Chapter 9 - The Price of Staying in the Family
The ledger listed continuity fees.
My goal was to learn whether Richard profited from the stolen children.
Payments moved into a Swiss account under Robert Hale.
The same alias Richard used at the shelter.
Twenty-six transfers.
One for each child retained within a trust-approved family.
Richard claimed the account funded rescues.
Everett demanded records.
Richard refused.
That refusal cost him whatever trust remained.
Federal agents froze the account.
The first outgoing payment went to a private investigator who located three missing mothers.
The second funded Emily’s education anonymously.
The third paid for Rebecca’s escape.
But other payments had no clear purpose.
Large cash withdrawals.
Property purchases.
One mansion in Connecticut.
Everett recognized the address.
Eleanor’s private residence.
Richard had financed her.
He finally admitted the truth.
For years, they had maintained a secret truce.
He kept certain children inside families he believed safe.
Eleanor kept him alive and allowed limited rescues.
He told himself compromise reduced harm.
In reality, it preserved the system.
Then investigators found a payment connected to me.
Twenty-two years earlier, Richard paid Samuel Vale to keep my identity hidden.
Later, he paid Eleanor to arrange my meeting with Everett.
He had engineered our marriage too.
Eleanor was not the only architect.
Richard believed combining our bloodlines would place Brooks Meridian beyond Benjamin’s corrupt board.
He saw Noah as the child who could legally end the network.
“Then why declare him dead?” I asked again.
Richard looked away.
Because a legally dead child could not be seized by the board.
The death certificate was part of his plan.
Eleanor changed the transfer destination.
Richard intended to hide Noah temporarily.
Eleanor intended to take him permanently.
Both men and women around us kept calling theft protection.
Everett closed the ledger.
“You used my wife and son without consent.”
Richard said, “To save hundreds.”
Everett answered, “That sentence is how monsters introduce arithmetic.”
That was his first real break from the family logic.
Then Emily found one final column.
Override authority.
Every continuity transfer required two approvals.
Richard.
And a second person identified only as MB.
I assumed Mercer Board.
Everett knew better.
Margaret Brooks.
His grandmother.
Eleanor’s mother.
The woman who had supposedly died before Everett was born.
Richard whispered, “She isn’t dead.”
Margaret created Rosehaven.
Eleanor inherited it.
Richard compromised with it.
Rebecca administered it.
And Margaret still held the master authority.
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I thought Eleanor was the final antagonist—but the ledger exposed a living matriarch above her.
Margaret’s next scheduled transfer named Baby Noah Brooks and gave an execution time of midnight on New Year’s Eve.
