Chapter 9 - The Soldier in the Ledger
Blake refused to let anyone turn a childhood photograph into a family verdict.
“My parents raised me,” he said.
“That's true whether this ledger is authentic or not.”
Cross nodded.
“Of course.”
But he admitted that decades earlier he helped arrange an adoption of a newborn whose origins Thomas Stanley wanted hidden.
He never met the adoptive family.
He only knew the boy's new first name was Blake.
Darlene learned the revelation from Blake himself.
He insisted on telling her face to face.
She listened without interrupting.
When he finished, she put her hand against the edge of the table to steady herself.
“I'm not asking you to believe we're related,” she said.
“Good, because I won't make that decision on a lawyer's story.”
They agreed to an independent, voluntary genetic comparison through an accredited laboratory.
The detective arranged evidence preservation but made clear that family testing and the criminal inquiry would remain separate.
Meanwhile, Blake called his adoptive mother, Ruth, whom he had been avoiding since Sarah's death.
She answered on the second ring.
“Are you and Abby all right?”
“She's safe.”
He swallowed.
“Mom, did you ever know who my birth parents were?”
Silence.
Then a small sound, like a hand being pressed over a mouth.
“Who told you to ask that?”
“Please.”
Ruth said she and Blake's father had been told only that his mother was too ill to care for him.
Years later, an attorney offered them money to stop asking questions about the sealed adoption.
They refused.
Their house was burgled within a week.
After that, they chose silence because they were afraid someone would take Blake away.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
Blake stared into the dark window.
“You were my mother every day.”
“I still am.”
“Yes,” he said.
“You are.”
That evening Abigail asked why a woman on the news called her father a corporate fraud.
Blake turned off the television.
Someone had leaked a story claiming the former janitor engineered Julian's arrest to obtain a rich executive position.
His military history was twisted into accusations of violence.
Darlene's stock fell sharply in after-hours trading.
Naomi traced the article to a public relations firm controlled by a shell company.
The shell company belonged to Leonard Cross.
Blake turned to the screen where Cross's name glowed.
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The man who claimed to be helping them had been funding the attack all along.
