The Forgotten One (The Heirs #2)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I’m Maximillian Smith’s personal secretary and need to speak to someone in charge.”

Sarah looked down at the pages of notes spread all over her desk.

Getting anyone to believe that she was Max’s secretary was nearly impossible. There was irony in that thought, but Sarah went with the lie in order to climb up the professional phone chain to have her needs met anyway.

The police file on Max’s abandonment was relatively easy. Police records were kept, especially if the case was never solved or closed.

With the file number and date of Lisa Davis’s disappearing act, Sarah now tried to battle Child and Family Services in the county where Max entered the system.

All Sarah could manage to get out of them was information the private investigator obtained when searching for Max.

Max went into the system, bounced in and out of group homes while they attempted to find him a permanent foster. There was a runaway report from when he was fifteen that was expunged. The word threw Sarah off. There was more documentation of placement but no explanation of where Max had been when he turned eighteen and his social services file was closed.

Zero details.

A good year and a half was missing.

He’d been old enough to remember where he was, but Sarah wanted everything social services had before she brought anything to Max.

Sarah sat with her phone on speaker, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Didn’t you call yesterday?” the person who answered the phone asked.

“And the day before that. No one returned my call.”

“We’re very busy here. Someone will get back to you.”

As much as Sarah wanted to scream, she gripped her pen and held her tongue. “I’m sure someone will, but it might be too late.” Create an urgent need and see if there was something Sarah could do for the person she was trying to get to do something for her.

“Too late for what?”

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Sarah asked.

“Nalee.”

“Nalee, have you watched the news in the past week?”

“A little.”

Sarah switched gears. “Do you have a cell phone with you?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, do me a favor and type in Maximillian Smith on your search engine.”

“Why?” Nalee asked.

“I want you to see exactly who I’m asking for this information for.”

Sarah waited in silence as Nalee presumably looked Max up on the internet.

“Oh. Oh! Wow. Is this legit?”

Sarah smiled and felt like she was getting somewhere. “One hundred percent. Max was in your system. He thought he was orphaned, but it turned out he was abandoned. Max is requesting his social services records ...” Think, Sarah, think! “So he can ... thank the people who took him in. You know, now that he has the means to do that.”

Yes!

“He’s a billionaire?”

“Crazy, right? He wants to give back. And right now, people are calling him, saying they helped him when he was a kid, but he doesn’t remember any of the names. We want to avoid scammers.”

Sarah’s lies were rolling off her tongue one right after the other.

“Oh, I bet.”

Sarah glanced at the paper where she’d written the woman’s name. “Please, Nalee. I need to talk to someone in charge so we can get this information and possibly keep anyone else from getting their hands on it. The media has been awful.” That last part was hard to swallow.

“Let me see if Mrs. Eastman is in her office. I’ll put you on a brief hold.”

Sarah sighed when the sound of the on-hold music crackled through the line.

Teri walked into the apartment, took one look at Sarah, and said, “Are you still at it?”

Sarah made a gesture of banging her head against the table. “State agencies are maddening.”

Teri laughed and tossed her purse and keys on the kitchen counter. “Government and state.”

Sarah tapped her pen against the pad of paper where she was jotting notes. “You’re working tonight, right?”

“Yup. Are you coming by?”

Sarah looked down at the sweatpants she’d been wearing since she got out of bed and stumbled to her desk. “It will give me an excuse to take a shower.”

“No date with Daddy Warbucks?” Teri had graced Max with the nickname.

“He’s packing.”

“I can’t believe your boyfriend is moving into a mansion.”

“Guy I’m dating, not boyfriend.”

“Still—”

Nalee’s voice came through the line. “Miss McNeilly?”

Sarah shushed Teri.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Eastman has left for the day.”

Sarah looked at her watch; it was only two. “Are you sure?”

“I know it sounds like a line, but it’s not. I’ll put a special note next to your name and follow up on Monday myself. No guarantees I can get you anywhere, but I’ll try.”

That was all Sarah could ask for. “Thank you.”

Sarah ended her call and pushed away from her desk. “So frustrating.”

Teri flopped on their sofa. “For a woman who is taking a couple weeks off, you sure are working hard.”

Sarah stood and stretched her back. “I know. It’s crazy what I’m learning about the system, though. It’s completely ass-backward.”

“Like how?”

She moved to the other end of the sofa, curled her legs under her as she sat. “Max’s mom committed either a misdemeanor or a level two or four felony when she abandoned him.”

“A misdemeanor? How can that be?”

“Depends on what the state would charge her with. She didn’t leave him in a home by himself—she walked away when he was in the capable hands of Miss Abigale. But abandoned him nonetheless. Let’s assume the court wanted to throw the book at her. For a misdemeanor, we’re talking ... six months in jail, three years’ probation, and a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine.”

Teri looked horrified. “For walking away from your kid? It has to be stiffer than that.”

“Sure. From there it goes to a level four felony or one-year mandatory jail sentence, and then it goes to a level two. So, four years in prison. But here’s the kicker. Whether she ended up in jail or not, she still abandons her son to the system. He has eighteen years, or sixteen in Max’s case, of being tossed around from home to home, and she gets out in four years and lives happily ever after. It’s not like she’d have to take care of him once she was out of jail. She goes off to the Bahamas, and Max is still left at the mercy of humans with big hearts, or small ones that like the government check.”

“And what about the father?” Teri asked. “I mean, I know he’s dead, but he didn’t step up to be a parent. Isn’t that considered abandonment?”

