Chapter 2: Threads of Trust
POV: Adam
The system's glow had faded to a barely perceptible shimmer at the edge of his vision by the time morning light crept through the hospital blinds. Adam lay awake, fingers drumming against the scratchy hospital blanket, his mind churning over the implications of what he'd stumbled into. Every deal was a contract. Every contract was power. And power, in The Vampire Diaries universe, was the difference between being a bystander and being a corpse.
"Financial leverage first," he decided, watching the numbers on the wall clock tick toward visiting hours. "Then social connections. Then... figure out how to survive when the Salvatore brothers arrive."
Liz appeared in the doorway at exactly seven AM, holding two cups of coffee that smelled like they'd been brewing since the Carter administration. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, but her sheriff's uniform was pressed to military precision.
"Thought you might need this more than I do," she said, offering him the slightly less terrible-looking cup.
"Thanks."
Adam accepted the coffee, using the bitter sip to buy himself time to organize his thoughts. The original Adam's memories provided context—late nights where Liz had worked double shifts, Caroline eating cereal for dinner because her mom was chasing down leads, the underlying stress that came from a single parent trying to hold everything together.
"About yesterday," he said carefully, "what I mentioned about the trust fund. I meant it. The monthly stipends are more than I need, especially if I'm living with you guys."
Liz settled into the visitor's chair, cradling her coffee like a lifeline.
"Adam, I appreciate the offer, but you don't need to—"
"Actually, I do."
He leaned forward, letting earnestness bleed into his voice.
"Look, you've been taking care of me and Caroline basically single-handedly. Dad used to say that when someone offers to help with the bills, you don't argue—you say thank you and figure out how to pay it forward."
"Did he say that?" Adam wasn't entirely sure, but the sentiment felt right, felt like something the original Adam's father might have believed. Liz's expression softened, and he knew he'd hit the right note.
"The trust fund details are a bit complicated," she said slowly. "Your parents set it up with some unusual clauses. Monthly allowances until you're twenty-one, then full access, but there are provisions about... about if anything happened to them under unusual circumstances."
"Unusual circumstances." There it was again—the thread that connected to whatever had really killed the original Adam's parents.
"What kind of unusual circumstances?"
"I'm not entirely sure. The lawyer mentioned something about insurance policies, investigations that might need to be reopened."
Liz's fingers tightened around her coffee cup.
"Honestly, I've been so focused on making sure you were okay that I haven't had time to dig into the details."
The phone at the nurse's station rang, shrill and insistent. Through the doorway, Adam could see the morning shift change happening—tired night workers handing off clipboards to fresh-faced day staff.
"Speaking of details," he said, "what exactly do I need to do to get out of here? Financially, I mean. Insurance coverage, discharge fees, all that bureaucratic fun?"
"The hospital will bill the trust fund directly for major expenses," Liz said. "But there might be some smaller administrative costs, processing fees..."
The same nurse from last night appeared in the doorway, looking marginally more human after a few hours of sleep. Her nametag read 'Sandra,' and she carried a stack of forms that could have doubled as a small novel.
"Mr. Adam? Ready for the paperwork marathon?"
"Actually," Adam said, glancing between Sandra and Liz, "I was wondering if there might be a way to streamline things. I know Sandra mentioned priority processing fees yesterday, and honestly, if a little extra tip helps get everyone home faster..."
Sandra's professional smile became slightly more genuine.
"There are expedited processing options, yes. Usually runs about fifty dollars extra, but it can cut discharge time from six hours to two."
"Extra meds for pain management during the transition home, quick release processing, and maybe some of those fancy discharge instruction packets that actually make sense?"
Adam met her eyes directly, letting his voice carry the weight of intent.
"Deal?"
The metaphysical click was stronger this time, more confident. Sandra straightened unconsciously, her bureaucratic instincts suddenly laser-focused on efficiency rather than procedure. But as she reached for the forms, they seemed to develop a mind of their own—sliding sideways off her clipboard, printing upside down when she fed them through the machine, generally behaving like inanimate objects with a grudge against organization.
"Oh, for crying out loud," Sandra muttered, chasing down papers that had somehow managed to scatter themselves across the floor. "I swear these machines have it out for me today."
"Still glitchy," the tutorial voice observed with amusement. "Your presence is causing minor reality hiccups. It'll smooth out once the universe gets used to you. Consider it growing pains."
Despite the mechanical rebellion, Sandra's commitment to his request had noticeably sharpened. She gathered the wayward paperwork with the determination of someone personally invested in solving his problem, rather than just another item on her shift checklist.
"I'll get this sorted out," she said firmly. "Give me twenty minutes, and I'll have you out of here with everything you need."
As Sandra hurried away, muttering about printer cartridges and administrative gremlins, Liz raised an eyebrow.
