Chapter 6 - Sarah’s Last Night
We watched the video in Rebecca’s office.
Garrison sat beside me.
He had not spoken during the entire drive.
The footage was grainy.
Bellweather parking garage.
11:43 p.m.
Sarah Blackwood appeared first.
She was young, dark-haired, wearing jeans and a university sweatshirt.
She carried a folder.
Julian entered the frame thirty seconds later.
He looked different.
Younger.
Thinner.
But unmistakably him.
There was no audio.
Sarah held up documents.
Julian tried to take them.
She pulled away.
They argued.
Then another man appeared.
Charles Mercer.
Julian’s father.
My stomach tightened.
Charles had died four years earlier from a stroke.
I remembered standing beside Julian at the funeral while hundreds of employees praised Charles Mercer’s integrity.
In the video, Charles grabbed Sarah’s arm.
Garrison stood abruptly.
Rebecca paused the footage.
“Sit down.”
He remained standing.
“Play it.”
“Garrison.”
“Play it.”
She did.
Sarah jerked free.
The folder fell.
Papers scattered.
Julian bent to pick them up.
Charles pointed toward the elevator.
Sarah left.
The Mercers remained.
Then Charles struck Julian across the face.
I gasped.
Julian did not fight back.
He stood there while his father shouted silently.
Then the video ended.
“That doesn’t prove they killed her,” Rebecca said.
“No,” Garrison replied.
His voice sounded empty.
“It proves she confronted them.”
“About what?”
Rebecca opened scanned documents recovered from the archive.
Sarah had highlighted medication changes in six patient files.
Mine was one.
The other five belonged to women married to executives connected to Mercer Holdings.
Several had husbands with severe infertility diagnoses.
In each case, the husband’s diagnosis had been hidden.
In each case, the woman had been labeled as the primary infertility patient.
And in four cases, medications had been administered that could interfere with pregnancy.
My hands went cold.
“Why?”
Rebecca stared at the documents.
“I don’t know.”
Garrison did.
“Money.”
We looked at him.
“Mercer Holdings insured executive compensation plans. Some included inheritance structures and family trusts tied to biological heirs.”
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed.
“You think pregnancies threatened asset control?”
“In some cases.”
I shook my head.
“That sounds insane.”
“It does.”
“Julian sabotaged pregnancies to protect money?”
“I’m saying Charles may have.”
“Then why mine?”
Garrison did not answer.
Rebecca searched another file.
Then stopped.
“Here.”
A scanned trust document.
MERCER FAMILY HOLDINGS SUCCESSION AGREEMENT.
I read the section twice.
Control of a significant voting block would pass to Julian’s first biological child.
Not Julian.
His child.
The structure had been created by Julian’s grandfather.
If Julian died without biological children, control returned to a family foundation administered by Eleanor and Charles.
My stomach turned.
“So if I had a child…”
“Julian gained independent control,” Rebecca said.
“And his parents lost it?”
“Possibly.”
I felt sick.
Garrison leaned back.
“That explains Charles.”
“But not Julian.”
Rebecca clicked another document.
A handwritten note.
J.M. AGREES — NO CHILD UNTIL RESTRUCTURE COMPLETE.
I stopped breathing.
Julian had agreed.
He had known.
Maybe not everything.
But enough.
“He let them do it.”
Nobody answered.
I remembered him sitting beside me after the second miscarriage.
He had cried.
Real tears.
Or at least they had looked real.
“Was any of it real?”
My voice cracked.
Garrison looked at me.
“Some people can love you and still choose themselves when love becomes expensive.”
That hurt more than calling Julian a monster.
Because monsters were easy.
People were not.
At noon, Rebecca received permission to contact the surviving Bellweather patients.
By evening, two agreed to speak.
The first was Melissa Grant, now living in Tennessee.
Her husband had left her after nine years of fertility treatments.
She had been told she could not carry a pregnancy.
Two years after the divorce, she remarried.
She became pregnant naturally at forty-one.
She now had twin boys.
When Rebecca told her about the altered records, Melissa cried for twelve minutes.
The second woman, Karen Doyle, had never remarried.
She whispered, “I knew something was wrong.”
There were others.
Too many.
By sunset, what had begun as my divorce had turned into something larger.
A pattern.
A system.
A crime, maybe.
Then Chloe called.
She had received the results from an independent paternity screening using a blood sample and donor records.
The baby was definitely not Julian’s biological child.
But there was another problem.
“The donor number doesn’t match the donor I chose.”
I stood.
“What?”
“The clinic paperwork says donor 418.”
“And?”
“The lab says the genetic profile doesn’t match donor 418.”
Garrison’s eyes sharpened.
“Then whose sperm was used?”
“I don’t know.”
Chloe started crying.
“I don’t know who the father of my baby is.”
We drove to the inn.
She was pacing when we arrived.
“I trusted them.”
I understood that sentence better than anyone.
Rebecca took the paperwork.
“We need the clinic’s chain-of-custody records.”
“They’ll destroy them.”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the state sealed the remaining Bellweather archives this afternoon.”
Chloe sat down.
Then her face changed.
She pressed a hand to her stomach.
“Chloe?”
“I’m fine.”
Another breath.
Then another.
She doubled over.
“Chloe!”
Blood appeared on her pajama pants.
Everything became movement.
Garrison called 911.
I knelt beside her.
“Stay with me.”
She grabbed my hand.
“Don’t let them take my baby.”
“No one is taking your baby.”
“Julian said if I left him, I’d lose everything.”
“Julian says a lot of things.”
Sirens approached.
At the hospital, doctors rushed Chloe into evaluation.
The baby still had a heartbeat.
But she was at risk of premature labor.
I sat beside her bed until nearly midnight.
Then the door opened.
Julian stood there.
Chloe screamed.
“Get him out!”
I stepped between them.
Julian stared at my hand holding hers.
“What is this?”
“She doesn’t want you here.”
“That’s my child.”
“No.”
The word landed like a gunshot.
Julian looked at me.
Then at Chloe.
“What did you say?”
Chloe was crying now.
“The baby isn’t yours.”
His face went blank.
For one terrible second, I thought he might collapse.
Instead, he laughed.
“You’re lying.”
“I had the test.”
“You’re lying.”
“The donor insemination worked.”
“No.”
His control cracked.
“No.”
A nurse stepped into the doorway.
“Sir, you need to leave.”
Julian pointed at Chloe.
“You told me it failed.”
“The clinic told me.”
“You let me blow up my marriage for another man’s child?”
Chloe flinched.
I stepped closer.
“No, Julian.”
He turned.
“You blew up your marriage because you wanted to.”
His eyes filled with hatred.
“You did this.”
I almost laughed.
“You falsified my records.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You knew you were infertile.”
His face changed.
Chloe stared at him.
“You knew?”
Silence.
“Julian?”
He looked at her.
And in that silence, she finally understood him.
The same way I had.
Not all at once.
But completely.
Security arrived.
Julian backed toward the door.
Then he looked at me with a strange expression.
Almost pleading.
“You don’t understand what my father did.”
My heart stopped.
“What did he do?”
He glanced toward the nurse.
“Not here.”
“Tell me.”
His voice dropped.
“Sarah Blackwood wasn’t supposed to die.”
Behind me, Garrison had just entered the room.
He heard every word.
May you like
Julian saw him.
And for the first time since I had known my husband, genuine terror crossed his face.