Sarah shook her head. “Nope. He was paying child support. As long as money was going to the mom, he was off the hook.”

“That sucks.”

“I know. Max is one of the lucky ones. Kids that age out of the system have a very slim chance of getting anywhere in their life other than jail or, if they’re a girl, pregnant before they’re twenty-one. And the cycle starts all over again.”

“What does ‘age out of the system’ mean?” Teri asked.

“They were never formally adopted.”

They were both silent for a beat, soaking in the information.

Then Teri asked, “All of this sounds like a recipe for an emotionally damaged guy. You sure you want to be a part of that?”

“The only thing I see in his behavior is that he gets quiet when he’s upset.” The man shuts down.

“What about when he’s angry? Didn’t you say he wanted to flatten the cameraman that gave you the black eye?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if that proves he has a violent streak. He’s protective.”

“I hope you’re not making excuses for him.”

Sarah shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Teri unfolded from the sofa. “If I see any red flags, I’m going to tell you. I don’t care how rich or how good in bed the man is. I’ll be damned if I let my best friend tangle herself up with someone that is only going to cause her a lifetime of misery. Not without a fight.”

Sarah loved her friend for the sentiment. “Who’s talking about a lifetime? We just started dating.”

“The man checks all your boxes, Sarah. If anyone knows that, it should be me. Although I didn’t see the motorcycle and tattoos coming.”

Sarah thought about the dragon that started at his shoulder and wrapped around to his back. His muscular back that said he worked hard and had a body to prove it. “I like his tattoos.”

Teri laughed. “Whenever you want to get friendship tattoos, let me know. I have a couple of images in mind.”

For the first time ever ... Sarah didn’t flat out say no to Teri’s idea.

Seemed Max was already shifting her resolve in something that was a “never” on her list.

There are things you do when you have money that you never considered when you didn’t.

Like taking trucks full of furniture and useful things to Goodwill instead of keeping or selling them at a yard sale.

Max spent the rest of the week packing, sorting, and throwing away his life before Stone.

The part of the house that required the most thought was his garage. Other than the truck Max had owned for less than a month being ripped off, his garage went unscathed.

Which shocked him. Of all the useful things in his home, tools were the easiest to recycle for money. The truck would require serious players willing to face charges of felony grand theft auto.

Or a trip to Mexico.

Max banked on the latter.

Tucker volunteered to help Max pack after school, and in turn, he was given a decent number of tools Max planned on replacing with newer, bigger, and shinier ones.

The truck insurance company had a loaner in Max’s driveway by noon the next day.

Money, Max thought.

Max Smith, not the billionaire, would never have gotten such swift and precise treatment.

Another perk.

The reporter snapping pictures from the street?

Not a perk.

Max ignored the reporter, and he eventually gave up trying to persuade Max to talk and left.

Saturday was moving day.

Max stood in the center of the empty space he’d called home for four years.

Jeff stood outside, both their trucks loaded up and ready to go.

And that was it.

Max’s entire life summed up in the back of two trucks.

While Jeff and Tucker strapped down the boxes, Max walked around the house with his landlord by his side.

Norm was a career landlord, as tall as he was wide, with a gray comb-over that did a piss-poor job of covering the man’s bald spot.

And he was a dick.

“You’re not getting your deposit back,” he snapped. “Broken windows. The carpet is trashed. And you’d think you had a toddler in here with all the markings on the walls.”

“One broken window,” Max corrected. “One wall where the guys that broke in didn’t care that they trashed the place while they committed a felony. And the carpet was crap when I moved in.”

“Well, it’s worse now.”

Max knew ahead of time Norm wasn’t going to cut him any slack.

Max handed the man the keys. “Pick who you want to charge for the damages, Norm. Me or the insurance company. Doing both is considered fraud.”

“What would you know about that?”

“I know your type. You double dip anytime you can, thinking no one will call you out. By all means, charge me, but understand I need the tax write-offs this year, and this place will be a line item.” Alex had gifted Max the knowledge of what to say to the man. Not that Max needed the deposit money back, but he disliked the guy. The rent went up by the maximum percentage every year, no accounting for the work Max did in the house or the yard. The garage had new workbenches and cabinets he’d installed shortly after moving there to organize the space so he could work in it. And when things inside the house had issues, Norm dragged his feet in fixing them ... or didn’t bother at all.

When Max had been stressed with his finances, those extra dollars had added up.

“Are you accusing me of something?” Norm’s face twisted in a bloated knot.

Max shook his head with a sinister smile. “Naw. I don’t have time for that.”

He walked out of the house and straight to the truck.

Tucker sat in the passenger seat, excited to come along, if only to see the house Max was moving into.

Across the street, the neighbor he loved to hate stood watching as Max and Jeff pulled away from the curb.

As much as Max liked to think he was a full-fledged, card-carrying adult, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity of giving one last fuck you to his nosy neighbor.

Max rolled down the window and stopped in front of the man’s house.

Siegfried tried to act like he wasn’t watching them as he held a garden hose and watered his lawn.

“Hey, Siegfried?” Max called out, then hit his horn when the man didn’t look up.

Siegfried’s constipated expression brought joy to Max’s heart.

“What?”

“I just wanted to tell you that I’ve never met a man in such desperate need of a blow job in my entire life.”

Tucker started to laugh.

Siegfried just stood there, speechless.

Max flipped the man off as they drove away.