Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO REMEMBERED MEClara tried to get out of bed.
Reyes stopped her.
“Absolutely not.”
“That’s my mother!”
“And you are carrying two premature babies after being assaulted.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
The words came from me.
Clara looked at me with such fury that I almost admired it.
“Your opinion is not currently high on my list.”
“Good. Hate me from the bed.”
Malcolm made a suspicious choking noise.
I ignored him.
“Bring Diane upstairs.”
Five minutes later, Clara’s mother entered my penthouse under guard.
She looked older than the photograph in Clara’s phone.
Prison had taken pieces from her.
Her shoulders curved inward. Her gray hair had been hacked unevenly near her neck. A faded hospital gown showed beneath a borrowed security jacket.
But her eyes were clear.
Intelligent.
And when she saw me, they filled with hatred.
“You.”
I had never met Diane Bennett.
At least, I thought I hadn’t.
Clara reached for her.
“Mom.”
Diane crossed the room and gathered her daughter carefully into her arms.
The sound Clara made broke something inside me.
For several minutes nobody spoke.
Then Diane touched Clara’s bruised mouth.
“Caleb?”
Clara nodded.
Diane closed her eyes.
“I told you not to bargain with Mercers.”
“I was trying to get you out.”
“You were supposed to live.”
“I couldn’t leave you there.”
“I’m your mother. Ruining your life is supposed to be my job.”
Clara laughed through her tears.
Even Reyes smiled.
Then Diane looked at Clara’s stomach.
Her expression softened.
“My grandbabies?”
“They’re okay.”
“Both?”
“Both.”
Diane kissed her forehead.
Only then did she look at me again.
The warmth vanished.
“You look like him.”
“Who?”
“Jonathan.”
The room became very quiet.
“You knew my brother?”
“I knew all of you.”
I felt Malcolm shift behind me.
Diane pointed toward the flash drive in my hand.
“If she brought you that, then we’re already out of time.”
“What’s on it?”
“The reason I spent eleven years in prison.”
She sat beside Clara.
“In 1998, I was a junior accountant for Mercer Biomedical.”
I knew the company.
My father had sold it decades ago.
“At the time,” Diane continued, “your family was funding experimental fertility research through St. Catherine’s.”
My stomach tightened.
“Dr. Harold Vale.”
She nodded.
“You remember.”
“Barely.”
“You were treated there.”
“For injuries.”
“No.”
One syllable.
A crack through thirty years of memory.
Diane leaned forward.
“You weren’t sterile because of the accident, Ethan.”
I said nothing.
“You were made sterile.”
Clara’s hand flew to her mouth.
Malcolm whispered something profane.
Diane continued.
“Your father discovered something in the Mercer family genetics. A hereditary cardiac mutation. Your grandfather died at forty-eight. Your uncle at thirty-nine. Your father became obsessed with preventing it from continuing.”
“That makes no sense. Jonathan had Caleb.”
“Jonathan tested negative.”
My chest tightened.
“You tested positive.”
The world seemed to narrow.
“So my father—”
“Authorized a procedure.”
Clara stared at me.
I could not look at her.
I remembered waking after the crash.
Pain.
Bandages.
My father sitting beside the bed.
Jonathan refusing to enter.
I had believed guilt kept him outside.
Maybe it had.
Just not for the reason I thought.
“Why would Jonathan pay Vale two million dollars?”
Diane’s face darkened.
“Because sixteen years later, Jonathan discovered the procedure may have been falsified.”
I finally looked at her.
“What?”
“Vale took the money. Altered records. Told your father it was successful.”
“Then I’m not sterile.”
“Maybe.”
My eyes moved involuntarily toward Clara’s stomach.
Maybe.
The most dangerous word I had ever heard.
Clara looked equally stunned.
But Diane wasn’t finished.
“Jonathan started investigating Vale. Then he found something worse.”
“What?”
“Vale had been selling reproductive material.”
Silence.
“Eggs. Embryos. Genetic samples. Wealthy families paid him to make problems disappear. Other families paid him to create miracles.”
I felt sick.
“What does that have to do with you?”
“I found the payments.”
Diane looked at Clara.
“I was going to expose them.”
“And then?”
“I was accused of embezzling six million dollars.”
Clara whispered, “The money they said you stole.”
“I never touched it.”
“Jonathan framed you?”
Diane shook her head.
“No.”
“Then who?”
She looked directly at me.
“Your father.”
That hurt.
Not because I loved my father.
Because I had spent half my life becoming everything he wasn’t.
Or so I believed.
“Why would Caleb care now?”
Diane’s expression changed.
“Because Jonathan never stopped investigating.”
“But he died.”
“Yes.”
“In a boating accident.”
Diane gave me a long look.
“Did he?”
I stared at her.
The official report had been definitive.
Storm.
Mechanical failure.
Body never recovered.
Caleb had been twenty-two.
I had practically raised him afterward.
I had forgiven every scandal because he had lost his father.
What if that grief had been built on a lie?
I inserted the flash drive into an isolated laptop.
Encrypted folders appeared.
One opened without a password.
A video file.
Dated six years earlier.
Jonathan appeared on screen.
Older than I remembered him.
Terrified.
He looked into the camera.
“If Ethan is watching this, then I failed.”
My breath stopped.
Clara reached for my hand.
I didn’t realize she had done it until her fingers closed around mine.
Jonathan continued.
“Ethan, Dad lied to you. I helped him.”
My knees weakened.
“The crash wasn’t your fault. I wasn’t drunk. Dad ordered me to drive you to St. Catherine’s because you were refusing treatment. We argued. I lost control of the car.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I let you believe I nearly killed you because the truth was worse.”
I could barely hear him over the blood pounding in my ears.
Then Jonathan said something that changed everything.
“Caleb found the files.”
The recording crackled.
“He knows what Vale did. He knows about Diane Bennett. And he knows Ethan may still be fertile.”
Jonathan leaned closer to the camera.
“If anything happens to me, do not let Caleb control Mercer Biotech.”
My heart stopped.
Mercer Biotech had not existed when Jonathan died.
I founded it four years later.
Clara saw the same problem.
“How could he know the name of a company that didn’t exist yet?”
No one answered.
Then the video continued.
Jonathan looked over his shoulder.
Someone had entered the room.
His face went white.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
A male voice answered from somewhere beyond the camera.
“You always were terrible at keeping secrets, Dad.”
Clara gripped my hand.
Caleb.
A crash.
Jonathan lunged toward the camera.
The recording ended.
Malcolm spoke first.
“Sir, there’s metadata.”
He enlarged the file information.
The date was not six years ago.
It had been modified.
Three days ago.
Clara whispered, “Someone wanted us to see this.”
A phone rang.
Not mine.
Not Clara’s.
Diane slowly reached into the borrowed security jacket.
A cheap burner phone vibrated in her pocket.
“I didn’t put that there.”
Malcolm took it.
One incoming message.
A photograph.
Taken inside my penthouse.
Taken seconds ago.
It showed all of us around the laptop.
Underneath were seven words.
NOW YOU KNOW WHY I HAD TO DISAPPEAR.
Then another message arrived.
Hello, little brother.
May you like
I stared at the screen.
Jonathan Mercer was alive.
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