Chapter 2 - The Lie Began Before the Funeral
Six months earlier, Julian had buried his wife.
Rebecca Mercer was thirty-two years old when she collapsed in the employee elevator of St. Matthew’s Medical Center.
At 8:06 that morning, she had kissed Julian goodbye.
At 9:43, she texted him a photograph of Leo covered in mashed banana.
At 11:17, she complained about a headache.
At 12:02, she lost consciousness.
By midnight, Julian was a widower.
The doctors called it a catastrophic cerebral aneurysm.
Sudden.
Unpredictable.
Unpreventable.
Julian hated all three words.
Leo was ten months old.
Too young to understand death.
Old enough to search every room for his mother.
For weeks, Julian barely slept.
That was when Eleanor became indispensable.
She arrived with food.
Took Leo during the nights.
Handled condolence calls.
Canceled Julian’s appointments.
Moved him temporarily into the Mercer estate in Connecticut.
“You need family,” she told him.
Julian believed her.
Three weeks later, she planted the first seed.
“Did Rebecca ever mention Dr. Aaron Mills?”
Julian looked up from Leo’s bottle.
“The cardiologist?”
“Was that what he was?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Eleanor gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Nothing.”
She walked away.
A week later:
“Leo has Rebecca’s eyes.”
Julian smiled.
“I know.”
“But nothing of yours.”
Julian stopped smiling.
Then came photographs.
Rebecca leaving a restaurant with a male colleague.
A hotel receipt from a medical conference.
Several deleted messages recovered—according to Eleanor—from an old tablet.
None proved anything.
Together, while Julian was grieving, they created poison.
Then Eleanor produced the document.
A DNA test.
Julian excluded as Leo’s father.
He read it three times.
His hands began shaking.
“Where did this come from?”
“I found it among Rebecca’s papers.”
“She never told me about a test.”
“That may have been the point.”
“No.”
“Julian.”
“No.”
“She knew.”
He ripped the report in half.
Then again.
And again.
“Leo is my son.”
Eleanor watched him carefully.
“You can love a child without lying to yourself.”
Julian left the room.
But that night he sat beside Leo’s crib until sunrise.
Not doubting Leo.
Doubting reality.
Because Rebecca was dead.
And dead people could not defend themselves.
Three days later, Julian secretly submitted new samples to an accredited laboratory.
Nobody knew.
Or so he believed.
What Julian didn't know was that Eleanor had already spent months preparing for the possibility that he would demand his own test.
She had access to the house.
His correspondence.
Several employees.
And one extraordinarily important legal document Julian didn't even know existed.
A document bearing the signature of his late father.
Arthur Mercer.
The document stated that upon confirmation of Julian’s first biological child, fifty-four percent of Mercer Dominion Group would become irrevocably controlled by a descendant trust.
Not Julian.
Not Eleanor.
The child.
May you like
Leo.
And Eleanor had known about it before Rebecca died.
