Chapter 8 - THE DEBT ROMAN NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT
Roman waited until we reached the car.
Then he said,
“Nathan told the truth.”
I stared out the window.
I didn’t answer.
“My father was Marco DeLuca.”
Still nothing.
“He worked for Evelyn Mercer.”
I turned.
“Doing what?”
“Whatever she paid him to do.”
“Intimidation?”
“Yes.”
“Threats?”
“Yes.”
“Killing people?”
Roman’s eyes shifted away.
“I don’t know.”
“That means yes.”
“No.”
“It means I stopped asking questions when I was a kid because I already knew I wouldn’t like the answers.”
That was the first thing he said that sounded less like a protector and more like a son.
We drove in silence.
Finally, Roman continued.
“The night Thomas called me, I didn’t know my father had been hired to stop him.”
“But your father drove the SUV.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died six months later.”
“How?”
Roman looked ahead.
“He drank himself into a wall at ninety miles an hour.”
I sat with that.
“Did my father know?”
“Yes.”
“And he still trusted you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Roman’s answer came quietly.
“Because Thomas understood something I didn’t.”
“What?”
“Children don’t inherit guilt.”
I looked at Ava.
That sentence landed differently now.
Roman continued.
“After the crash, my father believed Thomas had died.”
“But you got him out.”
“Yes.”
“You hid him.”
“Yes.”
“And your father never knew.”
“No.”
“Evelyn?”
“She suspected.”
“Is that why she kept watching you?”
Roman nodded.
I suddenly understood the tattoos.
The hard posture.
The reputation.
Roman had spent seventeen years making himself look like exactly the kind of man Evelyn expected Marco DeLuca’s son to become.
Dangerous.
Criminal-adjacent.
Predictable.
While secretly protecting the man his father had been paid to kill.
“You built your whole life around a debt.”
Roman stared through the windshield.
“Yes.”
“My father told me not to let you do that.”
His expression changed.
I had read the letter.
He knew.
I continued.
“You weren’t responsible for that crash.”
“My blood was.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
I thought of Nathan.
A baby placed into another family.
Raised inside a lie.
Then turned into the weapon Evelyn needed.
“Children don’t inherit guilt.”
I repeated.
Roman looked away first.
That evening, a new message arrived from my father.
Not a call.
Coordinates.
Roman checked them.
An abandoned Catholic church forty miles north.
Beneath the coordinates were two words:
RED LEDGER.
Angela warned us not to go.
Roman agreed.
I went anyway.
That was becoming a pattern.
The church had been closed for eleven years.
Dust covered the pews.
Stained-glass windows threw fractured colors across the floor.
A priest waited near the altar.
Father Michael Reyes.
He knew my name.
Of course he did.
“Thomas said you might come one day.”
I looked around.
“Is he here?”
“No.”
Disappointment hit harder than expected.
Father Reyes led us to the basement.
Behind an old baptismal cabinet was a steel lockbox.
Roman entered a six-digit code.
My birthday.
Inside lay a red leather ledger.
And seventeen photographs.
Children.
Different ages.
Different races.
Different decades.
Each photograph had a code.
M-1.
M-2.
M-3.
All the way to M-17.
The final photograph was me.
Eight years old.
I remembered the dress.
Blue with white flowers.
It had been taken three weeks before my father’s “funeral.”
On the back, my mother had written:
Claire. Healthy. No neurological decline. Evelyn must never know.
My hands shook.
“My mother knew?”
Father Reyes nodded.
“Anna knew more than Thomas realized.”
“Where is my mother’s file?”
He pointed to the ledger.
Roman opened it.
Page after page documented medical testing.
Children.
Blood samples.
Experimental injections.
Some entries ended with one word.
DECEASED.
I covered my mouth.
“What did they do?”
Father Reyes looked devastated.
“Cross Meridian’s first breakthrough therapy was not developed the way the public was told.”
Roman kept turning pages.
Then stopped.
“Claire.”
I looked.
M-17.
My file.
But beneath it was another notation.
M-17B
MATERNAL PREGNANCY SAMPLE
SUBJECT: ANNA BENNETT
My mother had been tested while pregnant with me.
Below that:
PROCEDURE AUTHORIZED: E. MERCER
CONSENT: OVERRIDDEN
I stopped breathing.
“She experimented on my mother while I was still inside her.”
Father Reyes nodded.
“And Thomas discovered it eight years later.”
I understood the rage.
The disappearance.
The trust.
Everything.
Then Roman turned the next page.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
I grabbed the ledger.
A newer entry had been added.
Six months ago.
M-17C
PROJECTED NEXT-GENERATION SUBJECT
FEMALE PREFERRED
My blood went cold.
Ava had been anticipated before she existed.
Below it was a list of candidates.
Potential fathers.
Names.
Medical histories.
Genetic compatibility.
And at the top:
NATHAN CROSS / NATHANIEL MERCER
My knees weakened.
Our marriage wasn’t merely arranged for legal access.
It was a breeding plan.
Evelyn had selected Nathan because of his genetics.
I nearly dropped the ledger.
Then Father Reyes whispered,
“There’s one more page.”
I turned it.
A payment authorization.
Five million dollars.
Recipient:
NATHANIEL MERCER.
Date:
May you like
Three weeks before Nathan proposed to me.
My husband had been paid to marry me.
