Chapter 6 - The Price of the Truth
Dr. Nolan Pierce agreed to meet federal agents.
But he refused to speak unless I was present.
“That’s not normal,” Agent Brennan said. “He may be trying to manipulate the situation.”
“I’m going,” I replied.
Maya grabbed my hand.
“No.”
“I need to hear what he knows.”
“You don’t know if it’s a trap.”
“I’ll have agents with me.”
Her eyes filled with fear.
“So did I when I was in that apartment. And your mother still got through.”
The guilt in her voice was unbearable.
I knelt in front of her.
“None of this is your fault.”
“I know you keep saying that,” she whispered. “But sometimes I still feel like it is.”
I held her face gently.
“Then I’ll keep saying it until you believe me.”
The meeting took place in a federal building in Lower Manhattan.
Dr. Pierce looked nothing like the polished physician who had stood beside Maya’s hospital bed eleven days before I came home. He was pale, sweating, and unable to stop twisting his wedding ring.
“I didn’t hurt anyone,” he said the moment he sat down.
Agent Brennan placed a folder on the table.
“You sold private medical data.”
“I gave referrals.”
“You gave details about vulnerable mothers to a trafficking network.”
“I didn’t know what happened afterward.”
“You knew enough.”
Dr. Pierce looked at me.
“Your mother approached me two years ago.”
My jaw tightened.
“She said she was helping desperate families arrange private adoptions. She said it was legal, discreet, and charitable.”
“And you believed her?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I owed money. Gambling debts.”
Of course.
There was always an excuse.
A debt.
A weakness.
A reason someone decided another person’s life was worth less than their comfort.
“What did you tell them about Maya?” I asked.
His eyes dropped.
“Her emergency surgery. Her anemia. The fact that you were traveling. Her lack of nearby family support.”
Maya’s private medical suffering had been turned into a list of opportunities.
I felt something inside me go silent.
“Why did you want to meet?” I asked.
Dr. Pierce swallowed.
“Because the people behind Knox aren’t finished. There’s someone named Adrian Wolfe. He runs the network now.”
Agent Brennan’s posture changed.
“Where is Wolfe?”
“I don’t know. But he contacted me yesterday.”
Dr. Pierce slid a folded piece of paper across the table.
It contained an address in Staten Island and a time.
Midnight.
“He said he wants the Carter baby,” Dr. Pierce whispered. “He thinks your family will still cooperate if he offers enough money.”
“He thinks wrong,” I said.
That night, federal agents raided the Staten Island warehouse.
But Adrian Wolfe was gone.
The building had been emptied hours earlier.
All they found were forged passports, hospital files, false birth certificates, and photographs of children.
One photograph was of Liam.
It had been taken before he was born.
Maya saw it and collapsed into my arms.
“They were watching us before he arrived,” she said.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“But why us?”
I had asked that question a hundred times.
Why Maya?
Why Liam?
Why our family?
The answer came from an unexpected source.
Mark.
After being released from protective custody, he came to see us.
He looked broken. Older somehow.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
Chloe had stopped speaking to him after her arrest. He had begun cooperating with investigators, hoping his information would reduce the charges against him.
“Diane didn’t choose Maya randomly,” he said.
Maya went still.
“What do you mean?”
Mark looked at me.
“Your mother hated that you married her.”
I stared at him.
“She said Maya made you independent. She said before Maya, you gave her access to everything. Your finances. Your schedule. Your decisions.”
“That doesn’t explain trafficking.”
“She said if Maya became too weak to fight, she could convince you that Liam needed to be placed somewhere else. She wanted control of your son. She wanted control of your inheritance.”
I felt physically ill.
“My inheritance?”
“Your grandfather’s trust. It transfers largely to your child if something happens to you. Diane knew that.”
The entire plan suddenly revealed itself.
This had never only been about Liam.
It was about money.
Power.
Control.
My mother wanted my son removed from Maya, then placed under an arrangement she could control. If I refused, she could paint Maya as unstable. If I fought, she could threaten us with scandal.
But she underestimated something.
She underestimated Maya.
And she underestimated what a father could become when someone threatened his child.
The next morning, agents received a call from Adrian Wolfe.
He wanted an exchange.
He claimed to have evidence that could expose everyone involved in the trafficking network—including politicians, doctors, judges, and wealthy buyers.
In exchange, he wanted immunity.
Agent Brennan refused.
Wolfe gave them a deadline.
“Bring David Carter to Pier 17 tomorrow night,” he said. “Or the evidence disappears, and the Carter family becomes the story everyone remembers.”
Maya looked at me when the call ended.
“No.”
“I have to go.”
“No, David. We survived too much for you to walk into another trap.”
I took her hands.
“This ends now.”
She shook her head, tears falling.
“I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t.”
But in the silence that followed, we both understood one truth.
Promises were easy.
May you like
Keeping them was the hard part.
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