the adopted truth
The silence in the study was absolute.
Lucas slowly set the telephone receiver back onto its cradle. The silver USB drive sat in his open palm, gleaming cold and bright under the morning sunlight filtering through the window.
"Who was that on the phone, Lucas?" Anna asked, her voice tight with rising anxiety. "What did they say?"
Lucas didn't answer right away. He stood behind his desk, looking at the USB drive, his mind racing through a hundred different calculations at once.
If the caller was right, everything he thought he had discovered at the lighthouse was another layer of misdirection.
Was the photograph real? Was Anna adopted? Or was someone playing psychological warfare to keep him off balance while the trust deadline approached?
"Lucas!" Anna demanded, stepping up to the edge of the desk, her face flushing with anger and fear. "Stop ignoring me! I have been chased, shot at, and kidnapped for twenty-four hours! I deserve to know what is happening!"
Lucas looked up at her, his eyes cold, calculating, but deeply weary.
"That call claimed you were adopted," Lucas said directly, not sugarcoating the words. "And it claimed Emma isn't my daughter."
Anna stared at him, her mouth opening slightly in absolute shock. "What... what are you talking about? That's insane! I grew up with Sarah Carter! I have her birth records!"
"Did you ever see a father's name on your birth certificate, Anna?" Lucas asked, his voice steady, probing.
"No, but—"
"Did you ever take a DNA test?" he continued. "Did your mother ever give you medical records from the hospital where you were born?"
Anna froze. Her hands began to tremble. "My... my mother kept all her papers in a small metal box in the attic. When she died, the house was sold before I could get it back."
Lucas plugged the silver USB drive into his encrypted laptop on the desk.
A single file appeared on the screen: GENETIC_LAB_ANALYSIS_2026.pdf.
He clicked it open.
On the screen were two official laboratory reports from the Massachusetts State Forensic Registry, dated just three weeks ago.
The first report showed a comparison between Anna Carter’s DNA profile and Sarah Carter’s archived medical records.
Match Result: 0.00% — No Maternal Relation.
The second report showed a comparison between Emma Carter’s DNA profile and Lucas Blackwood’s personal profile from the state database.
Match Result: 0.00% — No Paternal Relation.
Lucas stared at the numbers on the glowing screen. 0.00%.
The cold, ruthless armor he wore every day didn't shield him from the sharp, gut-wrenching pain slicing through his heart. He looked up at Anna.
"Look for yourself," Lucas said, turning the laptop screen toward her.
Anna stepped around the desk, her eyes scanning the official medical documents. As she read the bottom line of the second page, her knees buckled.
Lucas caught her before she hit the floor, lifting her up and setting her gently into the leather armchair beside the desk.
"No..." Anna wept, clutching her head in her hands. "No, no, no... this is impossible! I gave birth to Emma in a clinic in Maine! I know she's my daughter! How can she not be your child, Lucas?! There was no one else! I swear on my life there was no one else!"
Lucas stood over her, his mind analyzing every word, every sob. He knew Anna wasn't lying. The horror and grief in her voice were entirely real.
"If you gave birth to her, and you were only with me..." Lucas reasoned slowly, his brilliant strategic mind piercing through the emotional chaos, "...then these reports were either falsified, or the baby was swapped at the clinic in Maine six years ago."
Anna looked up, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, her eyes wild with sudden terror. "Swapped...?"
Before Lucas could process the thought further, a loud knock rattled the heavy study doors.
Harold stepped into the room, holding a thick Manila folder. His expression was grave.
"Lucas," Harold said, his tone urgent. "We just intercepted a secure fax sent to the local precinct from the State Attorney's office."
"What is it?" Lucas asked.
Harold opened the folder and laid a single legal document on the desk.
"It's an emergency child protection order," Harold said. "Issued by Don Vito Moretti's legal team in New York. They claim Emma Carter is the biological child of Julian Mercer's late daughter... who died in a clinic in Maine six years ago."
Lucas’s dark eyes flared with dangerous light.
The pieces suddenly slammed together in his mind with terrifying precision.
Julian Mercer hadn't just been managing the Blackwood accounts. Julian had lost his own daughter in Maine six years ago—the exact same clinic where Anna gave birth.
Julian had stolen Lucas and Anna's real biological child at birth, replaced her with his own orphaned granddaughter, and placed Emma in Anna's arms so the trust fund would eventually fall under his secret control when the child turned seven.
Which meant Emma wasn't Julian's victim.
Emma was Julian's biological granddaughter—and the real Blackwood heir was still out there, hidden somewhere in the cold world.
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Anna let out a suffocating scream, collapsing onto the carpet, her world utterly destroyed.
And upstairs in the master guest suite, the six-year-old girl with honey-brown hair and pale blue eyes was sleeping, completely unaware that the man she called her hero was about to tear Boston apart to find out who she really was.
