounts. All of it. Plus interest. Plus punitive damages from Evelyn. We’re looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-two million dollars.”
Forty-two million.
I sat down hard on the couch.
“Michael,” my mother said, reaching for me. “Don’t let him do this. I’m your mother. The only one you’ve ever known.”
I pulled away from her.
“You’re not my mother,” I said. “You’re the woman who kidnapped me.”
She crumpled.
Richard put a hand on my shoulder.
“I know this is overwhelming,” he said. “But you have family now. Real family. I have two kids—your cousins. They’re dying to meet you. We have a whole family tree you’ve never seen. Holidays, reunions, history. It’s all yours.”
It should have felt like a gift.
Instead, it felt like another bomb.
Because I looked at Rachel.
And I saw the calculation in her eyes.
Forty-two million dollars.
She’d known about the kidnapping for a year.
She’d said nothing.
Now her uncle-by-marriage shows up with a fortune.
And suddenly she was standing a little straighter.
A little closer to me.
“Michael,” she said softly. “Baby, I know you’re angry. But we’re in this together, right? Whatever happens, we’re a team.”
I looked at her.
Really looked at her.
The woman I’d married five years ago.
The woman I’d thought was my everything.
“Did you know?” I asked her quietly.
“Know what?”
“About the money,” I said. “Did Mom tell you about the Carter money when she told you about the kidnapping?”
Rachel’s face did that thing it does when she’s lying.
A tiny almost imperceptible flicker of the eyes.
“Of course not,” she said. “She only told me about… about the adoption thing. I had no idea there was money involved.”
I stood up.
I walked to the kitchen table.
I picked up her phone.
The one she’d used to record my mother.
“Give me the passcode,” I said.
“Michael, what—”
“Passcode. Now.”
She hesitated.
Then she gave it to me.
I opened the photos app.
Went to the hidden album.
And there they were.
Dozens of screenshots.
Bank balances.
Property deeds.
Emails between her and a divorce lawyer.
Dated eight months ago.
May you like
Four months after my mother told her the truth.
Four months before Richard Carter found me.