"That was remarkably efficient. Sandra's usually a stickler for protocol."
"Must be my natural charm," Adam said, then felt his phone buzz with a text. The original Adam's phone, he corrected himself, though the device felt foreign in his hands.
The text was from the bank: "Trust fund account showing irregular activity. Please call to verify recent transactions."
"Irregular activity." Yet another thread in the growing web of mystery surrounding the original Adam's parents. Their deaths hadn't been random. The trust fund had unusual clauses. And now the bank was flagging transactions.
"Everything okay?" Liz asked, noticing his frown.
"Just the bank being paranoid about the trust fund activation. Probably routine after a... after what happened."
But even as he said it, Adam felt the prickle of unease between his shoulder blades. In a world where vampires and witches were real, there was no such thing as coincidence. Someone had killed the original Adam's parents, and that someone might not be finished.
His phone buzzed again—this time with a call from an unknown local number.
"Adam?" The voice was professional, clipped. "This is David Morrison from First National. I'm calling about your trust fund account. There seems to be some discrepancy in the recent activity reports."
Adam put the call on speaker, partly for Liz's benefit and partly because navigating financial mysteries felt like something that required backup.
"What kind of discrepancy?"
"Well, the account has been receiving monthly deposits as scheduled, but there are some irregular withdrawal authorizations from about six months ago. Small amounts, but they don't match the standard trust fund protocols."
Six months ago. Adam's pulse quickened. According to the original Adam's memories, that was right around when his parents had started acting strange—working late, having hushed phone conversations, looking over their shoulders.
"What kind of withdrawals?"
"Payments to a private investigator in Richmond. A firm called Blackwood Consulting."
Adam met Liz's eyes and saw his own suspicion reflected there. Private investigator. Six months before the parents' deaths. The picture was starting to come together, and none of it looked good.
"Mr. Morrison," Liz said, leaning toward the phone, "this is Sheriff Forbes. I'm Adam's legal guardian. Could you fax over those transaction records to my office?"
"Of course, Sheriff. I'll send them over this afternoon."
After the call ended, silence stretched between them, heavy with implications.
"They were investigating something," Adam said quietly. "Six months of payments to a PI, then a car accident with 'unusual circumstances.'"
"It's looking that way."
Liz's sheriff instincts were clearly kicking in, her posture shifting from maternal concern to professional alertness.
"I should have dug deeper when the accident first happened, but honestly, I was so focused on making sure you were taken care of..."
"You did exactly what you should have done," Adam said firmly. "Family first, mysteries second. But maybe now we can do both."
Sandra reappeared, triumphantly clutching a properly organized stack of paperwork.
"Success! Expedited processing complete, discharge instructions printed correctly, and I even managed to get you an extra pillow for the car ride home."
"You're a lifesaver, Sandra. Literally."
As they gathered Adam's few belongings—clothes that still smelled faintly of antiseptic, a wallet with the original Adam's ID, a phone full of someone else's contacts—he felt the weight of stepping into a life that wasn't his. But it was his now, for better or worse.
The walk to Liz's patrol car took them through the hospital's main lobby, where a few early visitors clutched coffee cups and flowers. Normal people dealing with normal problems—broken bones, minor surgeries, the everyday dramas of mortality. None of them had any idea they were living a few miles away from vampires and werewolves and witches.
"None of them are going to die because they accidentally learned the wrong secret," Adam thought. "That's the difference between them and me."
Caroline was waiting by the car, bouncing slightly on her toes in the way that meant she was either excited or anxious. Given the circumstances, probably both.
"Finally! I thought they were going to keep you forever. I brought snacks for the ride home, and I set up your room, and I made Mom promise we could order pizza tonight because hospital food is basically a crime against humanity."
Her rapid-fire chatter was endearing and overwhelming in equal measure. The original Adam's memories provided context—Caroline used words like armor when she was stressed, filling silence with brightness to keep darker thoughts at bay.
"Caroline, breathe," Liz said gently, but she was smiling. "Let the boy get in the car before you plan his entire week."
"I'm just excited to have him home, okay? It's been too quiet without someone to argue with about music choices."
Adam slid into the passenger seat, immediately noticing that Caroline had indeed stocked the car with enough snacks for a cross-country road trip.
"Speaking of music choices," he said, spotting her phone connected to the car's audio system, "please tell me you haven't been inflicting Top 40 pop on your mom this entire time."
"Hey! My music taste is refined and sophisticated!"
"If by refined you mean 'designed to make dogs howl,' then sure."
Caroline gasped in mock outrage, reaching for her phone to defend her playlist. Adam was faster, snatching the device and scrolling through her music library with theatrical horror.
"Oh my God, Caroline. This is... this is actually worse than I expected. How do you even find some of these artists? Do they sell music exclusively at mall kiosks?"
