Chapter 6 - THE PRICE THEY PUT ON MERichard Carter denied everything.
At first.
The next morning, the Vale legal team brought him to a private conference room twenty floors below the medical suite.
He was not under arrest.
Not yet.
He arrived with three attorneys.
Evelyn came with him.
Mason, Jaxon, and Ethan did not.
Lily was nowhere to be seen.
I sat across the table with Helena, Adrian, Julian, Caleb, and two investigators.
Richard looked older than he had the night before.
“Chloe,” he began.
“Elara,” Julian corrected.
I raised one hand.
“It’s fine.”
Julian leaned back.
Richard’s eyes moved to me.
“I’m glad you’re safe.”
I almost admired the audacity.
“You watched me go to prison.”
His face tightened.
“I believed you were guilty.”
“No. You believed what was convenient.”
Evelyn lowered her eyes.
That was answer enough.
One investigator placed a document on the table.
“Mr. Carter, in March 2001, Carter Strategic Holdings received a fifteen-million-dollar private capital infusion from a shell corporation called North Meridian Biomedical.”
Richard didn’t move.
“Do you recognize the company?”
“No.”
The investigator slid another page toward him.
“Your signature.”
Richard looked at it.
“That was twenty-five years ago.”
“Twenty-one.”
Silence.
“And eleven months later,” the investigator continued, “you and Mrs. Carter filed an accelerated adoption application.”
Evelyn’s face drained of color.
“I didn’t know.”
Everyone looked at her.
She turned toward Richard.
“You told me the investment came from a European fund.”
Richard said nothing.
Evelyn’s voice shook.
“Richard.”
He rubbed his face.
“I didn’t know what they were doing.”
My stomach tightened.
“But you knew there was something.”
He looked at me.
“We were struggling.”
“Financially?”
“Yes.”
It was almost laughable.
The Carter estate.
Private schools.
Luxury cars.
Yet apparently there had once been a time when the empire nearly failed.
Richard continued.
“A man approached me through an intermediary.”
“Victor Soren?” Adrian asked.
“I didn’t know his name.”
“What did he want?”
Richard hesitated.
“To sponsor an adoption.”
My blood ran cold.
Julian stood so suddenly his chair scraped backward.
Caleb grabbed his arm.
“Sit.”
Julian stared at Richard.
“You took money to adopt a child?”
Richard slammed his palm on the table.
“I DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS KIDNAPPED.”
The room went silent.
His breathing was heavy.
“I was told she was part of a private medical guardianship program. A child with an unknown background. They wanted a wealthy family to provide stability.”
I stared at him.
“And fifteen million dollars.”
He closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
The word changed something in me.
Not because I was surprised.
Because suddenly so much made sense.
I had never been chosen.
Not really.
I had been purchased.
A business arrangement.
Evelyn began crying.
“I didn’t know about the money.”
Richard looked at her.
“I thought it would protect us.”
“You lied to me for twenty-one years.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t agree.”
“No,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t have.”
Helena’s hand moved toward mine, then stopped.
I placed my hand over hers.
She looked at me.
Small moment.
But real.
Richard continued.
“The money saved the company. By the time Chloe came into the house, I convinced myself the arrangement didn’t matter.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Didn’t matter?”
“We cared for you.”
“You tolerated me.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Fair?”
My voice remained soft.
“Let’s talk about fair.”
I leaned forward.
“You adopted a six-year-old girl because someone paid you millions. Then when your biological sons preferred Lily, you let them push me out. When Lily committed a crime, you accepted my confession without asking why. You never visited me. Never wrote. Never questioned anything.”
Richard looked down.
“And yesterday your children put a leash around my neck.”
Evelyn flinched.
Richard whispered, “I didn’t know.”
“You were standing ten feet away.”
His face crumpled.
No one spoke.
The investigator pushed another folder forward.
“There’s more.”
Richard looked up.
“What?”
“Payments continued.”
Adrian’s voice turned cold.
“Every year.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
The investigator opened the folder.
“North Meridian Biomedical transferred between two hundred thousand and six hundred thousand dollars annually into companies connected to Carter Strategic Holdings.”
My heart hammered.
“Until when?”
“Seven years ago.”
The room froze.
