I Have Five Kick-Ass Brothers – Episode 61
The audit listed the unknown recipient as Elias Lincoln. His account had been opened twenty years earlier, three days after Raina’s birth, then frozen before a single ordinary transaction occurred.
Noah checked the family registry twice. Their parents had five sons and one daughter. No birth, adoption, or guardianship record named Elias.
Raina refused to let the word brother become evidence. Someone had used paperwork to manufacture relatives before, and a one-dollar transfer was an invitation to panic.
Luke traced all six payments to a dormant trust administered by Halcyon Fiduciary. The firm had dissolved after its founder died, yet its server had awakened that morning.
Joshua contacted the financial-crimes unit while Henry searched archived newspapers. Mathew remained beside their parents, who looked wounded by the possibility that another child had been hidden from them.
Theo asked the question no one wanted to voice: why send equal amounts to six siblings unless the sender possessed the real family structure?
Raina found the answer in the recovered letter from her grandmother. A faint reference in the margin directed any “unreturned child” to a contingency account.
The wording did not specify a son. It described a legal identity designed to hold property until a missing Lincoln child could safely claim it.
Noah realized Elias might never have been a person. The account could have been a shield created for Raina after her grandmother suspected the hospital switch.
That explanation calmed their parents, but Luke discovered that someone had recently completed a biometric verification for Elias. The placeholder now had a face.
Security footage from a Halcyon kiosk showed a young man wearing a delivery uniform. He appeared frightened, not triumphant, as the scanner accepted him.
Facial recognition identified him as Eli Mercer, a twenty-one-year-old raised in state care. He had no criminal record and no known connection to Victor.
Raina asked Joshua not to send an armed team. If Eli had been given a stolen identity, approaching him as a suspect would repeat the cruelty inflicted on her.
They found him working at a warehouse outside Brookfield. He tried to leave when he saw the Lincoln cars, but stopped when Raina called him by his real surname.
Eli insisted a legal-aid volunteer had contacted him with proof that the Lincolns abandoned him. He had scanned his face only to learn whether the claim was true.
He showed them an embossed birth certificate naming Mrs. Lincoln as his mother. Even Joshua could not identify the forgery at first glance.
Raina told Eli that paper had lied about her too. She offered independent testing and counsel with no condition that he surrender the account.
Eli’s anger faltered. He admitted the volunteer promised him a fortune if he attended a press conference and accused the five brothers of stealing his inheritance.
The conference was scheduled for the following morning. A prepared statement already waited on his phone.
Then Eli opened the attached family photograph, and Raina saw Grace Davenport standing behind Mrs. Lincoln on the day Eli was supposedly born.