“That man told us you were happy with your new family.”
“He sent me to another group home.”
Luis’s hands tightened around the envelope.
“We tried to become your legal guardians.”
I looked at him.
“You did?”
“We filed the paperwork,” Marta said. “Martin told us the court rejected it because we were too poor.”
My attorney had found no court filing.
No rejection.
No background check.
Martin had never submitted their petition.
He simply removed me before they could ask more questions.
I had returned to repay their kindness.
But that was no longer the only reason.
While examining the neighborhood records, my attorneys discovered that Marta and Luis did not legally own the small house where they had lived for nearly thirty years.
They believed they had purchased it through a rent-to-own agreement.
Their final payment had been made twelve years earlier.
But the deed was still held by a shell company called Sunbridge Housing.
The company had secretly used the house as collateral for a commercial loan.
Luis’s signature on the loan was forged.
The registered manager of Sunbridge Housing was Martin Vale.
The same man had recently tried to purchase the entire neighborhood through Northline Renewal.
I handed Luis a second folder.
“I don’t think Martin removed me to protect me,” I said.
Marta looked pale.
“What are you saying?”
“My biological father left me an inheritance.”
I had discovered the trust only six weeks earlier.
My father, Daniel Reyes, owned a small commercial construction company. He died in a warehouse accident when I was nine.
The court appointed Bright Path Children’s Services to arrange temporary care while the estate was settled.
Daniel left a trust worth nearly eighteen million dollars in property, insurance, and company shares.
I was supposed to receive it when I turned twenty-five.
I had received nothing.
Martin’s organization billed the trust for private schools I never attended, medical treatments I never received, and homes where I had never lived.