Mei panicked. The transfer implied legal maneuvering performed decades ago—someone had tried to rewrite guardianship long before she knew the name of anyone. She fled to a friend's farm with a sleeping baby and a binder of documents, determined to understand what exactly she had been human pawn to.
Adrian tracked her down with legal means and a kind of contrite ferocity that frightened him as much as it did her. He insisted on speaking where she felt safe: a small chapel on the property, with light that made everything look like confession.
"I will not take your child," he said. "I will not take your choice. But I refuse to let anyone weaponize your life."
"Then leave me," she answered. "Fix it without touching me."
He did not. Instead he sat in the pew and listened. He listened as Elena's history unfolded like thread—family attorneys, secret trusts, the kind of long-term contingency planning that had been justified by fear.
In the chapel, they found a man who introduced himself as Mei's older neighbor from a town long away—he had been keeping a box for her since she'd been a child. Inside, letters in a childish hand, pressed flowers, and one photograph with a stern-faced woman and a baby in a hospital bed. The stenography of memory hit Mei like hail; she cradled the photograph as if it held a lit match.
Adrian's phone buzzed wild. The detective called: Victor was moving faster. He'd secured a temporary restraining notice claiming the child's legitimacy placed her under a family audit.
Mei looked at Adrian and, for a brief moment, let the weight of two names occupy the same space. She could feel how close catastrophe lived to them. She made the hardest decision—she would fight, but not in the courtroom Victor wanted.
Cliffhanger: Mei signs a form invoking a private arbitration clause she once saw in her paper—one that required the family to produce original ledgers at a hidden notary in three days' time. The clause could expose the original liar—but someone has already beaten them to the notary with a sealed envelope.