Chapter 6 - THE MERCER LEGACY
“Take the baby?”
I whispered,
the idea sounding like madness.
“Elias,
I’m not a kidnapper.”
“Legally,
you are the mother,”
Elias pointed out,
his voice cold and logical.
“The paperwork at Cedar Vale says so.”
“If you walk in there and take that child,
no one can stop you without admitting to the fraud.”
“Margaret can't call the police.”
“Daniel can't claim parental rights without revealing he's alive.”
“If you have the child,
you have the leverage.”
I looked out the window at the dark lake.
The moonlight was silver on the water.
I thought about the blond woman,
Elena.
She was a mother.
She had just gone through the pain of birth.
Was she a victim too?
Or was she just as guilty as the rest of them?
“She has my name on her wrist,
Elias,”
I said.
“She knows.”
“She has to know.”
“They all know,”
Elias said.
“They’ve been living off your grief for five years.”
“They’ve watched you wither away while they built their new world.”
“Do you think they feel sorry for you?”
I thought about Margaret’s red button.
I thought about Daniel’s silence.
I thought about the five years I had spent defending them.
The pity I felt for Elena vanished.
“How do we get back in?”
I asked.
“Cedar Vale is a fortress.”
“It was,”
Elias said,
a grim smile appearing on his face.
“But I’ve been doing some digging into the facility’s board of directors.”
“One of them is a former client of mine.”
“He’s been looking for an excuse to push Margaret out.”
“If we show him the evidence of identity theft and insurance fraud,”
“the gates will open.”
We spent the rest of the night preparing.
Elias made calls to his contacts.
I went through the trust documents one more time,
finding the specific clauses that would freeze the funds.
If I signed a "Notice of Disputed Claims,"
every cent Margaret was using to run that facility would be locked.
The power would go out.
The guards would stop being paid.
The kingdom would crumble.
At 4:00 a.m.,
my phone buzzed.
It was a text from an unknown number.
Natalie,
please.
Come to the boathouse at the estate.
Alone.
I want to explain.
D.
I showed the phone to Elias.
“It’s a trap,”
he said immediately.
“Margaret is using his phone.”
“Maybe,”
I said.
“But maybe it’s my chance to hear him say it to my face.”
“I’m going.”
“Natalie,
no!”
“I have the video,
Elias,”
I said,
standing up.
“I have the power now.”
May you like
“I’m not the confused widow anymore.”
“I’m the wife he forgot to kill.”
