Chapter 2 - MY MOTHER’S LAST NIGHTThe ballroom changed.
Seconds earlier, everyone had been staring at Juliette.
Now they looked at my father.
Douglas Mercer did not move.
Grant glanced between him and Victor.
“What does Caroline’s mother have to do with any of this?”
My mother, Eleanor Mercer, had died when I was twenty-three.
Cancer.
That was what we had been told.
Aggressive pancreatic cancer.
Six months from diagnosis to funeral.
I remembered sitting beside her hospital bed while she struggled to breathe.
I remembered her fingers wrapped around mine.
I remembered the last coherent thing she said to me.
Protect your sister.
For years, I had believed those words meant Juliette was fragile.
Maybe my mother had meant something else.
Dad stared at Victor.
“You miserable bastard.”
Victor’s expression remained calm.
“You’ve spent five years blaming everyone around you.”
“Because my daughter was dead!”
“No.”
Victor looked at me.
“Because you thought she was.”
Marcus stepped between them.
“We’re not doing this here.”
Dad ignored him.
“What did you tell them?”
“The truth.”
Dad’s fist clenched.
“The truth about what?”
Victor smiled bitterly.
“The trust.”
My stomach dropped.
The suspicious documents I had found before the fire involved Mother’s trust.
I looked at my father.
“Dad?”
He did not answer.
Marcus gestured toward the officers.
“Victor agreed to cooperate after we confronted him with evidence of fraudulent estate transfers.”
Juliette laughed hysterically.
“So he’s lying to save himself.”
Victor looked at her.
“I’m going to prison either way.”
“You deserve it.”
“So do you.”
Her face hardened.
Victor turned toward me.
“Your mother discovered irregularities in Mercer Holdings almost two years before she died.”
“What irregularities?”
“Money being hidden from investors.”
Dad stepped forward.
“Careful.”
Victor ignored him.
“Offshore accounts. False valuations. Tax structures that crossed lines they were never supposed to cross.”
I looked at Dad.
“Did you know?”
He said nothing.
That silence hurt.
Victor continued.
“Eleanor wanted an independent audit.”
Grant frowned.
“So?”
“So Douglas didn’t.”
Dad exploded.
“That has nothing to do with Caroline!”
“It has everything to do with her.”
Victor faced me.
“Your mother quietly restructured her assets.”
I remembered the documents.
“She put them in trust.”
“Yes.”
“For me and Juliette.”
“Mostly for you.”
Juliette stared at him.
“What?”
Victor’s expression softened slightly.
“Your mother didn’t trust you.”
The words landed harder than a slap.
Juliette stepped back.
“That’s a lie.”
“No.”
Victor’s voice became quieter.
“She loved you. But she was afraid of what money was doing to you.”
Juliette shook her head.
“You knew me when I was nineteen.”
“I knew enough.”
Marcus opened another section of the evidence file.
Eleanor Mercer had created a series of protections inside the trust.
I would receive controlling voting authority in Mercer Holdings at age thirty-five.
Juliette would inherit income-producing assets but not controlling authority.
If I died before that age, my voting rights would revert temporarily to our father.
Unless another condition was triggered.
“What condition?”
Marcus looked at me.
“If your death was suspicious.”
I felt cold.
“Suspicious according to whom?”
“A trustee.”
Victor raised his cuffed hands.
“Me.”
Dad laughed bitterly.
“Which is why Victor had every reason to declare the fire accidental.”
Marcus nodded.
“If Caroline’s death was classified as suspicious, Mercer Holdings would have been frozen under independent review.”
Grant slowly understood.
“And if her death looked accidental?”
“Control stayed inside the family.”
Juliette stared at Dad.
“You told me the company would collapse if we opened another investigation.”
Dad looked at her.
“Because it might have.”
“You said Caroline was gone.”
“I believed she was!”
“Then why did you fight Marcus when he questioned the identification?”
The question stunned everyone.
I looked at Dad.
Marcus did too.
Dad lowered his eyes.
And suddenly I remembered something I had never thought important.
At the hospital, after my memory began returning, nurses told me they had called my family repeatedly.
One nurse said a man had eventually returned the call.
Not a woman.
A man.
I had always assumed it was Victor.
“What exactly did you do after the fire?” I asked my father.
His eyes filled with tears.
“I buried my daughter.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“You buried a body.”
He flinched.
“Why didn’t you demand DNA?”
“The remains were badly burned.”
“That is exactly why you should have demanded DNA.”
He looked away.
Marcus spoke carefully.
“Douglas, there’s something else.”
Dad looked at him.
“The dental identification was falsified.”
The ballroom became silent again.
I could hear someone crying quietly near the back.
Marcus continued.
“The dentist whose records supposedly confirmed Caroline’s identity never signed the report.”
My father sat down.
“That’s impossible.”
Victor answered.
“No.”
Dad stared at him.
“You forged that too?”
Victor shook his head.
“I didn’t.”
I felt my skin prickle.
Juliette whispered:
“Then who did?”
Victor looked at me.
“Someone who already knew a body would be found in that house.”
The officers beside him shifted uneasily.
Marcus frowned.
“What are you saying?”
Victor inhaled.
“The fire wasn’t supposed to kill Caroline.”
A horrible pressure built behind my ribs.
“Then who was supposed to die?”
May you like
Victor’s eyes met mine.
“Your mother had another daughter.”
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