My eyes snapped open, and I was out the bedroom door before I’d even fully awoken. Making my way downstairs, I could hear Nico and Luis talking to Felipe. By the time I made it to the landing, Felipe was heading out the front door. Luis looked over and saw me, nudging Nico.
“Maddy, hey. Felipe said you went to sleep. Feel better?” Nico asked.
“I’ll feel better when I hear what Luis has to say.”
“Fair enough,” Luis said. He had a file folder and a laptop under his arm.
I sat on the couch and Nico sat beside me, taking my hand in his. He squeezed my hand reassuringly. Luis sat opposite us and shifted his things onto his lap. “Okay. We’ll start simple first. Once I arrived in Tampa, I did some initial digging. I stopped by a couple group homes, adoption centers, few churches. I asked about social workers who dealt with babies, specifically men, since that was the only lead I had from what your mom told us,” Luis said, nodding toward me.
I nodded back. “Yeah, she said all they knew was a guy had dropped me off at the adoption agency.”
“Right. That little tidbit helped a lot actually. Apparently less than fifteen percent of all social workers in the country are male. That means a guy should probably stick out and be memorable, right? Well, he was. The story gets a little sticky, though.”
“Sticky how?” Nico asked.
“Well, there are social workers who specialize in shifter babies. Not every shifter clan is as well off as we are. Lots of them are poor. For richer packs, there are always mated couples who can’t seem to conceive. There’s an undercurrent of—for want of a better word—soldchildren.”
“What?” I was horrified.
Luis made an apologetic face and shrugged. “It’s difficult. The parents have no money and no way of providing for their child. They sell the kid to a family who they know will give the child everything they can’t, and they get a nice chunk of change to try and better themselves. I see both sides of it.”
“Does this happen with humans?” I asked.
“Not usually. Shifter communities are way more insular. We have our own doctors, our own internal laws and ways of policing ourselves. It’s much easier for a shifter child to change hands than a human child simply because there’s more red tape in the human world. Anyway, as I was saying, I think I found the guy your mom was talking about.”
Nico and I both leaned forward, drawn into the story. It was interesting on multiple levels. One, because it dealt directly with me. Two, hearing about all this was like learning a big secret about the world. As awful as some of it was, it was exciting to learn.
“There was apparently a social worker in the Tampa area named Kenneth Reid. He was the go-to guy for handling shifter babies. He had lots of contacts with local shifter clans and was pretty well-liked in his agency, so no one ever looked into his shady dealings. I found these…” He pulled two documents outof his file folder and handed them over. “In that one, there are some descriptions of an unborn baby girl. No name, just a due date and the address of a shifter clinic. The due date is about nine days before your birthday, Maddy.”
I stared at the paper. It was basically an email with almost no information on it. “What is this supposed to be?”
“I found it in an ancient filing cabinet in the bowels of the agency Reid worked for. There were two dozen more for different babies. I think this was a simple description that he could use to find takers for the babies when they came. The other paper is the one that’s even more interesting.”
I glanced at the other document. It looked like a contract. I read it twice to be sure I understood what it was saying. It more or less promised the unborn baby girl to Kenneth Reid.
Luis pointed at the paper. “That is the very last thing I found from Kenneth Reid. No other papers, no other documents. His employment record ended not long afterward. Oncethistransaction was completed, he vanished. I think this contract is about you, Maddy. If you are who we believe you are, it must have been incredibly dangerous for this guy to do what he did.” He pulled a third sheet of paper out and handed it over. “This is your birth certificate.”
I pulled the paper from his hand greedily, desperate to see it. At the top was my name, Maddison, but the last name was different. It said Samuels. Maddison Samuels? That was my real name? On the line with the mother’s name were two words. My breath caught in my throat as I read the name. My birth mother. The woman who had carried me for nine months and birthed me. Gabriella Karson.
Luis pointed to the top of the paper. “This is a shifter clinic, which is weird, because your birth mother wasn’t a shifter.” He pulled yet another sheet of paper out. “This is your biological mother’s birth certificate. Human. And this clinic? It shut downand all staff members disappeared less than a week after you were born.”
A chill ran up my spine. It was like something out of a movie. This couldn’t be real life, could it? I turned the birth certificate around. “I don’t see a father on this.”
Luis nodded. “I think she knew you were going to be targeted, so she didn’t put anything on the certificate. It looks like she had good reason to be afraid.” He opened his laptop. “I used her name and the area to find out where she went to high school, which led me to finding these.”
He turned the computer around and clicked to expand an image. It was the smiling face of a beautiful girl. It looked like a senior picture from a yearbook. I looked into her face and felt a twinge in my chest. My birth mother. I had her eyes.
“This is her. I got the school to let me in and scanned some images from the library where I found the yearbooks. It gets more interesting.” He started clicking through more images. They showed the woman and another boy. My jaw fell open, and Nico whispered a curse. The guy looked just like me. The resemblance was uncanny. There was no way he wasn’t my birth father. One of the images was of the two of them embracing and laughing. Above the picture were block letters that readCutest Couple. Luis pointed at him. “This is David Samuels. Four months before you were born, this happened.”
He clicked open a link that brought up an old newspaper story about a high-school graduate who had been found murdered in an alley only a mile from the school. There were lots of quotes from friends and family. Beside the headline was a close-up of David Samuels with a huge smile on his face. Again, I had that strange sense of dissociation. I had a father, the one who raised me and loved me, but this was the man who’d helpedmakeme. I shared his DNA. I had his facial features and dark hair. This man was my father, too. It was so strange to finallysee him, and bittersweet to know that I’d never get to meet him. Knowing he was dead didn’t hit me the same as it would have if my dad had died, but I still felt a deep, weary sadness. It was especially tragic looking at how happy he’d seemed to be in life.
“This is the heir of the Edemas family bloodline. I think someone figured it out and killed him because of it,” Luis said. “He was nineteen when he died, and your bio mom had just turned eighteen when she gave birth to you. She was young and terrified. The love of her life had just been killed, and the baby she carried was likely to be a target. I don’t know if David Samuels knew his lineage, but from what Gabriella did to hide you, I think he did and told her about it. She gave you up to save you. It was done out of love,” he finished, his voice gentle and quiet.
I nodded. “I think you’re right.” I shook my head, confused and overwhelmed. “How the hell did you figure all this out?”
Luis cleared his throat and glanced at Nico before answering. “It’s kind of my gig. I’m a private investigator. I’ve got contacts and experience doing stuff like this. As good as I am, though, this was still pretty hard to dig up. I’m still looking into your birth father, but I’m positive he was killed because of the Hollander lineage. It was the royal family who found him and had him killed. I don’t think they ever found out about the girlfriend and baby, otherwise they’d have hunted you down before you ever even learned to walk.”
“What about Gabriella? Where is she now? Can…could I try to meet her?” I asked. The idea suddenly started building in intensity in my mind.