The year I went to prison.
I stared at Richard.
He looked equally shocked.
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
The investigator nodded.
“We believe the payments were automated through layered trusts.”
Helena’s expression became grim.
“They were paying to monitor her childhood.”
Caleb swore.
Julian’s fists clenched.
Richard looked sick.
I thought of every family dinner.
Every argument.
Every moment I cried in my bedroom believing I was simply unlovable.
Someone had been watching.
Maybe not through cameras.
Maybe through records.
School reports.
Medical files.
Behavior assessments.
My life had been data.
“How much did they know?” I asked.
Helena answered carefully.
“We don’t know yet.”
An investigator’s phone vibrated.
He checked it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He looked at me.
“We found Lily.”
My pulse spiked.
“Where?”
“At Westbridge Academy.”
The school where the crime happened.
Julian frowned.
“Why would she go there?”
The investigator looked toward the door.
“She broke into the old athletics records office.”
I knew immediately.
“Evidence.”
He nodded.
“She’s destroying something.”
We reached the school forty minutes later.
Police had already surrounded the administrative building.
Westbridge Academy looked almost exactly the same.
Red brick.
White columns.
Expensive landscaping.
My chest tightened as memories returned.
Track practice.
Lily crying in the bathroom.
Mason telling me to confess.
A detective asking if I understood the consequences.
Eighteen-year-old me saying yes.
The principal met us outside.
“Security caught her on camera entering the old records archive.”
“Is she inside?” Julian asked.
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“We think so.”
Then smoke began pouring from a second-floor window.
The principal shouted.
“Oh my God.”
Fire alarms erupted.
Lily had set the archive on fire.
Police rushed toward the entrance.
I followed.
Caleb grabbed my wrist.
“No.”
“She’s burning the evidence.”
“Then let the police handle it.”
“I need to know what she’s destroying.”
“Elara.”
I looked at him.
“For seven years, everyone else decided what I was allowed to know.”
His hand loosened.
He hated it.
But he understood.
We went in behind the officers.
Smoke filled the hallway.
Sprinklers blasted water from the ceiling.
At the far end, Lily stood outside the archive room.
Her silver gala nails were black with soot.
She held a metal box.
When she saw me, her face changed.
“Chloe?”
I walked toward her.
She backed away.
“You should have stayed with them.”
“What’s in the box?”
“Nothing.”
“Then give it to me.”
“No.”
Police shouted at her to put it down.
She clutched it tighter.
“I said no!”
Her mask vanished completely.
“You ruin everything!”
I stopped.
Lily began crying.
Not fake this time.
“You always ruin everything.”
I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
“You took seven years of my life.”
Her face twisted.
“You gave them.”
The words hit hard.
“You confessed.”
“Because they asked me to.”
“And you agreed!”
Her voice became shrill.
“You wanted them to love you so badly, you would have done anything!”
The cruelest part?
She was right.
I had.
Lily laughed through tears.
“You think you’re better than me now because some billionaire family came looking for you?”
“No.”
“You think they love you?”
I didn’t answer.
She stepped closer.
“They don’t even know you.”
Maybe that was true too.
But love wasn’t the point.
Not yet.
Choice was.
Respect was.
Truth was.
Lily lifted the metal box.
“This is the only proof that I did anything seven years ago.”
My pulse jumped.
Inside were the original laboratory test sheets.
A handwritten statement.
And an old security drive.
She smiled wildly.
“If this burns, your conviction stays exactly where it is.”
I looked at the spreading flames behind her.
“Then burn it.”
She froze.
“What?”
“Burn it.”
Even Caleb stared at me.
Lily’s mouth fell open.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do.”
“Then why—”
“Because I don’t need to destroy myself proving what you already know.”
Her face crumbled.
“And you do know.”
I stepped closer.
“You’ve known every day for seven years.”
Sirens screamed outside.
Sprinkler water ran across the floor.
Lily’s hands began shaking.
Then a voice came over the officer’s radio.
“We recovered the off-site backup.”
Lily went completely still.
The officer smiled grimly.
“School servers archived everything.”
The metal box slipped from her fingers.
May you like
It hit the floor.
And for the first time since I had known her, Lily had nowhere left to hide.
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