Chapter 7 - The Son They ErasedA family secret buried for twenty yearsI didn't speak during the drive home.
Wade didn't ask me to.
He knew silence was safer than the questions racing through my head.
When we reached the ranch, I went straight to Dad's office.
There had to be something.
There had to be a name.
I searched every drawer.
Every cabinet.
Every old photograph.
At the back of a filing box, I found a hospital bracelet.
The ink was faded.
BABY BOY CARTER.
Date.
Twenty-four years before I was born.
My hands went numb.
“Wade.”
He came in.
I handed him the bracelet.
“What is this?”
“I don't know.”
He turned it over.
A hospital name was printed on the back.
St. Mary's.
I searched Dad's files again.
Then I found a birth certificate.
Male.
Name blank.
Mother, Lois Carter.
Father, Henry Carter.
The child's status was marked:
Transferred.
I stared.
“What does transferred mean?”
Wade shook his head.
“We need the hospital records.”
We drove to St. Mary's.
The hospital had changed names twice.
But the archives remained.
After hours of searching, a clerk returned with a file.
There was no full record.
Only a discharge note.
Infant transferred to private guardian.
“Who was the guardian?” I asked.
The clerk looked at the record.
“Daniel Carter.”
My heart stopped.
“Who is Daniel Carter?”
The clerk shrugged.
“I don't know.”
But Wade did.
He pulled out his phone.
“There's a man by that name in the state registry.”
I stared at the screen.
Daniel Carter.
Forty-eight years old.
Real estate developer.
Owner of several properties in Colorado.
And chairman of a private investment company.
North Valley Capital.
I almost dropped the phone.
“That can't be.”
Wade looked at me.
“The lender.”
My mother's lender.
The company financing the ranch acquisition.
My brother.
A brother Mom had erased.
We drove back before dark.
Mom was waiting on the porch.
She knew.
I could see it in her face.
“You found him.”
I stopped.
“You knew he was alive.”
She closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Why did you hide him?”
“He was dangerous.”
“To whom?”
“To all of us.”
“Was he Dad's son?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you give him away?”
Mom's lips trembled.
“Because Henry wanted to leave me.”
I stared.
“What?”
“He wanted to take you and Daniel and start over.”
I couldn't breathe.
“You gave away his son because Dad wanted to leave?”
“He was going to expose everything.”
“What everything?”
Mom looked at me.
“My father had died owing money.”
She swallowed.
“And I had taken some of it.”
“Some?”
“Millions.”
I stared.
She continued.
“Daniel was used as collateral.”
I recoiled.
“You can't say that about your own child.”
“I was desperate.”
“You sold your son.”
“No.”
She started crying.
“I arranged for him to be raised elsewhere.”
“By a stranger?”
“By a man who could protect him.”
“Daniel's own father?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Mom didn't answer.
Wade stepped forward.
“Who financed the transfer?”
Mom looked at him.
And whispered:
“Dale Ferris's father.”
Silence.
The network was bigger than we had imagined.
Dale's father had funded the concealment.
Daniel had grown up inside the same financial empire.
And now he controlled the company paying for my family's ranch.
I looked at Mom.
“Does Daniel know who I am?”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Two years.”
My heart pounded.
“Two years?”
“He found out when he accessed the old hospital records.”
I thought of the forged title.
The debt.
The lender.
The sixteen-million-dollar offer.
“Then why didn't he come to me?”
Mom looked away.
“Because he doesn't want the ranch.”
May you like
I waited.
“He wants revenge.”
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