Chapter 6 - EVELYN MERCER
The screen went black.
Roman ripped the television cable from the wall.
I stared at the dead screen.
“She knows where I am.”
“Yes.”
“She hacked the hospital television.”
“Probably the internal media system.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
Roman called someone.
His voice changed immediately.
“Lock Level Four.”
A pause.
“No electronic access.”
Another pause.
“Bring the vehicle underneath.”
He ended the call.
“We’re leaving.”
I looked down at the IV attached to my arm.
“I gave birth today.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m not running through another stairwell.”
“You won’t.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere Evelyn can’t access.”
I laughed bitterly.
“She accessed a hospital.”
Roman looked at me.
“She can access systems.”
“That’s different from accessing people.”
Twenty minutes later, a female physician disconnected my IV.
She gave Roman instructions about bleeding, fever and postpartum complications.
Roman listened to every word.
Nathan had not asked one question about my recovery.
The comparison made me angry for reasons I didn’t want to examine.
A private elevator took us to an underground loading area.
A black SUV waited.
I stopped.
“No.”
Roman looked back.
“The last black SUV in your story tried to kill my father.”
He considered that.
“Fair.”
He opened the adjacent door.
A dusty beige minivan waited.
I stared at him.
Roman DeLuca.
Tattooed.
Six-foot-three.
Dressed in black.
Standing beside a beige family minivan with a cartoon sunshade attached to the rear window.
I almost laughed.
He shrugged.
“Less dramatic.”
That was the first moment in hours when I truly smiled.
It lasted three seconds.
Then Ava cried.
We drove to an old brick townhouse twenty miles outside the city.
No mansion.
No fortress.
No armed men in visible positions.
Inside, everything was quiet.
A woman in her sixties greeted us.
“Claire.”
I stepped back.
Roman said,
“This is Elena DeLuca.”
His mother.
She looked nothing like I expected.
Small.
Gray-haired.
Wearing slippers and a cardigan.
She immediately ignored Roman and reached for my hospital bag.
“You need food.”
I blinked.
“That’s your solution?”
“It’s my solution to almost everything.”
Roman sighed.
“She’s serious.”
For the next hour, something strange happened.
Nothing.
No attack.
No mystery.
No billionaire conspiracy.
I fed Ava.
Elena heated soup.
Roman changed the locks on a back door that apparently didn’t need changing.
Then Elena disappeared upstairs.
I sat at the kitchen table.
Roman placed a laptop in front of me.
“There’s something Thomas recorded.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?”
Roman’s face gave me the answer.
“He can’t?”
“He’s alive.”
“But?”
“Watch.”
He pressed play.
My father appeared.
Seventeen years older than the man I remembered.
Thinner.
Gray at the temples.
A scar ran from his ear to his collar.
I stopped breathing.
“Claire.”
His recorded voice filled the kitchen.
“If Roman is showing you this, then either I have finally gathered enough evidence to come home…”
A pause.
“…or something has gone very wrong.”
Tears streamed down my face.
“I am sorry.”
My father looked directly into the camera.
“Not for leaving that road alive.”
“For leaving you behind.”
He explained M-17 again.
But then he revealed the part Roman had withheld.
The trust did not merely own patents.
It owned thirty-one percent of voting control in Cross Meridian Biotech.
The shares had been placed there by Thomas and the original founder, Samuel Cross.
Graham Cross had spent seventeen years trying to invalidate them.
He could not.
The trust activated only when hereditary M-17 continuity was independently verified.
Ava’s birth had done exactly that.
“You are now the acting trustee.”
My father said.
“And Ava is the beneficiary.”
I stared at the screen.
“Do not think of this as wealth.”
His expression became hard.
“Think of it as leverage.”
Then came the real reason.
Cross Meridian was preparing to sell its rare-disease division for eleven billion dollars.
The transaction was scheduled in nine days.
If completed, M-17 evidence would be buried beneath international licensing agreements.
Victims could lose their best chance to prove what had happened.
“You have nine days.”
Thomas said.
“Use the trust.”
“Stop the sale.”
“Open the records.”
“And whatever Nathan tells you…”
My pulse quickened.
“…remember that he was recruited to marry you.”
I closed my eyes.
“But recruitment and love are not always mutually exclusive.”
I looked back at the screen.
Why would my father defend him?
“I believe Nathan loved you.”
Thomas continued.
“I also believe fear made him choose the people who created him over the family he created with you.”
His voice softened.
“That distinction may matter to your heart.”
“It should not matter to your judgment.”
The video ended.
I sat silently.
Roman closed the laptop.
Nine days.
A billion-dollar company.
A father who was alive somewhere.
A husband who had been planted in my life.
And a daughter whose DNA had just made me one of the most powerful shareholders in America.
I looked at Roman.
“Where is my father?”
“I don’t know.”
“That video was three months old.”
“Yes.”
“When did you last speak to him?”
“Six days ago.”
“What did he say?”
Roman hesitated.
“He found the original M-17 ledger.”
“And?”
“He was coming home.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where is he?”
“He missed the meeting.”
Fear moved through me.
Roman continued.
“That is why I went to the hospital.”
“You thought Evelyn had him.”
“I still do.”
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I answered.
No voice.
Only breathing.
Then a man whispered,
“Claire?”
Every hair on my arms rose.
I knew that voice.
Not from adulthood.
From memory.
From bedtime stories.
From pancakes.
From a red bicycle.
“Dad?”
The line crackled.
“Don’t trust the trust.”
“What?”
“Dad, where are you?”
“Listen to me.”
His breathing was strained.
“M-17 was never created to protect the Bennett family.”
A loud sound came through the phone.
A door opening.
My father whispered one final sentence.
“It was created to identify us.”
The call ended.
Roman stared at me.
“What did he say?”
I looked at the laptop.
At the trust documents.
At everything we had believed was our weapon.
May you like
Then I whispered,
“He said the trust is a trap.”
