Chapter 6 - The Bloodline Lie
For several seconds, I did not understand.
The warehouse smelled of oil, rust, and rainwater. One broken light swung above us, throwing shadows across Claire’s bruised face.
David kept the gun against her temple.
Charles Mercer walked closer.
“The baby,” I said. “What does my baby have to do with any of this?”
Charles smiled.
Unlike David’s polished corporate smile, his held no warmth at all.
“You married into a family with considerable assets.”
“I don’t want your family’s money.”
“This was never about what you wanted.”
David laughed.
“Nothing has ever been about what Anna wanted.”
My sister struggled against the rope.
“Don’t listen to them.”
David pressed the barrel harder against her head.
“Quiet.”
I took one step forward.
“Touch her again, and you don’t get the drive.”
“The drive is a copy,” Charles said calmly.
My stomach dropped.
He knew.
“How?”
“We taught David to check details. The casing has been opened recently.”
David kicked the flash drive across the floor.
“You really thought a store manager and a small-town detective could outsmart us?”
Sirens sounded faintly in the distance.
David’s head turned.
Charles did not react.
“You were followed,” David snapped.
“No,” I said. “You gave them the wrong location.”
His expression changed.
Wyatt had been right.
The photograph had exposed the true warehouse.
Charles glanced toward a man standing near the rear entrance.
“Prepare the vehicle.”
The man disappeared.
“You’re not leaving with Claire,” I said.
Charles looked at my belly.
“We are not leaving with Claire.”
My hand tightened protectively across my stomach.
David’s grin returned.
“You always wondered why I kept such close track of your doctor appointments.”
“You said you cared about the baby.”
“I cared about the blood test.”
I remembered the genetic screening he had insisted upon early in the pregnancy.
He told me it was standard.
He handled the paperwork himself.
“What blood test?”
Charles removed a folded document from his coat.
“Your mother had a child before you.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“A son.”
“My mother never mentioned a son.”
“She was seventeen. The baby was adopted.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Charles held out the document.
At the top was the name Daniel Mercer.
David’s uncle.
Charles’s younger brother.
“Daniel died without children,” Charles said. “Or so the family believed.”
I looked down at the page.
It was a birth record.
The mother was listed as Evelyn Brooks.
My mother.
The father was Daniel Mercer.
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes you Daniel’s daughter’s half-sister,” Charles continued. “And under my father’s trust, Daniel’s direct bloodline controls forty percent of Mercer Development.”
I struggled to follow.
“My mother’s son inherited part of your company?”
“He would have, had he been found.”
“Where is he?”
“Dead.”
“How?”
Charles glanced toward David.
The answer was in that look.
“You killed him,” I whispered.
“We located him eleven years ago,” Charles said. “He had no idea who his father was. Unfortunately, he began asking questions.”
“What was his name?”
Charles paused.
“Michael Brooks.”
The warehouse seemed to spin.
Michael Brooks had been my older cousin—or so my mother told me.
He died in a robbery when I was twenty-one.
He had protected me throughout childhood.
He taught me to ride a bicycle.
He attended every school performance when my mother worked late.
He was not my cousin.
He was my brother.
And the Mercers had killed him.
Claire began crying.
“You monsters.”
David’s eyes remained on me.
“The trust passed to Michael’s closest living descendant.”
“I’m not his descendant.”
“No,” David said. “But Michael had a son.”
“Where?”
“That is what we spent years trying to discover.”
Charles lifted the blood-test report.
“Then the prenatal screening showed something unexpected. Your child carries a rare genetic marker shared by Daniel Mercer’s line.”
“That could come through me.”
“Not strongly enough.”
Cold spread through me.
David had accused me of infidelity throughout the pregnancy.
He tracked my movements, searched my phone, and questioned every male doctor.
But now he was implying something else.
“Who do you think the father is?”
David’s face twisted.
“We know who the father is.”
Before he could continue, an explosion shook the rear of the building.
Federal agents shouted outside.
David grabbed my arm.
I drove my elbow toward his throat, but he pulled me against him and pressed the gun beneath my chin.
“Back off!” he shouted toward the entrance.
Charles seized Claire’s chair and dragged her toward a side door.
Gunfire erupted.
Glass shattered overhead.
I heard Wyatt shouting my name.
David pulled me backward.
“You ruined everything,” he hissed into my ear.
“You ruined it yourself.”
“I gave you a life.”
“You gave me a cage.”
His grip tightened.
Then the baby kicked.
Hard.
David flinched when my belly moved against his arm.
I drove my heel down onto his foot and twisted away.
The gun fired.
Pain ripped across my upper arm.
I fell against a stack of wooden pallets.
Wyatt burst through the smoke and tackled David.
They crashed onto the concrete.
Claire screamed as Charles pulled her toward a waiting van.
Agent Ellis fired at the tires.
One burst.
Then another.
The van swerved and slammed into a steel barrier.
Ortega reached Claire first.
David and Wyatt continued fighting near the loading dock. David struck Wyatt with the gun, opening a cut across his cheek.
Then he raised the weapon toward me.
Wyatt grabbed his wrist.
The shot went into the ceiling.
Federal agents surrounded them.
“Drop the gun!”
For one second, I believed David would surrender.
Instead, he smiled at me and pulled a second weapon from behind his back.
Wyatt shoved him sideways as the agents fired.
David fell behind a row of crates.
When the smoke cleared, he was gone.
A maintenance tunnel beneath the loading dock stood open.
Charles was arrested.
Claire was alive.
But David had escaped.
As paramedics treated the graze across my arm, Agent Ellis examined the blood-test report Charles had dropped.
Her face became unreadable.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The paternity section.”
“What does it say?”
She turned the page toward me.
May you like
The listed father was not David Mercer.
It was Wyatt Hale.
