Page 71 of Cruel Dreams

She turns, and the expression on her face shatters me. So much love after everything I’ve done to her.

“You know the FBI is going through all of Ash’s and Clayton’s businesses, their deals, their bank accounts. Everything.”

She nods. “Yeah. I wondered if anything they did was legal.”

“I thought, maybe, their foundations would be off limits, that despite all the bad they were doing, they might have been doing a little good, too.”

“They weren’t, were they? Did you find proof?”

“Yes, we found proof. Max looked into it first after hearing what Huxley said at the Black Cat, and using their resources, the FBI went further.”

“That’s why Clayton didn’t want to work with your dad. He had no idea how to run anything legitimately, nor did he want to, for that matter.”

“No, he didn’t, and with all the shit Clayton was involved in, the Blacks’ foundations were small potatoes, but he still managed to hurt a lot of people.” I hold her hand and brush my thumb over her soft skin.

“I’m sorry, Zane.”

“I’m sorrier, Stella, because what they did affected you, too.”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You know Ash and Clayton ran a foundation that helped couples adopt.”

“Yeah.”

“They supposedly paid adoption fees, even helped match infants in need to prospective parents.”

“I know.”

“The FBI looked closer...Stella, they found some of those babies that were matched with adoptive parents already had biological parents.”

She sits up and twists to look at me. “What do you mean? Of course they did.”

I’m going about this the wrong way. I feel like someone poured concrete into my chest, and my heart is trying to pump while the cement hardens around it.

“What I’m trying to say is, they kidnapped babies and then sold them to people, rich people, who could afford to buy them.”

Stella covers her mouth, and a sheen of tears fills her cornflower blue eyes. She hasn’t pieced two and two together yet. If I stop now, I could keep her. We could fight the world just the two of us, but then I would be living in fear that one day she would discover the truth. That she would know what I did, and in her eyes, I would be no better than Ash.

I suck in a deep breath and force the words out.

“One of those babies was you.”

She pales and yanks away from me. It’s already starting, the withdrawal.

I push back the pain. There will be more where this comes from. I tell myself to get through it and do what I need to do to survive it.

“What are you saying?” she whispers.

I slide the file out of my messenger bag. “Your mother was shopping at the Heritage Mall twenty-six years ago. You were four weeks old, and she brought you out to do some last minute Christmas shopping. In a busy store, she turned her back, and when she checked on you, you were gone. Someone stole you out of your carrier. Clayton Black sold you to a Gwendolyn Mayfair, and she renamed you Stella.”

I copied the newspaper stories Banks found at Black Enterprises. They kept track of every baby they kidnapped to keep ahead of any investigations.

“What happened to her?” she asks calmly, holding the copy of the old clipping.

I slide another photo out of the pile and show her a picture of a woman holding an infant in a hospital room.

She rears back in surprise and pulls the grainy photo from my fingers. “That’s my mother holding me in the hospital after I was born.”

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