Chapter 20 - THE MAN BENEATH THE ROSES
The stranger entered slowly.
He wore a tan coat and carried a black case.
Robert gripped the edge of the table.
“Samuel.”
The man stopped.
“You always were difficult to surprise.”
Daniel moved in front of us.
“Who are you?”
Samuel looked at him.
“The person who wrote the first version of your security code.”
Robert’s voice hardened.
“You sold it to foreign buyers.”
“I sold a limited copy.”
“You nearly destroyed the company before it existed.”
Samuel smiled.
“That is the story you told everyone.”
He placed the black case on the garden table.
Inside were old design notebooks.
Contracts.
And a photograph of Robert, Raymond, and Samuel as young men.
All three stood inside the garage where Mercer Systems began.
Samuel explained that Robert and Raymond had not been the only founders.
He wrote the encryption architecture.
Then he disappeared after discovering that a government contractor wanted to use it for illegal surveillance.
Robert believed Samuel betrayed them.
Samuel believed Robert cooperated with the contractor.
Raymond used the misunderstanding to divide them.
“Why return now?” I asked.
Samuel looked at my silver hair.
“Because Raymond was not the final person using your family.”
He opened another file.
Vanessa had received money from a company created decades earlier.
The company belonged to Samuel’s daughter.
Her name was Evelyn Vale.
The attorney who helped us expose Marcus.
Daniel stared toward the empty garden gate.
“Evelyn was working with Vanessa?”
Samuel shook his head.
“She believed she was protecting the trust.”
“Someone used her company the same way Raymond used Robert’s identity.”
“Who?”
Samuel removed a photograph from the case.
It showed the fertility clinic director standing beside a young woman.
The woman wore a white coat.
Her face resembled Vanessa’s.
“Vanessa has an older sister,” Samuel said.
“Her name is Victoria.”
“Vanessa never mentioned her.”
“She would not.”
“Victoria created the embryos.”
“She controlled the clinic.”
“And she disappeared with a third container before police arrived.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“A third embryo?”
“No.”
Samuel looked toward Robert.
“A genetic sample.”
“From whom?”
Samuel opened the final page.
The donor name read Robert Mercer.
The sample had been collected during his years inside the nursing facility.
Raymond and Victoria had been developing a legal heir to the family trust.
A child genetically connected to Robert but controlled by someone outside the family.
My hands became cold.
“Was a child created?”
Samuel did not answer immediately.
Then he placed a current photograph on the table.
A little boy stood beside a lake.
He appeared to be four years old.
He had Daniel’s eyes.
Robert’s chin.
And silver-gray hair at his temples.
“The child’s name is Oliver,” Samuel said.
“Victoria claims Robert is his biological father.”
Robert stared at the photograph.
“That is impossible.”
“The records say otherwise.”
Daniel looked at Samuel.
“Where is the boy?”
“Missing.”
“Since when?”
“Yesterday.”
A message appeared on Daniel’s phone.
It contained a video.
A woman stood inside the abandoned fertility clinic.
Vanessa’s sister held the little boy’s hand.
Behind them were shelves filled with medical containers.
Victoria smiled at the camera.
“Your family spent years protecting a company.”
“You never asked what else was being built with its technology.”
The camera moved toward Oliver.
The child looked frightened.
Victoria continued.
“Bring Robert’s original patent notebooks.”
“Bring the trust key.”
“And bring Eleanor.”
Robert caught my hand.
Daniel looked toward the garden gate.
A black car waited outside.
Samuel closed the case.
“They already know where you live.”
I stood beneath the roses with my shortened silver hair moving in the wind.
One year earlier, Vanessa had believed cutting it would make me smaller.
She had been wrong.
I looked toward my husband.
My son.
And the road beyond the gate.
Then I picked up the black case.
May you like
“No one takes another child from this family.”
TOBE CONTINUED
