Chapter 4 - Their Mother WakesGrant arranged to meet Nathan at the office at noon.
Rachel objected.
Grant went anyway.
Mercer Urban Design occupied seven floors of a glass tower overlooking the Chicago River. Grant had entered the building thousands of times.
That morning it felt foreign.
Nathan waited inside Grant's conference room.
He looked terrible.
“You knew,” Grant said.
Nathan didn't deny it.
“Emily contacted the company while you were in Singapore.”
“And you decided I didn't deserve to know?”
“You were thirty-six and finally getting everything we'd worked for.”
“I had daughters.”
“You didn't know that yet.”
“Because you made sure I didn't.”
Nathan stood.
“Emily wanted you to leave the overseas project.”
“She was carrying my children.”
“We had personally guaranteed eighty million dollars in financing. If you'd abandoned the project, we could have lost everything.”
Grant stared at the man he once considered family.
“So you chose my company for me.”
“I chose the future we'd spent fifteen years building.”
“No. You chose the future you wanted.”
Nathan looked away.
Grant stepped closer.
“Did Emily fall because of you?”
Nathan's head snapped around.
“No.”
“Did you know she was investigating financial records?”
“Yes.”
“What records?”
Nathan hesitated.
Grant slammed his palm against the table.
“What records?”
Nathan flinched.
Grant had never raised his voice at him in seventeen years.
Finally Nathan spoke.
“Your father invested the original capital.”
Grant frowned.
“My father was a school principal.”
“That's what you thought.”
Nathan opened his briefcase.
Inside was a copy of an old trust document.
Grant's father, William Mercer, had quietly inherited property from Grant's grandfather. Most had been sold before Grant started the company.
William invested $600,000 through a holding trust.
Grant never knew.
“Why hide it?”
“Your father wanted you to believe you built the company yourself.”
Grant looked at the document.
“That doesn't explain Emily.”
Nathan swallowed.
“The trust had a succession clause.”
If Grant died without descendants, his ownership interest transferred partly to Nathan.
If Grant had biological children, those shares would eventually be protected for them.
Grant understood.
“You benefited from nobody knowing.”
Nathan's face hardened.
“I never hurt Emily.”
“But you hid my children.”
“Yes.”
“That's enough.”
Grant walked out.
Before the elevator doors closed, Nathan called after him.
“There's somebody else involved.”
Grant stopped.
Nathan approached.
“I wasn't the only person who knew.”
“Who?”
“Your uncle.”
Grant almost laughed.
“I don't have an uncle.”
“Yes, you do.”
Nathan's answer followed him into the elevator.
“Your father had a brother.”
At 2:30 that afternoon, Rachel called.
Emily was awake.
Grant drove to the hospital himself.
Sophie and Sadie came with Denise under special authorization.
The twins became silent as they entered the neurological intensive-care floor.
Sadie held Grant's hand.
Sophie held Sadie's.
Emily Carter looked impossibly small in the hospital bed.
Bruises marked one side of her face.
Her auburn hair had been cut near the temple.
Grant stopped in the doorway.
Twelve years disappeared.
Emily opened her eyes.
She saw him.
Tears immediately filled them.
“Grant.”
He couldn't speak.
Then the girls ran.
“Mommy!”
Emily sobbed as they climbed carefully beside her.
She kissed their hair.
Their cheeks.
Their hands.
Grant turned away.
He had imagined confronting Emily.
Demanding explanations.
Six years.
Why hadn't she tried harder?
Why had she kept them?
But watching her hold their daughters destroyed every speech he'd prepared.
Eventually Emily looked at him.
“You got my letters?”
“No.”
She understood instantly.
“Nathan.”
Grant nodded.
Emily closed her eyes.
“I should have come to you.”
“Yes.”
“I was angry.”
“So was I.”
“I thought if you ignored the first letter, I'd never beg you to love your own children.”
“I never saw it.”
“I know that now.”
Grant pulled a chair beside the bed.
“When did you find out?”
“Three months ago.”
“About Nathan?”
“About everything.”
Emily explained.
After the twins were born, she had moved to Milwaukee and worked as a bookkeeping consultant. She raised the girls with help from her mother until her mother's death two years earlier.
Then, three months ago, Emily took a temporary accounting contract for a company called Lakeshore Development Holdings.
She recognized one of its transfer recipients.
Mercer Urban Design.
She investigated.
Millions had been quietly diverted through shell companies.
One trail led to Nathan.
Another led somewhere stranger.
A man named Charles Mercer.
Grant stared.
“My father's brother?”
Emily nodded.
“He's alive.”
“Why have I never heard of him?”
“Because your father erased him from your life.”
William Mercer and Charles had inherited property together.
Charles gambled, borrowed against shared assets, and nearly destroyed the family.
William bought him out and cut contact.
But Charles never accepted that the Mercer fortune belonged to William's son.
“He believes part of your company is his.”
Grant leaned back.
“And my daughters?”
“The trust.”
Emily's voice trembled.
“When I discovered the succession clause, I realized why Nathan had hidden them.”
“But Nathan gets shares only if I die without children.”
“Yes.”
Grant felt cold.
“Then revealing Sophie and Sadie costs him millions.”
Emily nodded.
“But Nathan isn't the person I'm afraid of.”
“Charles?”
Before Emily could answer, a nurse entered.
A man was asking for Grant at reception.
Grant stepped into the hall.
Nobody was there.
Then his phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A photograph arrived.
It showed Grant entering the hospital twenty minutes earlier with the twins.
A message followed.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE PAST BURIED.
Grant showed Rachel.
She immediately contacted security.
When Grant returned to Emily's room, Sophie was asleep beside her mother.
Sadie was drawing on a hospital notepad.
A house.
Four people stood outside.
Grant pointed.
“Who's that?”
“Mommy.”
“And those two?”
“Me and Sophie.”
Grant stared at the fourth figure.
A tall man.
“Who's he?”
Sadie looked surprised by the question.
“You.”
Grant couldn't breathe for a moment.
Emily watched him.
Then Sadie pushed the drawing toward him.
“You can have it.”
Grant accepted the paper as though it were priceless.
His phone rang again.
This time the caller was his chief financial officer.
“Grant, we have a problem.”
“What?”
“Someone initiated a transfer from the company reserve account.”
“How much?”
“Fourteen million dollars.”
Grant's eyes moved to Emily.
“Who authorized it?”
The CFO hesitated.
“According to the system?”
May you like
“Yes.”
“You did.”
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