Chapter 10 - The Truth Inside the Safe
I refused to trade Lily.
So did everyone else.
That did not mean we abandoned Cole.
Dad traced the video signal.
Daniel contacted police.
Shaw claimed she could identify the location from the laboratory equipment.
For once, all the liars in my life had the same goal.
Find Lily.
Find Cole.
The signal led to an old Vale storage facility.
Police entered first.
Cole was there.
Alive.
The masked figure was gone.
Lily was not.
But Cole had information.
“She came voluntarily.”
“What?”
“The person contacted her directly.”
“Why would she go?”
Cole looked at me.
“Because they told her they had Eleanor's final recording.”
My mother.
Even after death, she was being used to move us around like pieces on a board.
Cole remembered hearing Lily mention a bank safe.
Dad knew which one.
My parents had maintained a private box for decades.
We went there under police escort.
Inside was my mother's final archive.
No medical data.
No genetic reports.
Just recordings.
Mom appeared on screen.
Older.
Sick.
“Robert,” she said, “if you're watching this, then Claire knows.”
Dad began crying.
Mom confessed that she had suffered a small stroke months before her death.
She believed it had been caused deliberately.
She also knew who had revived Project Haven.
“It wasn't Evelyn.”
Shaw stared at the screen.
Mom continued.
“It was Michael Mercer's son.”
I looked at Daniel.
He stopped breathing.
“No.”
Mom clarified.
“Not Daniel.”
Daniel's face changed.
I had never heard of another son.
He whispered, “Nathan.”
His older brother.
The brother Daniel told me had died in a car accident when they were teenagers.
Another dead man.
Possibly another lie.
“Is Nathan alive?” I asked.
Daniel shook his head.
“I saw his body.”
Dad looked at him.
“No. You saw a closed casket.”
Daniel sat down.
Nathan Mercer had been twenty-two when he supposedly died.
He had worked briefly with their father.
Mom's recording explained that Nathan adopted another identity after Michael Mercer exposed Richard's illegal work.
Nathan believed his father's research had been stolen.
He spent years reconstructing it.
Then came the worst part.
“He knows Claire because he has watched her since Daniel began dating her.”
Daniel punched the wall.
I barely reacted.
I was past shock.
Mom gave Nathan's current identity.
Dr. Samuel Hargrove.
My fertility doctor.
The man who had helped create my pregnancy.
Daniel stared at the screen.
“My brother.”
Hargrove.
Nathan.
The man who had forged my consent.
The man who had transferred our embryo to Emily.
The man who had been inside our lives for years.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
“Claire.”
Hargrove's voice.
Now that I knew, I could hear something of Daniel in it.
“Where's Lily?”
“Safe.”
“Let me speak to her.”
Lily came on.
“Claire?”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Why did you go?”
“Because he has Mom's full letter.”
“Listen to me. Leave if you can.”
“I can't.”
Hargrove returned.
“Come alone.”
“No.”
“Then you'll never know why Eleanor chose Daniel.”
I looked at my husband.
“What does that mean?”
Hargrove laughed softly.
“Ask him about the night your mother died.”
Daniel went white.
I lowered the phone.
“You were there?”
He whispered, “Yes.”
“When?”
“The night she had the stroke.”
“You told me you were in Chicago.”
“I lied.”
My knees nearly buckled.
“Why were you with my mother?”
Daniel's eyes filled.
“She called me.”
“Why?”
He looked at the safe.
“Because she had finally discovered who Hargrove really was.”
“And?”
“She asked me to do something.”
“What?”
Before Daniel answered, the bank alarm began screaming.
Smoke poured beneath the door.
Someone had locked us inside.
Then my mother's recording restarted by itself.
A new file opened.
On-screen, she said:
“Claire, if Daniel has kept his promise, then he has never told you what I asked him to do.”
Daniel stared at the screen.
May you like
The recording continued.
“I asked your husband to let me die.”
