Chapter 15 - The Lowest Point
The threat changed the investigation.
Police placed Emily under protection.
Daniel moved her from the staff wing into a secured guest suite.
Charles denied everything publicly.
His lawyers called Vanessa emotionally unstable.
Then Charles made his most aggressive move.
He released documents showing Robert Mercer’s illegal foundation transfer from 1997.
The financial press exploded.
Mercer Holdings shares fell.
The foundation suspended operations.
Board members demanded Daniel resign temporarily.
Margaret’s name became synonymous with cover-up.
And Emily became the woman blamed for triggering the collapse.
Strangers waited outside the gates.
Reporters followed her aunt.
Online comments called her greedy.
A liar.
A homewrecker’s daughter.
Emily sat alone in the guest suite reading the headlines.
For the first time, she wondered whether Anna had been right to disappear.
Daniel knocked.
She didn’t answer.
He entered anyway.
“I’m leaving.”
Daniel stopped.
“No.”
“You don’t get to decide.”
“Where will you go?”
“Anywhere that isn’t destroying itself because I asked questions.”
Daniel sat across from her.
“This family was already destroying itself.”
Emily looked away.
He placed a folder on the table.
“The new DNA test came back.”
Emily stared at it.
The laboratory had compared her DNA to Daniel’s.
Half-sibling relationship.
Confirmed.
She didn’t touch the report.
Daniel continued.
“My attorneys can file recognition papers tomorrow.”
“I don’t want the money.”
“This isn’t about money.”
“It became about money the second everyone heard Mercer.”
Daniel was silent.
Emily finally looked at him.
“I spent twelve years believing my mother died in an accident.”
Her voice cracked.
“Now I don’t even know whether she died.”
Daniel’s expression softened.
“We’ll find out.”
“What if finding out gets someone else killed?”
That question silenced him.
Emily packed a small suitcase.
Then Margaret appeared at the door.
She held an old jewelry box.
“I should have given you this years ago.”
Inside was a silver pendant.
Emily recognized it instantly.
Her mother had worn it in nearly every photograph.
Margaret said Anna gave it to her during their secret meeting.
“She told me to keep it if something happened.”
Emily turned it over.
There was a tiny seam along the edge.
Daniel used a letter opener to release the back panel.
Inside was a strip of microfilm.
The investigators digitized it.
Page after page of financial records appeared.
Names.
Accounts.
Dates.
Payments.
One column was labeled NOLAN.
Another was labeled O.B.
Owen Blake.
Then Emily saw one final entry dated the night Robert died.
The payment was two hundred thousand dollars.
The recipient was not Charles.
It was not Vanessa.
It was made to a company owned by someone named Evelyn Mercer.
Daniel stared at the name.
Emily looked at him.
“Who is Evelyn?”
Daniel’s voice was barely audible.
“My aunt.”
May you like
Margaret turned white.
Because Evelyn Mercer had supposedly been dead for seventeen years.
