The next week was a silent, desperate marathon. Cameron became a ghost in the Reed mansion, speaking only when necessary, his presence going unnoticed. Every waking moment not spent interacting with his family was devoted to his plan.
He used knowledge from his first year of college in his past life to tackle his final high school curriculum with brilliance. Calculus problems were solved with an ease that didn't surprised him. Literature essays were written with a maturity and bleak insight that made his English teacher pull him aside with admiration. He was a sleeper agent, activating skills from a future he'd barely begun.
Simultaneously, he began his journey to financial freedom. The Reeds gave him a moderate allowance just to keep image…conditional on his obedience and silence. He stopped spending it entirely. The few dollars for coffee, the occasional cheap lunch with acquaintances he now coldly avoided, all were kept in a hidden compartment of his old school bag. Luckily, he found his old, deactivated smartphone from two years ago. Using a public library computer during a supposed "study group," he followed online guides to clean and restore it to basic functionality. It couldn't call, but it could connect to Wi-Fi. It became his secret portal to the world.
In the dead of the night, under the cover of his blankets, he began his true research. His searches were cautious, using library VPNs and incognito windows.
'Infant abduction 18 years ago hospital.'
'Missing baby wealthy family search.'
'Cold case kidnapped newborn.'
The results were heartbreaking, unrelated tragedies. He refined his search, trying to remember any detail from the hidden memory. Victoria Reed (his supposed mother) had said "orphanage." He searched for private orphanages in the state that had closed down around that time. It was a needle in a haystack of pain and bureaucratic dead ends.
He then turned his search inward, towards the people who held his leash. 'Richard Reed business partnerships.' 'Reed Holdings controversies.' He found society page photos of his parents at galas, smiling vacantly. He found a few business articles hinting at Richard's ruthless deal-making. Nothing about selling sons, of course. That business was conducted in shadows.
One name popped up more frequently as he dug deeper into the city's power structure: Blackwood. Aaron Blackwood. There were few photos, a shot from a charity event showing a stone cold, unapproachable, devastatingly handsome profile; a stock image from a corporate website of a man in an impeccably tailored suit, his gaze icy and direct enough to feel through the screen. Articles spoke of "ruthless acquisitions," "unparalleled market foresight," and a "reclusive personal life." He was a fortress, a formidable entity.
Cameron stared at the image, a strange sense of vertigo washing over him. This was the man who, in a few years, would be a business ally to Alexander Sterling. A man whose world is far from what Cameron can either imagine or comprehend. He was also, Cameron remembered with a jolt, the unknowing source of the deflection that had bought him time. He'd used Blackwood's name as a shield. He felt a flicker of grim connection to the distant, powerful figure.
The financial grind was slower. He needed a job, but anything local risked the Reeds finding out. He explored online freelance platforms on his secret phone, but most required a bank account or PayPal he couldn't openly access without his parents' knowledge. He registered for a freelance academic editing site under a pseudonym, using the library's computer to complete a painstaking grammar and style test. He passed. His first job came in: editing a 20-page sociology paper for a desperate university student for thirty dollars. It took him six hours of intense, hidden work over three nights, but when the payment notification appeared in his anonymous digital wallet, it felt like a fortune. It was a seed.
The pressure was high. The fear of being discovered was a live wire in his chest. The trauma etched deep in his bones. The sound of Richard's raised voice in his study downstairs made him freeze, his breath catching. The dismissive flick of Victoria's wrist when he passed her in the hall sent a flush of shame-hot anger through him. Chloe's loud, dramatic phone calls about her latest acting workshop, where she'd compare herself to Anna Sterling, were a grating reminder of the superficial world he was trapped in.
He had nightmares. Not of the fall, but of the moments before, the smirk, the betrayal, the cold calculation in their eyes. He'd wake up gasping, the question screaming in his mind: Who are my parents? It was his anchor and his torment.
One afternoon, a week after the breakfast confrontation, he was in the library, using a computer to put final touches on his Crestview scholarship essays. He was digging into Crestview's publicly available research partnership agreements, looking for specifics to cite, when he decided to try a more direct approach. He accessed a subdomain of Crestview's career center site. It was poorly secured, meant for internal use but indexed by search engines. He typed in a search for "Blackwood Group partnership memorandum."
The page loaded a technical document. As he clicked to open a PDF, a dialogue box flashed on the screen for a split second: [Query Logged: Security Protocol B-7. Ref: Blackwood.] Then it was gone, and the PDF opened, filled with dry legal and logistical language.
Cameron's blood ran cold. Logged. He immediately closed the browser, cleared the cache, and shut down the computer. He sat back, his heart hammering against his ribs. It was a tiny ping in a vast digital ocean, but he'd just touched a wire connected to a vault. Aaron Blackwood's vault.
It was a mistake. A stupid, risky mistake born of desperation. He'd been so focused on gathering tools he'd gotten careless.
He gathered his things and left the library, the crisp autumn air doing little to cool the anxiety on his skin. He had drawn a line in the sand with the Reeds. And now, by accident, he might have just sent a faint, digital ripple towards the most powerful man he'd ever invoked.
He was playing a dangerous game with pieces he didn't fully understand. But as he walked back toward his personal prison, the thirty dollars in his secret digital wallet and the completed scholarship essays in his bag felt like the only real things in the world. He had made his first move. Now, he had to wait to see if the board would move in response.