Chapter 14 - THE RECORDING
Richard’s voice was younger on the recording.
Angrier.
“You should have handled Hannah before she reached Bennett.”
Ethan answered.
“I’m nineteen.”
“I’m not killing anyone for you.”
My heart stopped.
Vanessa’s hands shook.
Richard continued.
“Then stay out of the way.”
“She gave you life.”
“I gave you a name.”
“You decide which one matters.”
The recording skipped.
Then Ethan’s voice returned.
“If something happens to her, I want controlling shares.”
Richard laughed.
“You’re blackmailing me?”
“I’m learning from you.”
Silence.
Then Richard said,
“Fine.”
The recording ended.
Vanessa stared at Ethan as though she were seeing him for the first time.
“You knew.”
Ethan looked at her.
“I couldn’t stop him.”
“You didn’t try.”
“I was nineteen.”
“You were old enough to ask for shares.”
That sentence hit harder than a scream.
My father stood slowly behind Ethan.
“You protected the man who killed your biological mother.”
Ethan turned on him.
“She abandoned me.”
“No.”
Dad said.
“She spent nineteen years looking for you.”
Ethan’s face cracked for half a second.
Then the anger returned.
He grabbed the M-17 folder from my hand.
He opened it.
Empty photocopies.
His eyes lifted.
“What did you do?”
“I learned from you.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Luka’s team entered first.
Police followed.
Ethan backed away.
“You set me up.”
“No.”
I said.
“You confessed.”
Officers freed my father.
Ethan was detained on charges connected to witness intimidation, financial fraud, and the abduction of my father.
But Richard Mercer was still free.
And Ethan knew it.
As officers led him outside, he stopped beside me.
“My father will come for Emma.”
My entire body went cold.
“Why?”
Ethan laughed bitterly.
“You still don’t understand what her DNA means.”
Luka moved closer.
“What does it mean?”
Ethan looked at him.
“M-17 isn’t just proof I was stolen.”
“It’s proof of who my real father was.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“What?”
Ethan smiled without humor.
“Hannah never told you?”
“Dad wasn’t some random man.”
Then he looked at me.
“And Claire’s baby just became the only living descendant who can prove it.”
The officers pulled him away.
I turned to my father.
“What is he talking about?”
Dad had gone pale.
“Thomas?”
He looked at Emma’s photograph on my phone.
Then at Luka.
“The DNA envelope.”
Luka stiffened.
“What envelope?”
My father whispered,
May you like
“The one Sofia told me never to open unless Richard Mercer forced our hand.”
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