"Give me my phone back, you musical snob!"
"I'm not a snob, I just have functioning eardrums. Look at this—you have seventeen different songs that are just the same four chords played at slightly different tempos."
Their playful argument filled the car with the kind of sibling energy that felt both natural and strange. The original Adam's relationship with Caroline had been easy, built on years of shared jokes and mutual teasing. Slipping into that dynamic was like putting on a well-worn jacket—comfortable, but with the constant awareness that it belonged to someone else.
"Okay, okay," Caroline said, laughing despite her protests. "Maybe my music taste isn't perfect. But at least I don't listen to pretentious indie bands that no one's ever heard of."
"Pretentious indie bands have soul, Caroline. They sing about real things, like... existential dread and the futility of modern consumer culture."
"Oh please. The last song on your playlist was literally titled 'My Feelings Are a Metaphor for Rain.'"
Adam paused, realizing he'd been defending music preferences he didn't actually have. The original Adam's tastes, bleeding through in ways he hadn't expected.
"Okay, that one might have been a mistake purchase."
Liz caught his eye in the rearview mirror, her expression soft with something that might have been relief.
"It's good to hear you two bickering again. The house has been too quiet."
But as they spoke, Caroline's laughter took on a slightly brittle edge, and Adam caught the moment when her smile became just a little too bright.
"Hey," he said quietly, handing her phone back. "You okay? And don't say fine—you get that weird plastic smile when you're not actually fine."
Caroline's facade wavered for just an instant, long enough for Adam to see the exhaustion underneath.
"It's just... with Dad being gone, and Mom working so much, and then you in the hospital... I kept thinking about how things can just change, you know? How people can just be gone, and there's nothing you can do about it."
The original Adam's memories supplied context: Caroline's father, Bill Forbes, had left when she was younger. Custody visits that gradually dwindled to birthday cards and Christmas checks. Another abandonment that had taught her to hold onto people too tightly, to fear the moments when they might slip away.
"Caroline," Adam said, his voice gentler than he'd intended, "I'm not going anywhere. We're family, remember? The annoying kind that you can't get rid of even when you want to."
"Promise?"
The word was barely a whisper, but it carried the weight of every loss she'd experienced, every fear that the people she loved would disappear.
"Promise," Adam said, and meant it in ways that surprised him.
As they turned onto the Forbes family street, lined with houses that managed to look both charming and slightly worn around the edges, Adam felt something shift inside his chest. Not just the settling into borrowed memories, but something new. The beginning of real connection, real responsibility.
The Forbes house sat at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, two stories of white colonial with blue shutters and a front porch that looked like it had hosted decades of summer evenings. But it was the sign posted by the front door that made Adam grin—a hand-painted placard that read "HOUSE RULES: 1. Mom is always right. 2. When Mom is wrong, see rule #1. 3. Caroline's music is banned from common areas after 9 PM. 4. Adam is responsible for all missing snacks."
"Rule four seems a bit presumptuous," Adam said as they pulled into the driveway.
"That's not presumptuous, that's based on historical evidence," Caroline shot back. "You once ate an entire sleeve of Girl Scout cookies in twenty minutes."
"That was one time!"
"It was Thin Mints, Adam. Thin Mints! Those were supposed to last the whole week!"
"And there it is," Adam thought, looking at the sign that welcomed him home to a life he'd never lived but somehow remembered. "My first prank target."
The idea hit him with the force of inspiration: switch the sign. Nothing malicious, just enough mischief to establish his reputation as the household troublemaker. Caroline would shriek, Liz would roll her eyes, and Adam would have taken his first real step into the role of the brother they remembered.
"Small pranks first," he decided. "Then bigger ones. Then whatever it takes to keep them safe when the supernatural hits the fan."
As they climbed out of the car, Caroline already chattering about room arrangements and dinner plans, Adam felt the system interface pulse once at the edge of his vision—not with information, but with something that felt almost like approval.
"Welcome home," he thought, looking at the house that would be his base of operations. "Time to get to work."
MORE POWER STONES == MORE CHAPTERS
To supporting Me in Pateron .
Love [ The Vampire Diaries : I Make Deals ]? Unlock More Chapters and Support the Story!
Dive deeper into the world of [ The Vampire Diaries : I Make Deals ] with exclusive access to 26+ chapters on my Patreon, you get more chapters if you ask for more (in few days), plus new fanfic every week! Your support starting at just $5/month helps me keep crafting the stories you love across epic universes like [ Game Of Throne ,MCU and Arrowverse, Breaking Bad , The Walking dead ,The Hobbit,Wednesday].
By joining, you're not just getting more chapters—you're helping me bring new worlds, twists, and adventures to life. Every pledge makes a huge difference!
👉 Join now at patreon.com/TheFinex5 and start reading today!